Revised Artist Statement: Take 3

It’s taken a while, and I’m still not completely content (will I ever be?), but I’m an artist who deals with the photographic medium. I take photographs and I make movies.  I’m most interested in how the subject (I prefer to have one subject in my frame) interacts with their surroundings and the viewer. Most of my subjects are aware that there will be a viewer, but they don’t know who it is. They aren’t exactly sure why I want to take their picture. However, I choose them because I see them as someone who has become a chameleon to the space.  They need the space and the space needs them. But, this is my opinion and I use digital manipulation to enhance my own beliefs.

I take a lot of time and care in my process. My photos are taken with a long shutter speed on film, which in turn, begs my subjects to be still.  This allows for a certain element of awkwardness. These days a photo can be taken in 1/500 of a second. I’m taking around two minutes to focus my camera and to take the photo. I’m making the subject frozen in time—I’m catching a moment and stretching it for as long as possible. 

Go to the Art Institute RIGHT NOW.

Free February and the basement photo gallery is housing some amazing works right now. The exhibition is titled, "In the Vernacular."  

I just discovered Tina Barney because of the exhibit. She's does what David Benjamin Sherry does with color but one hundred times better. 

I also enjoyed this photograph by Larry Sultan:

Looking Up or Into Grids

Review of Megan Lee's Work from 2/5

At her work's basic core, Megan makes grids. Her work exhibits lines intersecting, or barely intersecting, with other lines; shapes becoming shapes; shapes almost becoming shapes. There is a rhythm to her work. There is a past, future, and present. 

Last Friday Megan presented two pieces. Both pieces were barely discernible when I first walked into the space. For one of her works, the above statement must sound obvious, because it was a projection of strings cross-cutting each other. We were only able to view this piece once Megan turned off the overhead lights and flipped on the projector. The projection created its own space in the corner of the room. At first the corner resembled a jail cell but upon further examination, the grid felt a lot safer. Some people, such as Kelly, didn’t want to step into the space, but others, like Tina, really enjoyed being in the shadows of the grid. Zac gave Megan the parameters to do this work, and the parameters were to use string as a surface, to play with a corner, to use light in some way, and to read at least one remark every hour while working (from Wittgenstein’s “Remarks on Color”). Even though the material for the sculpture was laid across the projection screen, a space was created from light and shadow, and the space felt monumental.

Megan’s second piece was created from parameters she gave to herself. She had to use string as the main material, break or blur the framing edge, and employ a duality or dichotomy. As I already mentioned, my eye didn’t go to Megan’s sculpture when I walked into the room. Just like Malevich’s Supremacists Composition: White on White, this work was white string on white wall. If I had to guess, I would say that Megan completed Zac’s parameter project before working with the white string sculpture, for it plays with both light and [absence of] color. Once lights were directly pointed over the strings, shadows created a three-dimensional quality to what appeared to be a flat piece. The work consisted of two grids whose horizontal lines could intersect with each other if there wasn’t space in between them. Therefore, the blank, middle space was given agency—it was charged. I originally perceived the horizontal lines to not intersect with each other, but as I moved around the piece I realized that this was not the case. However, the viewer immediately begins to wonder how the two grids interact with each other in the space between them.

I can’t wait to see what else Megan is working on. I especially appreciated the sculptural aspects to her work this time around. The sketch and collage grids have changed immensely now that Megan is working with light, shadow, string, and potentially color. At first I thought her work was subtle, but that’s only upon first glace. Megan’s work says a lot about how we see and feel, the viewer just needs to take more than a moment to let it all sink in. 

Abby's Parameters

A sample: 

Line of Inquiry 2: THE WORK OF DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY

Kim Gordon

David Benjamin Sherry is another artist the class suggested for me to research. I must admit, when I first started scanning the links on Google, I was a little disappointed. This guy did an interview with Urban Outfitters? Ew. But I won’t blame Sherry (or the class). However, on a slight tangent, the article spent two-thirds of the interview talking about how he’s gay and how he did drugs when he was twelve. One-third talked about how fashion photography can be art once you do more than photograph a model in front of a backdrop. Anyways, back to Sherry, because he is an artist with merits, and not just an Urban Outfitters flavor-of-the-week.

Sherry is from Woodstock, NY, and as his hippy background would suggest, his photographs are heavily saturated in colors and have a certain tie-dye affect. The vibrant colors in Sherry’s work could also reflect an influence from David LaChappelle, as Sherry was his intern for one summer. Sherry’s education is extremely impressive. He went to RISD for his undergraduate training, and studied at Yale for graduate school, where his mentor was Philip Lorca-Dicorcia. David Benjamin Sherry does a little bit of everything with his photographs. Some are fashion-based editorials. Other pieces of his work are experimental landscape photographs. He even does the self-portrait now and then. The photographs that totally stun me are the portraits that manipulate the space and the subject to be one hue. There is a green man, in a green meadow, surrounded by a green forest. There is also a photo of a blue ban, with a blue ball in his mouth, in a blue room. To me, this is eye candy. I see passion and love for what he’s doing, but I don’t necessarily see a concept. However, that’s completely fine. I’m attracted firstly to aesthetics and that’s what stands out in Sherry’s work. The class mentioned that I would like these photographs for his use of color and how he stays away from digital manipulation. I found out from my research that that isn’t necessarily the case, but Sherry does depend a lot on manipulated all that he can during production. Most of his photographs have a nostalgic quality, as if they came right out of my mom's photo album from her flower child days. It's ironic how he and others try to achieve this look through digital means. (Another tangent: proof that pixels can't match the archival quality of analog. Ha!)   

Do I see my own work like the work of David Benjamin Sherry’s? No. Definitely not. But, I do appreciate it. To me, I hope that my work falls somewhere in between that of Sherry’s and that of Jeff Wall’s. I love the outlandishly surrealistic qualities of Sherry’s photographs—it’s like being on an acid trip. Personally, I’ve never been on acid, but I guess I can trust Sherry, because according to that Urban Outfitters article he has definitely tried the stuff. 

Rain and I at Teepee

Line of Inquiry 1: THE WORK OF JEFF WALL

A Sudden Gust of Wind

Jeff Wall is a Canadian photographer who is famous for his large scale, cinematic, backlit cibachromes.

Wait, wait, wait—let me back up for a second. A backlit what?  A Cibachrome is a “dye construction positive-to-positive photographic process used for the production of slides on photographic paper.” Thank you, Wikipedia! So, essentially, Wall is known for installing his works as phototransparencies, each one individually lit to expose its color purity and image clarity.

I could talk about Wall’s numerous awards and academic accolades. I could talk about his wide array of published essays. However, all I’ll say is that the man isn’t failing in the achievements department. Instead, I’d rather talk about why Jeff Wall deserves such notoriety.

Wall plans and composes most of his shots, but they all have a very cinematic style. He explores the history of representation in art (Mimic is famous for its racial undertones), and contemporary culture in his staged photos. Wall is based on conceptual art, and sure, his work goes beyond photography—his work includes sculptural design and even some digital manipulation inside the frame. He tests the boundaries of forms, both in human and in inanimate object subjects. For example, Milk captures a man tosses a glass of the said liquid. Wall stated in his 1989 essay, “A natural form, with its unpredictable contours is an expression of infinitesimal metamorphoses of quality. Photography seems perfectly adapted for representing this kind of movement or form.” I can appreciate Wall’s work because it goes beyond just the cinema “scope”. If that were all I was interested in, I would have just stuck to make moving images—I would have concentrated on frames that move 1/24 of a second. Instead, what I love about the medium of photography is what is frozen, what is encapsulated at a moment. A professor once told me that a photograph captures what is now dead at the moment right before it was about to die, and makes it live forever. I love how Wall never lets go of these moments. He combines he love for the conceptual and the cinema in his pieces.

In contrast, I see Gregory Crewdson’s work to be much more one-dimensional. Crewdson’s work, even right down to the elaborate productions, is all about the cinema. Looking at one of his photographs makes me wish I were just watching the movie that’s based on it. It’s less about the concept and more about its advertising qualities. They’re movie posters.

I also love how there is a quality of street photography and reportage in Jeff Wall’s work. His studio is the world, essentially. He uses the world and its natural habits as his inspiration and recreates them. The photos are captivating even when I look at them online. I’ve never had the chance to see the actual light boxes, but I can still imagine they’re aural qualities. Jeff Wall is the ultimate. Some people consider portraits as headshots. Well, I don’t. Wall’s portraits are slices of life, lit (yes, that’s a pun) by the social attitudes of his subjects, or the culture surrounding the object(s) in the frame. 

Mimic

Milk

Photograph by Gregory Crewdson

Charlie

Kodak Gold 35mm, 200 asa, daylight but shot with tungsten lights. 

This kid hates to pose.