the eyes of anne collier

i've been having a hard time with portraits lately.  i've taken a bit of time off from really looking at them (or taking them).

Anne Collier's approach to capturing the subject is very appealing to me right now.  her images raise a lot of questions, ones that i enjoy--about appropriation, looking, documenting, nostalgia, and about why we take photographs.

the top image is from her "Woman With A Camera" series; it's a photograph of a promotional photo for "Eyes of Laura Mars" (the 1978 film in which Faye Dunaway sees--and photographs--through the eyes of a male serial killer).  the second image is "8 x 10 (Left Eye #1)," from a recent series of photographs of 8 x 10 prints in photo paper boxes.

Collier has said of photographing other photographs and album covers: "It's got something to do with self-portraiture, but I'm not really in any of the photographs."

(listen to more at the 2006 Whitney Biennial site.)

feral bodies, tame bodies

i am both compelled and troubled by Megan Cump's project Feral, which i saw on Flak Photo. in the project, Cump goes on solo hiking and kayaking trips and photographs herself going back to nature in some surprising tableaux. the images themselves are compelling enough: beautiful landscapes; contemplations of nature and man's role; a naked, young photographer interested in her ability to lose her humanity and have a feral immersion.

her website is organized so that you can see not only each photo, but a detail zoom of each image's selected punctum (see the above detail images: "bloodbath detail" and "siren detail"). i think the troubling part about the project for me is not the content, but two other things. the first one is desire to explain the importance of the images using the grainy details, instead of letting the viewer find its own meaning in the photograph. in this way, the details are offered as trophies, which i think undercuts the photos themselves. (this approach also reminds me a bit of the hide-and-seek product-placement ads playfully included in Alec Soth's Fashion Magazine.)

secondly, i am troubled a bit by something else, which is not Cump's fault, nor is it limited to her: self-portrait projects from a visually-privileged position of young, white, nude beauty. i have been thinking about the "trouble" with beauty in art photography for some time. i can see an alternate world in which i would earnestly feel that female photographers' naked self-portraits were brave, theoretically rigorous, challenging, honest, etc...etc... except i rarely do feel that way, because lately i notice that mainly thin, beautiful women engage in these projects in the first place. or at least, their projects are the ones that gain recognition in the art world (which is why i see them?). of course, such projects might have something thought-provoking and honest to offer, but overall, it still troubles me.

this uneasiness has kept me from embracing other work that i otherwise enjoy and find interesting, from Elinor Carucci's early work to Janice Guy. i'd love to hear from anyone else who has been thinking along the same lines lately. (and i don't mean to lump these photographers together with Flickr's Female Self-Portrait Artists' Support Group or anything, but it's been on my mind, and i would love to see some antidotes--feel free to email them to me.  see also some more discussion of this here.)

back to Feral--some images from the project are below (non-detail views). Megan Cump's project statement is here, and is worth checking out too. she says:

"Important influences also include Freud’s concepts of the uncanny, turn-of-the-century “spirit photography,” and acts of sudden transformation found in myths."

photos of photographers taking photos

yesterday, 'Young Curators, New Ideas' organizer Amani Olu forwarded me ArtCal's new review of the show. i thought it was interesting and that others might want to check it out too.

but i thought one of the reviewer's points was a bit strange:

"Charles Benton's Opposing Photographers presents a more conceptual bend... With two back-to-back slide projectors cued to trade slides of photographers, the work catches the viewer in a crossfire of sorts — an interactive, if less inspired, update on Janice Guy's seedier works."

in the 70s, Janice Guy took mirror self-portraits (see below), featuring reflections of the camera and her nude, reclining body. (i don't find them seedy.) it's an interesting link to make, because at first it seems purely visual: both works happen to have a camera in them. but it's true that both projects explore and poke at the dichotomy between subject and photographer.

i perceive Janice Guy as exploring the agency of the subject and the role of the feminine in art. her photos are purposefully sensualized, and also contain the mediation of the mirror as a reminder of the question of vanity (and gaze).

Benton's work (above) is also concerned with the line between photographer and subject, but is even more interested in the troubling third: the viewer, placed in the middle of the volley between the two. the curator's statement says the piece aims "to experience not just the gaze of the photographer towards his or her subject, but also to reflect that gaze back and enable the viewer to experience both subject and object simultaneously." a bit grandly stated, perhaps, but cool to think about. my take on the slide presentation was that it was cute and fun, and did something interesting with the snapshot cliché of folks with cameras taking photos of each other.

what do you folks think? are there links to Janice Guy that i'm not thinking of?
(also, are there actual seedy photos of hers that i haven't seen? — oh, do send them on.)

otherwise, one of Guy's photos was in the New York Times yesterday too...but wait, haven't i seen that in the Times before? oh yes, last year. gee, they sure love sticking that photo at the top of their arts reviews... see below. i thought it was interesting to see the different tones/contrast in the Met-supplied image vs. the White Columns-supplied (2007) image.

8/25/08:

7/10/07:

three questions for carmen winant, part 3

part three of three questions for Carmen Winant. (thanks again, Carmen! come back and visit anytime.)

Subjectify: What are you looking for when you photograph a subject?

Carmen Winant: I think that contemporary photographers are inclined to posture their subjects as either completely aware or unknowing of the camera’s gaze. (I always think of how Hellen Van Meene’s young subjects rarely acknowledge the camera. Even when they do, their gaze seems hazily unfixed and unspecific.) But of course there is a liminal space—between the manufactured nature of Gregory Crewdson’s work and the sincerity of Robert Frank’s—and that is what I am continually striving to tap when taking pictures of the people in my life. Because the two poles can be quite seductive, it is easy to overlook the substantive and interesting ground between the performed and the unstaged. I think several interesting young photographers right now, like Gilda Davidian and Amy Elkins, are exploring that grey area of representing subjectivity without much distance or irony.

Richard Avedon said that he wished there could be no camera at all, that his eye could be his only mechanism of transferal. For me, however, the camera is a protagonist in producing strong portraits. I shoot film with a Hasselblad 501c, and it requires a deliberate set-up, a relatively long time to focus (which I sometimes consciously extend to increase the slight discomfort of my sitter), and an almost violent, gun-like release. I want a contrived and a sincere subject, and it doesn’t seem to me that the two have to deny each other.

Concerning the difference between a portrait and a biography, my friend, poet Geoffrey Hillsebeck wrote to me once:

A portrait doesn't make a claim while a biography does. That’s often the difference between visual art and the written word. Do portraits always present what is mysterious in the subject; do they always confront you with the impossibility of the enterprise? Can one know Madame X or Rembrandt better by standing in front of the paintings longer, the way one gets to know friends better by spending more time with them? Rembrandt said he wanted to get at the "deepest inward emotion" of his subjects. Biographies never try to do that. They are always supremely conventional, in structure, organization, approach. They are works of history usually, not imagination.

kelly

Stephen K. Schuster sent me a copy of his new book, Kelly, a personal project that is a study of his relationship with his ex-girlfriend. beyond Schuster's images, i really enjoyed the experience of looking through the book and thinking about its meaning and how it was put together.

to that end, i enjoyed the introduction by the ubiquitously delightful Jon Feinstein. not to mention the irony of his statement: "Looking at these photos, you won't know the details of Kelly's past or that she and Stephen's first encounter was a one night stand." of course, now we do know these things (and others). but how do they color a stranger's glimpse into an intimate relationship, and how do they intend to color it?

there are several lovely, fine-arty portraits in Kelly.


and also several provocative ones.

because Subjectify (and my brain) mainly focuses on questions of the interaction between the photographer and the subject, many of the portraits in Kelly beg the question of what it means to publish naked, happy photographs of your ex-girlfriend of two years...after the breakup.

the punctum of these for me is one vivid nude image in the middle of the book that is printed half and half on either side of the gutter—making it become, to me, a kind of subverted centerfold of the book. (my snapshot of this to the left.) Kelly lays on the bed, covering her head with her arms, and only upon cracking the spine firmly can you make out the wry smile on her face. otherwise her face, expression and form are lost in the fold. i found the way this was printed in the book to be very evocative. it works, and it made me think. it's also a beautiful photograph. i asked Stephen about the printing, and he said that the image is central to the book for him as well; and that he was urging his designer to lay it out it differently in the second edition. personally, i like the difficult layout choice (whether the effects of it are intentional or not), and i would stick with it.

because of the intimate nature of the photos, i do think that Stephen's inclusion of a few images of himself along with his subject is a good—and ultimately necessary—self-conscious touch. one place in particular where this holds true is the very last image inside the book; printed smaller, as a postscript, you see Stephen's hand on Kelly's chin, tilting it up, posing her, asserting himself as the photographer and her as the subject. the loved object. as a final image, it made me think of the Roland Barthes quote (not from Camera Lucida for once, but from A Lover's Discourse): "Absence can exist only as a consequence of the other: it is the other who leaves, it is I who remain. The other is in a state of perpetual departure, of journeying; the other is by vocation, migrant, fugitive."


as for the lovers' journeys, Jon Feinstein writes in the introduction that because of the nature of Kelly, "the viewer is confronted with a pastiche of photographic asides." in places "pastiche" seems exactly the right word. since these images were taken as, well, part of everyday life and travels and journeys, we see Kelly smiling for the camera on vacation, in a motel room, relaxing nude in a pool, giving her best suicide-girl look in the shower. as Stephen says "We both love to take off and the camera was always there." on their own, these images don't do much for me. but in context, the narrative builds in places into a pastiche of the snapshot, perhaps even a critique of the types of ways—even clichéd ways—we (photographers? Americans? lovers?) use and interact with cameras in our personal lives and relationships. i don't know if this is intentional, but it certainly inspired a lot of thought in me.

if you would like to check out Kelly for yourself, Stephen is selling limited edition copies here.

p.s. for blogger/photog Liz Kuball's take on Kelly, check out her post on it here.

the hug and the brad

a couple of weeks ago i polled my friends. "what would you say is Nan Goldin's most iconic photograph?" ("...okay, okay, not counting the cover of Ballad," i would inevitably add.)

well, none of them said "The Hug," but for me it is so definitely "The Hug," and so, like, if they all refuse to parrot the right answer for the sake of a blogecdote, there's nothing i can do about that.

seriously, The Hug has all the essence of Nan Goldin wrapped up in one seeming snapshot: crazy love, sex, brutality, candor, tenderness, masculinity and femininity and an ambiguous merger of the two, those Kodrachromey colors... you get the drift. is there even more to say about The Hug? yes—Darsie Alexander apparently wrote a whole essay about the photo for the book Singular Images (which i sadly don't have, but clearly need). there isn't a whole book written about it yet, but perhaps in a way there is, since as Alec Soth pointed out, "The Hug" has been selected several times over as the cover image for novels (about love, loss and drama, i am sure).

i thought a fun photo project would be to attempt to reshoot The Hug over and over again. a whole series of attempted Hugs. well, i haven't gotten around to it.

but i keep seeing Rachael Dunville's photograph "The Brad" everywhere. it's the title image from her series Springville about her community in the Ozarks. i finally realized that it reminds me of "The Hug." not only the actual hug, but the intensity of the gaze, the reveal of skin, the gender play, the stiff ambiguity in the posture of the girl being hugged... (and one more thing... the mysterious white thing on the man's wrist in the hug is echoed—humorously, for me—in the yellow Lance Armstrong bracelet on the Brad.) overall, the image seems to tap into something kindred, though in a very different mode and format.

what do you think? any other Hug contenders out there?

(Joerg Colberg of Conscientious interviewed Dunville last month: check it out.)

double life and the space between

i'm sure it comes as no surprise that i love love love the work of Kelli Connell. Connell scans and combines multiple (medium format) images of the same model in Photoshop to show moments in the relationship between two people. to me, the resulting images feel like short stories. the fact that both characters are played by the same model make them instantly recognizable as fiction (a fiction that feels very true to life), and makes reading the interactions between the characters that much more interesting. the constructed realities they present offer the viewer many questions...

Connell describes her ongoing project as "an autobiographical questioning of sexuality and gender roles that shape the identity of the self in intimate relationships. Polarities such as the masculine and feminine psyche, the irrational and rational self, the exterior and interior self, and the motivated and resigned self are portrayed." all this talk of polarities and the self makes me think of the Jungian archetype of The Syzygy: two entities, masculine and feminine, combined to form an archetypal whole without losing their own identities. Connell's couples portray the paradox of this idea of subjecitivity so vividly.

one thing i find fascinating about her work is how frequently people assume that the model is Connell herself (she isn't--i'm not sure who the model is, but she's pretty amazing). i made the same mistake when i first saw them. i wonder, would that assumption happen to any photographer who exclusively photographed one person...or is it something particular to the intimacy or the visible queerness of the project ? (or something else?) obviously her work raises a lot of questions and challenges assumptions. as she says, "I am interested in not only what the subject matter says about myself, but also what the viewers response to these images says about their own identities and social constructs."

Kelli Connell's monograph is called Double Life. the images above are "The Space Between," "Pregnancy Test," and "Reverie."

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...)

the gaze

i just saw Ted Partin's photos for the first time and i love them. Partin says his photographs are about the gaze, and i agree that the direct gaze of the subject is one of the really arresting things about them. (of course, direct gaze isn't unusual in portraiture, so i'm not exactly sure why it sticks out here, but it could have to do with the explicit intention of it and also the accumulation of gazes in the images when the project is viewed as a whole.)

several of the blurbs about Partin's work go on to discuss the idea of capturing "the masculine, feminine and gay gaze" which would probably be very interesting in a visual theory and gender studies sort of way if the idea were a lot more fleshed out. as a single line in a gallery write-up, it's less compelling—it would be cool to see the whole project statement. whose gaze are we gazing at or through, and how do the gazes interact? how does Partin's gaze, or ours, triangulate the scenes depicted?

bonus: all of the above images were shot in Brooklyn.

(you know, the Wikipedia page on the gaze is actually pretty neat. although the "factual accuracy" of it is disputed, and there is a warning that all or part of the article might be "confusing or unclear." ha. sounds like everything i studied or wrote in college.)

domestic stages

i saw Domestic Stages by Carrie Levy a few years ago at Daniel Cooney Gallery and a few of the photos stuck with me. well, literally. the gallery had printed the top image, above, as 5 x 7 promotional postcard. i grabbed it and for some reason stuck it on the wall over my computer at home. a lot of people come over and wonder why there is a photograph of a random naked guy on my wall and i have no good explanation.

Carrie Levy describes the project, which she started after finishing an emotional personal project, as "anti-portraiture." a lot of portraits these days play with the idea of anti-portraiture... and i've seen a lot of portraits that hide the face in various ways, but these seem to me to also be adding in an idea of shame. i don't think it's just the nudity and facelessness that adds that in—it's the turning to the wall but also the studio lighting, the exaggeration of the pose, and the choice of color film. Levy also says the project was about investigating "how we deal with identity when you are not exposed to facial details and how the body becomes a gaze which does not see."

do the subjects gaze at us? whose shame am i detecting? Levy's, the subjects', yours, or my own?