flower portraits and photographs of childhood

dear subjects,

apologies for the lack of postage this week, but i will say that there is an exciting theme week in the works... more on that next week. until then, a few thoughts:

a while back, everyone was posting about Colin Pantall's Sofa Portraits of his daughter (which turned out to be--oddly, to me--controversial). i just saw on Colin's blog that he's working on a new series of his daughter interacting with flowers. the image below is lovely. the photographs i have seen so far are much much more sentimental than the Sofa Portraits. but i really do think that they are hitting on the same themes at heart about interior life, and observing children while they are turned inward. a few more are here.


he also posted a discussion about children as subjects of controversy (and more) between Sally Mann and filmaker Steven Cantor, who made the documentary "What Remains" about Mann. you can check it out over here.

p.s. wow. Alec Soth's blog archives are really gone.

sofa portraits

i feel like Colin Pantall's sofa portraits have popped up on almost every photo blog i read. that in itself is really interesting. i like the series, of Pantall's daughter watching television, a lot. i like the juxtaposition of her zonked-out look and some of the classical poses he finds her in... i like the fact that you can never see the television but its presence is so powerful in the shot. in a way, her gaze is so fixed that it troubles the artist-subject-viewer triangle and brings the TV into the picture as another player in the dynamic.

Colin Pantall has a blog himself, and has tracked other blog readers' responses to his work. it's so funny to see how differently people react to his work based on context and the comments of their peers: A Photo Editor's readers think the portraits are gorgeous and honest, but these folks think they are disturbing images of child molestation and abuse.

there is something a bit disturbing, in a way, about these photos, but it's interesting to see how uncomfortable some folks are with feeling disturbed...and quick to point fingers of blame for how they feel.

(Pantall is represented by Witzenhausen Gallery. I've seen the sofa portraits featured on Conscientious (the trend-setter here i think), A Photo Editor, J-Walk, Metafilter, etc.. etc...)