photobooth

yay for the photobooth blog.

p.s. it's got one of my favorite local photobooths indexed on it, too.

guns, girls, and keds

can i just say how much i love Amy Stein's idea for customized Keds?

her image above, from the "Women and Guns" series.

alessandra sanguinetti: the life that came

i was excited to see Alessandra Sanguinetti's "The Life that Came," since it is a continuation of her wonderful project "The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams," about two cousins growing up together on their family's farm in Argentina.

i expected to love the new work, and, although the images are lovely, i didn't really love them. i think maybe this is purely an emotional response--and that the new photographs made me sad. maybe in my mind i let Guille and Belinda stay as floating symbols, with the freedom of dress up, smell the flowers, gender play, swim all day, and generally run around in their underwear. it's nice to see their closeness continue. but it was harder than i expected to see them grow up.

i'd be curious if anyone else had a similar reaction.

you can check out "The Life That Came" on Women in Photography and in real life at Yossi Milo Gallery. the artist's reception is tonight, from 6:00 - 8:00 pm.

psychodrama

i enjoyed these photographs by Jill Frank, from her upcoming show Psychodrama, opening September 12th at Golden Gallery in Chicago.

Frank says that the show "expands on the form of psychotherapy by asking her subjects to sit before the camera to record & memorialize some of their most traumatic, awkward, and embarrassing moments. The creation of these missing pictures negates the generally accepted custom of employing photography to anchor memories of happy times & celebration."

september

i recently saw a self-portrait by Amy Montali in PDN's gallery announcements--it captured my imagination especially because i immediately fancied it a queer image, despite the fact that it only showed a figure's white back in a darkened room.  but tantalizingly enough, i can't find the image online, and Amy does not have a website or a lot of web presence (which is kind of refreshing!).

so, instead, please enjoy the above images by Amy.  i really like the work of hers that i've seen so far.  the third photograph, above, is called "september," and i enjoy the naughty puzzle of its composition. and after spending yesterday afternoon in my Brooklyn garden, the september leaves and drooping flowers feel just right to me.

if you are in Boston, check out Amy Montali's work at Gallery Kayafas, september 5 - october 11.  there is also some more info about her work here.  

and, of course, this is my favorite part of her artist's statement: 

"Left unchecked I fall in love with the images of my subjects. I stare at people and consume them by photographing. Maybe this is problematic, but I grew up molested by movies and TV. The media reached into my visual panties long before I was old enough to make informed decisions. Now I too prowl around in the dark."

Amy, you can reach into my visual panties any day.  so feel free to send more work this way!

the windowpane and the landscape

earlier this week, i posted Wolfgang Tillmans' quote that "a photograph is always seen through its content," and was reminded of one of my favorite passages from the bible (er, i mean, Roland Barthes' book Camera Lucida):

"A specific photograph, in effect, is never distinguished from its referent (from what it represents), or at least it is not immediately or generally distinguished from its referent... It is as if the Photograph always carries its referent with itself, both affected by the same amorous or funereal immobility, at the very heart of the moving world: they are glued together, limb by limb, like the condemned man and the corpse in certain tortures; or even like those pairs of fish...which navigate in convoy, as though united by an eternal coitus.

The Photograph belongs to that class of laminated objects whose two leaves cannot be separated without destroying them both: the windowpane and the landscape, and why not: Good and Evil, desire and its object: dualities we can conceive but not perceive."

honestly, that's why i am interested in photography, and really, in portraiture.

i would like to look at photographs that capture the awesomeness of both the prose and the sentiment here—photographs that make me feel the amorous and funereal immobility at the heart of the moving world, that show me the condemned man and the corpse, the windowpane and the landscape, desire and its object—and yes, fish coitus too. and photos that do so while making me grapple with the special trouble of separating the object from the thing it depicts.

and, as always, if you see any like that, let me know.

photographic and literal mysticisms

last week, i touched on the topic of the 'new mysticism' in contemporary photography in a discussion of the Young Curators, New Ideas show. one of the artists in the show (and also alleged as a new mysticist), Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, emailed me a thoughtful response on photographic mysticism and his own work.

"Great Grandfather with Freemasons," above, is one of my favorite photos of his. i love the way it mixes family history, portrait-as-document, analog vs. digital, and pokes at the mystery and ritual of freemasonry with some freaky, postmodern special effects. it's from his series Nocturne.

Noel says:

"I can’t speak for the other photographers in the show but for me this tendency, to highlight and/or deconstruct the medium’s properties (photographic mysticism which we can be critical of, and photographic mysticism that is attached to all photography whether we like it or not), is heavily rooted within my upbringing. This is to say that, unlike previous generations who used photography as a crucial way to understand, confront and engage with social issues, political unrest, and war, my relationship to photography is related to my upbringing by the intrusive and numbing hand of media (news, movies, TV, computers, etc).

I know war and heroism through highly graphic movies, vehicles of unrealistic archetypes. The ways of the universe (both spiritually and spatially) have been prodded into my consciousness by robots streaming data back from the very edges of the solar system. God is no longer a viable entity and the psychotropic drugs don’t get her/it/him to speak - realistic computer generated pixies and dragons are far more telling.

With all of this in mind I refuse to buy into the medium’s influential ability to mean significantly (its importance as a vehicle for substantial change in an all but uninterested world), however, this doesn’t mean that photography being produced today is uninspired or vacant, it's just aware of its relative unimportance. So this may explain why there is an inherent “prettiness” in so much photography as well. I take this notion and make banal beauty to subvert the notion of having to live up to the medium’s past and present quality control. My photos are small, often single editions of minimal captured prints. I want people to consider how digital and analogue image-making co-exist now and forever, how our thirst for better, faster, stronger, shapes our understanding of value in a medium tied to craftsmanship.

A quote by Wolfgang Tillmans on The Sonic Blog sums our present relationship with photography perfectly:

“The initial question everybody asks when confronted with a photograph is, who is it? Where is it? When was it made? How it was taken? A photograph is always seen through its content and rarely through its presence as an object in itself.”

I take a photograph to show you an object, loving its business both in thought, tangibility and commerce."


thanks so much, Noel, for your thoughts—and for letting me post them. (and i think there are several topics here that are worth discussing in more depth, too, especially questions of beauty and questioning the photograph's referent.)

here & there

i saw Katie Shapiro's work for the first time and thought it was well worth checking out.

the photos above are "jamie and david on a blanket," "on the floor," and "sisters." (i'd love to see a general artist's statement for her thoughts on her portrait work and how it all fits together.)

Katie Shapiro is also a part of From Here to There, an LA-based collective of photo/art folks. (their website says that they meet biweekly to discuss art. in real life — like a book club! ok, maybe this isn't a crazy idea, but perhaps a refreshing alternative to internet connections.)

(thanks Carmen for the link.)

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:

photos: where are they at?

so, before i went to check out 'Young Curators, New Ideas' at Bond Street Gallery, i promised to come back with my take on the exhibition's offer of "where art photography is today." i did come up with an answer for your consideration, and it's posted below some thoughts on the show itself.

the show: the exhibition offers the viewpoints of six curators. though they obviously aren't all attempting to conclusively tackle the question of where art photography is in grand terms (especially given how quickly the show was put together), all six curators present themes that point toward possible answers to our question.

i'd group the exhibitions into three loose categories: 1) the first and most straightforward for me was Amy Stein's exhibition, which presents a new crop of photographers working in the directorial tradition of Sherman and Crewdson. these folks, like Alix Smith and Ofer Wolberger, are interested in identity and storytelling and photographic authority.

2) the second group i would describe as pretty pictures with themes of magic, light, and new mysticism (Grant Willing & Alana Celii and Jon Feinstein's exhibitions both explored these). i have to admit that i find a lot of these beautiful, which makes me question them a bit. there's a lot to plumb here (perhaps a few more posts worth), but for discussion-starters i liked Jon Feinstein's interview with Shoot! about the turn toward 'photographic mysticism.'

3) my final grouping was of three curators who seemed primarily interested in questioning photographic forms, and the deconstruction of the meaning of the photograph (Michael Buhler-Rose, Laurel Ptak, and Lumi Tan). obviously this topic is dear to my heart. i enjoyed Buhler-Rose's presentation of Charles Benton's "Opposing Photographers": a timed slide presentation of two guys taking pictures of each other taking pictures of each other. incredibly simple, yes, but how fun to see a thoughtful and playful meditation on one of the most common snapshot clichés. and of course, Laurel Ptak's commissioned animated GIFs stood out (not the least because so many people at the opening reception were crowded around the flatpanel screen watching them animate). of the 26 photographers who contributed GIFs, Noel Rodo-Vankuelen stole the show. (his GIFs are GIFtastic. check out his "Father" above and "Black Monolith," below.) Karly Wildenhaus's are amazing too.

many of the themes presented do overlap and coalesce toward a certain kind of vision of art photography today. but overall -- where is it at? -- i have to say there was one obvious but largely unspoken elephant in the room: the internet. not only had i seen most of the photographs in the show online before, but the show itself definitely had a vibe of people who know each other from the internet posting up paper pictures of some of their favorite photos that they saw on different websites. i don't think this is a negative thing, but it does warrant some thought. and it is definitely something i will be pondering as i, too, contribute more posts and links about various photographs that i primarily, if not exclusively, encounter online. (of course, these questions have been tackled before, here's one interesting and topical starting point.)

the most self-conscious exploration of internet-as-co-curator is also the reason that the animated GIFs were so interesting: because they are a low-brow computer/online digital form being presented on an expensive television screen on a gallery wall -- not to mention being "sold" for $20 each. clever stuff. i think the only thing that could have been better than this, in terms of questioning photography and poking at its online migrations, would be to print each frame of the GIF out individually on paper and turn them into flipbooks.

for those folks who have also checked out the gallery show on Bond St. in lovely Gowanus, Brooklyn (and i do recommend that you check it out), i would love to hear your thoughts as well. Google is returning 3,700 hits for "Young Curators, New Ideas," and frankly the thought of reading them all is freaking exhausting. so i turn to you, dear readers.