#undirected portrait

[thatrickmcginnis]

PHILIP GLASS, Toronto 1989

I couldn't tell you why Philip Glass was giving a press conference in the backroom of the Rivoli on Queen West back in February of 1989, but he had a lot going on at the time and since memory fails me you'll just have to guess. Born in Baltimore in 1937, Glass is easily among the most famous composers alive today - a great accomplishment since his music, when it was first performed in the '60s, was considered hopelessly avant-garde. He accomplished this mostly by making himself ubiquitous - composing and performing his works everywhere he could, and taking on commissions like movie soundtracks to help make his distinctive version of minimalism less forbidding and more mainstream. I was part of that generation who came of age as Glass' music went from loft to music festival to opera house to movie theatre, so when I heard he was in town I tried to get a few minutes of his time for a portrait - and failed.

An invitation to a press conference with Philip Glass in the back of a club was my consolation prize when I couldn't arrange a portrait sitting. Normally I wouldn't have bothered, but I wanted to get some kind of portrait with Glass, and if an unposed, "undirected" portrait was all that was available, I'd take it. (I still debate whether this is a portrait at all, but a lot of people say it is, so I'll go with the crowd.) The late '80s were a crucial time for Glass: besides the soundtrack to Powaqqatsi (the sequel to Koyaanisqatsi, one of the great rep cinema stoner films of all time) he had provided one for Errol Morris' acclaimed documentary The Thin Blue Line, and he was working in more conventional classical idioms, like the string quartet and symphonic compositions. He could have been promoting any of these things when he sat down to talk to the press that morning in the Rivoli backroom.

When I pulled out my camera to photograph Philip Glass during a morning press conference in the back of a downtown club, the first thing I noticed was that there wasn't much in the way of light. I had come prepared, loading my Pentax Spotmatic with high speed Kodak film, but once I was able to judge that I had a decent exposure I was actually grateful. While I couldn't demand his attention like I could with a real portrait session, the single spotlight in that room with its black walls picked him out starkly; without any distractions in my composition, I was practically forced to take a minimalist portrait of a minimalist composer. In pursuit of this, I've pared down the pictures even more - taking out reflections and microphones, isolating Glass' face in each frame, tightening how the light hits his face with some digital assists. (I've even rendered one shot in colour, just to see what it would have looked like if I'd put colour film in my camera.) In the end I consider these more graphics than portraits, but they'll have to do until the (probably slim) chance I get to get Glass to sit down for a real portrait.

[patrice-bergerons]

The thing that gets me about flinthamilton is that Thomas is there throughout the entire story—long before we learn his name or know what he meant to Flint. He is there in the inscription of a book and a portrait, in Flint’s undirected rage and equally in his idealism, his steadfast refusal to accept the status quo out of comfort or convenience; in his grief and every interaction he has with Miranda. He is there in the pardons Rogers offers.

And yet, Thomas is equally only really present in 5 episodes (+1). The flashbacks to London do not even span the totality of the second season; we hear how Flint came to meet and know him, and then all too suddenly, before we as the audience nearly got our fill of this wonderful man and what he and James shared, the story ends (in ruin) and is done. No more flashbacks, no more of his face or smile or intelligence gracing our screens; he recedes to being only a memory, present only in his absence. Loss I think works that way, maddening in the way the deceased too present in everything you think or do or say and yet completely gone. And what a brilliant use of a narrative device to portray that, you know?

[seamuswrynn]

Hi Seamus,

I hope the first question doesn't violate you or is too personal, I'm just a follower of you and your art, so I want to know a bit more about the artist himself.

• Do you miss your wife, and if so, what was she like?

• How do you and Kelly even start shootings, is it the idea for the picture that comes first or is it first the scenery and then the idea?

• What camera do you use?

(I myself prefer a Canon eos 450d and a panasonic lumix dc-g9 ii) I hope you have a lovely day/night.

-☆anon

Hello!

Feel free to ask me as many questions as you like; I have no issues speaking of both myself and my work (although, perhaps I may suffer a deplatforming for speaking too freely about my work publicly like this. Only time will tell!). Your curiosity warms me and I continuously seek to connect with like-minded individuals.

Q: Do you miss your wife, and if so, what was she like?

My former wife, Molly, was a brilliant and bright woman; perhaps one of the kindest I have ever known. I dare say that the only enemy she faced in the time she was alive was circumstance. She was quite the romantic and had a distinct way with words; each simile and metaphor which left her mouth was novel and thought-provoking. In a better time for women such as today, or even back when she was alive, I firmly believe she would have made a fine novelist if more people simply believes in her talents.

To answer your question about whether or not I miss her: I think about her frequently, but to say I miss her would do her wrong: I don't believe she would have wanted me to miss her. We both came to understand that we simply were not meant to be, and to act pretend we were would have been dishonest to not only ourselves but to one another. I can only hope she found what she was looking for.

Q: How do you and Kelly even start shootings, is it the idea for the picture that comes first or is it first the scenery and then the idea?

An excellent question. Inspiration is quite the odd thing, and I find that it manifests itself in different fashions for me. What is consistent, however, is that it is always the concept which comes first, and because I most often work in portraits, the subject of the image is the most important thing to work with.

Allow me to elaborate: years ago, I once met a boy and his fascinating entourage. Nathaniel was his name. It was when I laid my eyes upon him that I knew he would make for the most fascinating subject of photography, for in him I could sense the isolation, the undirected anger, the seeking of connection. There was so much to work with, so many facets of his being to slowly peel away at and showcase.

The most important part of photographing a portrait is that your photograph of the subject tells the viewer something about them. This is something I am only able to achieve through getting to know the subject personally.

To recapitulate my answer concisely: what I aim to capture is the sordid beauty of the human state. As such, both the idea and the scene is always found within the person I showcase.

Q: What camera do you use?

Ah, the hardware... Did you know I still do own my first bellows camera? Compared to the devices the modern market has to offer, it is quite the relic, but to this day, it still works! :) I occasionally still make use of it.

I have had to switch cameras a few times due to rapid advancements. Presently, however, I have gravitated towards the Nikon D750. A terrific and reliable camera which also works excellently in lower light. It meets my needs as a photographer and, in my opinion, simply feels correct in my hands.

Thank you for taking the time to ask me questions! I hope I hear from you soon.

[slims-poetry]

Musings on Malintent

Sahh, dudes!

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about anger. To me, it's the most fascinating fascet of the human condition, and it results in some of the most terrible and awe-inspiring follies of man. The most obvious of these is war, being, in essence, a collective act of pure rage, with all other emotion and reasoning being secondary. There are, however, many more strange and interesting byproducts of this emotion.

Anger can also often be fuel for ambition, and viewed through this lense, some of the most amazing creations of man can be attributed, in part, to anger. The space race, for instance, stemmed from the hostility between the Soviets and ourselves, and technologies the likes of which Humanity has never seen were forged in that flame. Revolution, though usually destructive and unsuccessful, has also spawned great things (and who could deny that the essential documents of American freedom, the bill of rights and the declaration of independence, are among the most shining examples of this).

What also fascinates me about anger is the pure vitality of it. Even when my anger is undirected, or attributed to a hundred abstractions I can't possibly face, I find myself motivated to move and take action. The violent urge brought on by emotion is, in my experience, a kind of hunger that can only be sated through destruction. This destruction does not necessarily have to be physical, however; to quote one of my favourite TV characters, Dr. Melfi, "depression is rage turned inward". Often, when in search of something upon which to take out our rage, we paradoxically choose ourselves as the target. This, I find particularly fascinating; in humanities evolution into the realm of higher thought, anger has become far more dangerous, and men are torn apart by their own sapience. You can even feel that destructive power channeled through your veins in the worst times, a kind of dull, throbbing pressure, and a heat in your blood.

Anyhow, I hope you've found something in my ramblings worth pondering. In other news, the rate at which I write songs has grown more frequent recently, and I find myself gravitating towards my guitar more rather than less. I wrote two songs fairly recently, and I'm quite proud of both, particularly a tune called "Nihilist Bop" that I posted on my Instagram. It was an absolute joy to write, especially because I never knew I had the capacity for punk in me. Particularly amusing to me was the chance to employ extended jazz chords in a punk rock song, and amusement turned to awe when I discovered that my voicings fit like a glove. I wish more songwriters would realize the untouched world of sound below the tip of the iceberg on which popular music sits, because the utility of complex chord extensions is by no means relegated to the world of jazz. The lyrics to my tune were also loads of fun to write, and to loop back to my previous topic, they were my attempt at showcasing the form my anger usually takes, and how that anger can be directed both outward (I hate the world, I hate life) and inward (I hate time, I hate music), although I wasn't thinking of this consciously at the time.

Anyhow, thanks for taking the time to examine my ramblings. Peace y'all, and keep on rockin!

Edit: Since the creation of this post, I’ve written a poem on anger which I think you’ll find interesting and relevant. Below is a transcription.

Rage- a Self Portrait

Bloody knuckles A shape, unformed Thudding, pumping, churning Held back and pushed forward Fading, red to black Clenching, grinding, burning

To wish to sprint and to crawl To wish for pain and to be numb To wish to punch, bite, choke, hammer To sit, and to restrain To hate in every moment the unanswerable force To wish for action and to fall short

Fuming, clogging the senses Ugly, grimacing and leering Contemptuous, turning inward Killing weight

[kgoldtemporarygallery]

The Wild Ones: Polly Brown

26 Νοεμβρίου - 23 Δεκεμβρίου, 2018 Instagram @kgoldtemporarygallery

Η ετήσια έκθεση “The Wild Ones” της K-Gold Temporary Gallery παρουσιάζει το έργο έξι διεθνών φωτογράφων μέσα από τον λογαριασμό της πλατφόρμας στο Instagram. H έκθεση εξετάζει τις αναζητήσεις, τις τάσεις και τους πειραματισμούς στη σύγχρονη φωτογραφία, με σημείο αφετηρίας τις προκλήσεις που η εποχή της εικόνας επιφέρει στις ανθρώπινες κοινωνίες.

Στο πρώτο από τα έξι μέρη της έκθεσης παρουσιάζεται η πρόσφατη σειρά φωτογραφιών “Mood Ring” της Βρετανίδας Polly Brown, που εστιάζει στο σύνθετο κόσμο των συναισθημάτων και την ιδιαίτερη σχέση τους με τη γλώσσα. Η Polly Brown (γεν. 1986) ακολουθεί διεπιστημονική πρακτική που συνδυάζει εκτυπώσεις, ταινίες και βιβλία. Τα έργα της, αν και εκλεκτικά, επιχειρούν να προκαλέσουν την υπέρβαση της καθημερινότητας και να δημιουργήσουν ψυχο-γεωγραφικές τάσεις από το φαινομενικά τετριμμένο. Χρησιμοποιεί στοιχεία νεκρής φύσης, performance και κλασικό ρεπορτάζ για να αποτυπώσει εννοιολογικές φωτογραφικές διερευνήσεις. Έχει συνεργαστεί με το Frieze, ICA, Gucci, Miu Miu, Jil Sander, National Portrait Gallery και τους Times. Η Brown έχει τακτική στήλη στο περιοδικό AnOther.

H επιλογή των καλλιτεχνών είναι του Νικόλα Βαμβουκλή, ενώ την έκθεση συνοδεύει μια σειρά συζητήσεων μεταξύ της Βίκυς Τσίρου και των φωτογράφων, που στόχο έχουν να φωτίσουν διάφορες πτυχές των πρακτικών τους.

Συνέντευξη στην Βίκυ Τσίρου

BT: Τις επόμενες εβδομάδες θα “καταλάβεις” τον λογαριασμό της K-Gold Temporary Gallery στο Instagram με το τελευταίο σου πρότζεκτ “Mood Ring”. Περί τίνος πρόκειται;

PB: Το “Mood Ring” είναι μία συλλογή φωτογραφικών σκηνικών και αναπαραστάσεων που συνοδεύονται από ασαφείς και αρχαϊκούς ορισμούς συγκεχυμένων συναισθημάτων. Οι φωτογραφίες χρησιμοποιούνται όχι τόσο για την άμεση απεικόνιση του νοήματος των λέξεων, όσο ως ποιητικά σχόλια, ��νωρίζοντας ότι οι λέξεις, ανεξάρτητα από το πόσο συγκεκριμένες είναι, θα αδυνατούν πάντα να περιγράψουν αυτό που νιώθουμε.

BT: Πώς είναι η διάθεση σου αυτήν την περίοδο;

PB: Νιώθω αυθόρμητη, αλλά με μια ελαφρώς βαθύτερη ανησυχία.

BT: Στη δουλειά σου συχνά αποτυπώνεις στιγμές της οικιακής ζωής. Για ποιό λόγο επικεντρώνεσαι σε αυτές τις λεπτομέρειες; Γιατί τις βρίσκεις μοναδικές;

PB: Χρησιμοποιώ τον οικιακό χώρο κυρίως ως σκηνικό για παρεμβάσεις, performance ή άλλες σκηνοθετημένες καταστάσεις και λιγότερο για τη καταγραφή ή την αποτύπωση της ζωής στο σπίτι. Μου αρέσει να περιεργάζομαι τους χώρους που με περιβάλλουν.

BT: Ποια είναι τα καλλιτεχνικά σου είδωλα;

PB: Ο Yves Klein, ο John Cooper Clark και ο Ed Ruscha.

BT: Πότε ανακάλυψες την κλίση σου προς τη φωτογραφία;

PB: Σπούδασα Καλές Τέχνες στο κολέγιο και πολύ σύντομα ανακάλυψα πως έκανα κυρίως έργα με φωτογραφικό αποτέλεσμα. Δεν ήταν τόσο η επιθυμία καταγραφής διαμέσου της φωτογραφίας, όσο η τάση να χρησιμοποιώ την εικόνα ως μέσο για να διερευνήσω τις ιδέες ή τις ανησυχίες μου.

BT: Θεωρείς ότι ο τόπος που μεγάλωσες έχει επηρεάσει τη δουλειά σου;

PB: Μεγάλωσα στα νότια της Αγγλίας. Ήταν μία ήσυχη περιοχή, γι’ αυτό ίσως στα έργα μου επικεντρώνομαι σε εσωτερικά σκηνικά.

BT: Πώς είναι να είσαι φωτογράφος στις μέρες μας;

PB: Πιστεύω πως είναι εξίσου προκλητική και ενθουσιώδης εποχή για να είσαι φωτογράφος. Είναι πρόκληση να χαράζεις το δρόμο σου σε ένα τόσο κορεσμένο πεδίο. Ωστόσο, είναι επίσης μια περίοδος στην οποία οι άνθρωποι πειραματίζονται με αυτό το μέσο και αναλαμβάνουν ρίσκα, εξερευνώντας και εξυμνώντας μια γλώσσα που βασίζεται στην εικόνα. Σήμερα, επικοινωνούμε τόσο πολύ με εικόνες και η πρόσληψη οπτικών ερεθισμάτων είναι τόσο μεγάλη, που τίθενται ενδιαφέροντα και απαιτητικά ερωτήματα με το οποία οι φωτογράφοι μπορούν και πρέπει να ασχοληθούν.

BT: Τι περιλαμβάνει η δημιουργική σου διαδικασία;

PB: Περνάω αρκετή ώρα παίζοντας. Μου αρέσει να φτιάχνω γρήγορα γλυπτά, να κάνω μικρούς βανδαλισμούς, να τακτοποιώ ξανά τα δωμάτια. Θα καταγράψω το γεγονός, αλλά αυτή η διαδικασία δεν είναι προσανατολισμένη. Είναι αρκετά ελεύθερη. Στη συνέχει�� θα εξετάσω όλο αυτό το υλικό και θα αρχίσω να διακρίνω θέματα και σχέσεις στις εικόνες. Έπειτα, αυτό γίνεται η σπίθα για να αναπτύξω ένα έργο και να τραβήξω πιο συγκεκριμένες εικόνες.

BT: Η χρήση των κοινωνικών δικτύων γίνεται ολοένα και πιο δημοφιλής. Το Instagram μετρά έναν τεράστιο αριθμό χρηστών. Ανάμεσα τους, πολυάριθμοι φωτογράφοι και εικαστικοί. Ποιά είναι η προσωπική σου προσέγγιση στο Instagram?

PB: Πάντα έβλεπα το Instagram ως μία πλατφόρμα για πειραματισμό και χαζολόγημα, ως προέκταση ενός μπλοκ σχεδίου. Το χρησιμοποιώ για να παίζω και να δοκιμάζω ιδέες. Οι περισσότερες εικόνες είναι άμεσες και βραχύβιες, αλλά κάποιες πυροδοτούν ιδέες για πρότζεκτ και εξελίσσονται σε σώματα έργων.

BT: Ποιά είναι η σχέση σου με την Ελλάδα; Έχεις επισκεφθεί ποτέ τη χώρα μας; Έχεις κάνει κάποια φωτογράφηση;

PB: Ήρθα στην Ελλάδα πέρσυ για την documenta στην Αθήνα. Τράβηξα αρκετές φωτογραφίες τις οποίες θα χρησιμοποιήσω σε ένα καινούριο πρότζεκτ που ονομάζεται “FIRE”.

The Wild Ones: Polly Brown

November 26 - December 23, 2018 Instagram @kgoldtemporarygallery

The annual exhibition “The Wild Ones” of K-Gold Temporary Gallery presents the work of six international photographers through the Instagram account of the platform (@kgoldtemporarygallery). The exhibition examines the quests, trends and experiments in contemporary photography, starting from diverse challenges that the age of the image brought to human societies.

In the first of six parts of the show, we present “Mood Ring” by British photographer Polly Brown, a new series that focuses on the complex world of feelings and their particular relationship to language. Polly Brown (b. 1986) has a multidisciplinary practice combining print series, film and book works. Her projects, though eclectic, attempt to evoke the expansive from the everyday, to conjure up psychogeographic tendencies from the seemingly mundane. She uses a mix of still life elements, performance and classic reportage to create concept based photographic investigations. Collaborations include Frieze, ICA, Gucci, Miu Miu, Jil Sander, National Portrait Gallery and The Times. Brown also creates a regular column for AnOther magazine.

Τhe selection of the artists is by Nicolas Vamvouklis while the exhibition accompanies a series of discussions between Vicky Tsirou and the photographers, which will shed light on their practices. Find here the interview with Polly Brown.

Interview to Vicky Tsirou

VT: In the upcoming weeks you will occupy K-Gold Temporary Gallery’s Instagram account with your latest project “Mood Ring”. What is it about?

PB: “Mood Ring” is a collection of photographic set ups and reenactments paired with obscure or archaic definitions for muddled feelings. The photographs are used less to directly illustrate the words’ meaning but rather as poetic annotations, aware that the words, no matter how specific, will always fall short of representing our own interiority.  

VT: What is your current “mood”?  

PB: Feeling reflexive but with slight underlying anxiety.  

VT: In your work you often capture moments of domestic life. What is the reason you concentrate in these specific details? Why do you find them unique?

PB: It is less a reportage or capturing of domestic life and more using a domestic setting as backdrop for a series of interventions, performances or set ups. I like to play with environments that surround me.  

VT: Who are your artistic icons?  

PB: Yves Klein, John Cooper Clark and Ed Ruscha.

VT: When did you discover your inclination for photography?  

PB: I studied Fine Art at college and very quickly discovered I was mainly making work with a photographic outcome. It was less a desire to document through the photograph and more an inclination to use the format of the image to explore my concepts or concerns.  

VT: Do you think the place you grew up in has influenced your work?

PB: I grew up in the south of England. It was a quiet area so maybe that is why I concentrate on domestic settings.  

VT: What is the most challenging part about being a photographer today?

PB: I think it is both challenging and an exciting time to be a photographer. It is a challenge to carve your way into a saturated field however, it is also a time when people are experimenting and taking risks with photography and exploring as well as celebrating an image based language. We communicate so much through images and our intake of visual stimulus is so great today that it poses interesting and challenging questions that photographers can and have to engage with.

VT: What is your creative process like?

PB: I spend a lot of time playing. I like to make quick sculpture, small vandalism, rearranging rooms. I will document as I go but mainly this process is undirected and quite free. I will then look over all this material and start to detect themes and concerns in the images. This then becomes the spark to building on a project and maybe shooting more directed images.  

VT: The use of social media becomes more and more popular. Instagram counts a massive number of users. Among them, numerous photographers and visual artists. What is your own approach to Instagram? 

PB: I have always viewed Instagram as a platform for experiments and messing around, an extension of a sketchbook. I use it to play and try out ideas. Most images are just immediate and short lived but some spark ideas for projects and build into bodies of work.  

VT: What is your relationship with Greece? Have you ever visited our country? Did you take any photos there?

PB: I was in Greece last year for documenta in Athens. I took a bunch of pictures which I’m using in a new project called “FIRE”.

[artisjustafeeling]

Todd Hido 

(The Private Gallery / Foucher-Biousse Gallery)

Todd Hido, an American Photographer, born in 1968 in Kent, Ohio is now based in San Francisco. Although he has multiple portraits of women, who are identified as his wife and ex-girlfriends, the majority of his photographs are based on the use of natural and artificial light in urban landscapes of his country. 

“Hido takes his pictures in a “fairly undirected way”, he says, but edits his negatives together and manipulates them until he produces an image that represents his encounter with a place. In describing his process, Hido said, “I shoot sort of like a documentarian, but I print like a painter.”  (Artsy, 2018)

https://www.artsy.net/artist/todd-hido

[creativinn]

'Time for Outrage!': an art exhibition in challenging times | DW | 29.10.2020

Anger and hatred are intense human feelings, yet these negative emotions are clearly shaping our current social interactions to an ever greater extent  — conspiracy theories, extremist terrorism and violent hate speech have become commonplace.

The exhibition "Time for Outrage! Art in Times of Social Anger" at the Kunstpalast museum in Düsseldorf is a response to the "social upheavals of our time," said Kunstpalast director Felix Krämer.

The showcased works by 35 clearly political artists and art activists illustrate and reflect on notions of anger in our challenging times.

The exhibits reflect art as a political space, said curator Linda Peitz, adding that the artists urge "solidarity, empathy and humanism, who point out, analyze or ironically break down the injustices in our society."

The inscription over the artist's photo is a quote from graffiti

'Outrage does not equal hatred'

This also reveals an implicit but important distinction between hate and anger on the one hand, and outrage and rage on the other. While anger is undirected, indignation and rage refer to concrete events. The suspense that marks the exhibition is founded on this semantic difference.

Particularly impressive: a work by the Bosnian artist Sejla Kameric, originally conceived as a poster but wallpapered on a 12-meter high wall in Düsseldorf. It shows the artist and the words of a Dutch NATO soldier, who in 1994 or 1995 wrote on a barracks wall in the village of Potocari near Srebrenica: "No teeth? A moustache? Smells like shit? Bosnian girl!"

Kameric reminds us of the war in former Yugoslavia and the genocide of thousands of Bosnians in Srebrenica but she also links the soldier's cruel graffito with her portrait, which makes it more personal. In the photo she looks straight at the visitors, forcing them to evaluate the work.

Observers can't avoid taking a stance

Many of the exhibits, for the most part photographs, video installations and films, work along those lines. What initially comes across as more of a documentary form helps juxtapose the two defining levels of the exhibition — hate and, as a result, outrage. The audience must draw its own conclusions from these juxtapositions.

At times, it is perspective that forces the viewer to take on an active role, for instance in Signe Pierce and Alli Coates' experimental setups.

What is private, what is political?

Yoshinori Niwa, a conceptual artist from Japan, set up a container in front of the musem where people can get rid of Nazi memorabilia. Ads in the local newspaper urged citizens to participate in the project named "Withdrawing Hitler from a private space" and to drop off any such artifacts so they can be destroyed at the end of the exhibition.

Feminist artist Judith Bernstein evokes 'Trump horror'

A video by French artist Kader Attia also focuses on how private becomes political if you have the 'wrong' origin. In "The Body's Legacies Pt. 2: The Post-Colonial Body," he interviews descendants of colonized people and slaves, showing how colonial violence and racism still influence the perception of the body and the behavior of people in public space today.

Reclaim outrage 

It is no coincidence that the title of the exhibition refers to the title of a well-known essay published in 2010 by the late Stephane Hessel, a French essayist and political activist who was a resistance fighter in the Nazi era. The exhibition echoes issues that were pressing even then, including the meaning of human rights, how we treat refugees and social inequality.

The show that was a year and a half in the making is surprisingly topical, and the coronavirus pandemic has even worsened many of the global injustices addressed. In recent months in particular, conspiracy theorists have dangerously often misappropriated his words. To a degree, the exhibition corrects the discourse by looking at overarching issues that have long been toxic, while also recapturing Hessel's basic ideas behind his call for outrage.

This article has been adapted from German by Dagmar Breitenbach

This content was originally published here.

[some-trace-of-her]

Working “blind”, as she calls it, is virtually a mantra for Dean, and one that manifests in diverse ways. First and foremost, she considers film a blind medium, in that one does not get to see the images one has captured until the film comes back from the lab. Dean has doubled this blindness by working – as she did in FILM and later in JG (2013) – with specially cut masks which are inserted inside the camera like stencils and which expose only a part of the frame at a time. The undeveloped film is then rewound, and an inverse mask allows a different image to be recorded onto that unexposed area of the frame. Sometimes these masks are quite elaborate, such as the shape of a foot in Antigone, but more often the effect is simply to split the screen. The results, however, are far from simple: because film is a time-based medium, the interplay between the images is subtle and entirely unpredictable. Dean used the technique in a miniature 35mm film portrait, included in the NPG exhibition, titled His Picture in Little (2017). Here three actors who have all played Hamlet – Ben Whishaw, Stephen Dillane and David Warner – were filmed separately by the artist, just being themselves, out of character and undirected, on different parts of the same roll of film. When she received the processed film, Dean was astonished by the “sublime synchronicity” of gestures and expressions that coincided, telegraphing across time and space inside the camera.

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/magazine-tacita-dean

[westonucf]

Works of Todd Hido:

Untitled, #11374-8145 (2014)  © Todd Hido

Archival pigment print

Caption: “...I don’t just take pictures. There has to be something about a place or person that I recognize, that I need to record or remember or think about again.” -Todd Hido

Untitled, #2479-a (1999). © Todd Hido

Archival pigment print

Caption: “... the viewer can place their own memories within it or create a narrative that would otherwise be blocked by the reality of what is actually inside.” -Todd Hido

Untitled, #11793-9406 (2017). © Todd Hido

Archival pigment print

Caption: “...One thing that is important to know about my work is that not all of it is about me or things that I have encountered…many of the narratives come from things I have seen in others.” -Todd Hido

Untitled, #7373 (2008). © Todd Hido

Archival pigment print

Caption:  Hido takes his pictures in a “fairly undirected way”, but edits his negatives together and manipulates them until he produces an image that represents his encounter with a place. In describing his process, Hido states, “I shoot sort of like a documentarian, but I print like a painter.”

Untitled, #1952, 1996, from "Interiors" © Todd Hido

Archival pigment print

Caption: “As I was shooting exteriors, I was standing on the outside looking in. The next natural step was to go inside...” 

“I wanted to convey a kind of change to the space so I shot it from a watching distance to the TV and from the ground. I wanted to capture the feeling of setting in front of that television on that shag carpet in my half-finished basement family room and watching endless hours of television.”

“The blank screen conveys a kind of emptiness, and the light from the TV on the carpet emphasizes the perspective, which makes the picture personal. You get the sense that this is the room where I would sit with a bag of Doritos and a two-liter of Mountain Dew watching TV after school and late into the night.”

-Todd Hido

Untitled, #1765, 1996, from "Portraits" © Todd Hido

Archival pigment print

Caption: “...very simple gestures become fascinating. You don’t need to go for grand poses; subtle hand gestures and expressions of the eyes and mouth say it all. We are such complex communicators with our bodies that the slightest movement can alter the meaning of a picture. If a person lowers or raises their eyes, it changes everything.” -Todd Hido

Works Cited: (from the caption/quotes)

Hido, Todd, and Gregory Halpern. Todd Hido - On Landscapes, Interiors, and Some Nudes, 1st ed. Aperture, 2014.

Todd Hido | LensCulture. “Todd Hido On ‘Homes at Night? and Illustrating Memories in Photography - Interview by Coralie Kraft.” LensCulture. Accessed April 15, 2019. https://www.lensculture.com/articles/todd-hido-todd-hido-on-homes-at-night-and-illustrating-memories-in-photography.

[fullemoon]

Crowd Theory, Simon Terrill

“Each project begins with drawing on peoples’ association with place. Following a period of location research, the process begins by inviting anyone and everyone who has an association with that place to be a part of the image. From there an idea of a crowd portrait emerges. (...)  The works explore a contrasting and oscillating space between the personal and the public, the individual and the collective, and the impact of these fluid definitions on architecture, portraiture and the photograph. For each event, a time and place is specified and a group of people assemble, but their actions on-site are left undirected and uncontrolled. I am interested in how people choose to represent themselves within these spaces and how in turn, these spaces potentially represent their inhabitants.”

[talbottoalam]

TODD HIDO by Jeremy

Todd Hido is an American photographer, born in Kent, Ohio in 1968, predominantly known for his capturing of the American suburban landscape. He studied at Tufts for his BFA and California College of Arts and Crafts for his MFA. In an interview with We Are Our Choices, he speaks on how his family (composed of a mother who was a cashier and a father who was a plumber) was never interested in art. A temporary hobby of riding BMX bikes led him to the discovery of a hobby he never put down after all his buddies wanted their tricks documented – making photographs which he started in his later years of high school. As a senior, he initially enrolled in photoclass because it was known you could sneak out early via an exit in the darkroom but after his teacher first recognized then challenged his profound ability, he started to experiment more and more in the darkroom – crediting photography for keeping him out of trouble. Though a large majority of his work is landscapes, he still has many striking images exploring other genres like nude, interior, and portrait. Hido who exclusively is in charge of editing and laying out his works, in an interview with SVA speaks on how he is constantly shuffling and sequencing images to see how they interact with each other in order to find deeper meanings so people look beyond the obvious. Whilst shooting he claims to be “fairly undirected” and in order to represent his encounter with a place he edits images together and manipulates them. He summarizes his process with the statement of “I shoot sort of like a documentarian, but I print like a painter.”

From 1996 until 2000, Hido photographed in Northern California in the suburbs of San Francisco at night for his first monograph House Hunting which was released in 2001. It features an incredible set of images with beautiful pastel tones throughout. In an interview with Pier 24 Photography, he explains technically that for this body of work, he created alone “using a tripod, shooting negative film, and all ambient lighting”. Later speaking on how the most important thing to him was that he was “discovering a place and not creating it.” He captures all of the scenes from the outside with most of them focusing on a lonely window with light bleeding out, never with a person in frame, in order to not express a complete narrative rather simply hint at smaller details leaving the viewer to do the interpreting. On his personal site, in an interview with Katya Tylevich he speaks on how he “takes photographs of houses at night because I he wonder(s) about the families inside them...I wonder about how people live, and the act of taking that photograph is a meditation. House Hunting, therefore, is more question than answer. A rumination without resolution.” This series in specific is one of my most favorite because of the narratives that the audience implies simply based off something as simple as a window bleeding light. They are real places, real snapshots, and there is no opinion or staging of any parties in turn meaning it supports his intent (rather than go against it like in Between the Two).

Todd Hido, Housing Hunting (2001):

After a few years of shooting so many non-human subjects with two books studying houses and one landscapes, he decided to switch up his norm and began to work with subjects through a 126mm Instamatic. In 2007, he published his first portraits in his 4th body entitled Between the Two – in this monograph he almost exclusively features his portraits along with mostly the interiors of empty rooms. The book features young women (some naked, some semi-naked), mainly captured in baron furniture-less environments – many of which appear to be motel rooms. In a conversation with blogger Joerg Colberg, he explains his casting process of finding women through online modeling websites, literally knowing nothing about them outside of the images “they choose to let me him see”. In the same interview, he speaks on how he prefers to work with “beginners” as they are “not so stuck in any one way of presenting themselves.” Later in this interview saying “As an artist I have always felt that my task is not to create meaning but to charge the air so that meaning can occur”, this leads into the blogger asking how he changes the air to which he responds “There is no secret I could give away. You charge the air by photographing the right person, allowing them to be real, and by making a potent image. My images can say so much more than I can honestly.” And after reading into this interview a sense of confusion began to grow in me specifically with regards to his intention for this body of work. Whilst claiming to want to capture the realness of his interaction between him and his subject, he completely contradicts himself by bringing up how in some cases the models “don’t even resemble themselves” due to styling done by him (wigs was his main go-to), as well as well as staged placement that he dictates. Whilst shooting this project, he consistently brought two cameras with him – one loaded with black and white and the other color so that he’s able to capture many different types of images and feelings within scenes, as in his belief during editing the most work is done talking about how at times the edit process leads to focused re-shooting as he develops so much of the narrative through sequencing and then needs to fill it out. Whilst reading through all of this and looking at this body of work, I began to grow a disgust towards it. I tried to understand his intention in his retelling of personal feelings and memories, but felt he was blatantly objectifying his talent under a gross male gaze due to many factors (one being the decision to place them in motel room like places). On his personal site, he explains that this series is about the spaces “between photographer and subject, photograph, and viewer, and between one paragraph and the next, in which a narrative (or tension) inevitably forms.”

Todd Hido, Between the Two (2007):

All in all, after deep diving into Todd Hido’s 1st book House Hunting and 4th book Between the Two along with lots of information surrounding who he was and his intentions as an artist I was able to better get to know him. I rekindled my fascination with his exterior landscapes and was interested to hear why he was attracted to certain places, but sadly was exposed to his portraiture for the first time and it appalled me. I feel like there are many way too many flaws in his staged portraiture – the main being his objectification of women, especially with regards to the narratives he is pushing through the small decisions he makes.

[mastcomm]

Wedding Photographers Share Their Favorite Moments

Most photographers have a shot list — a must-capture catalog of photographs that each couple insists they have to remember their wedding day. And yet the unexpected moments are really what everyone hopes for.

“You always look for these rare moments. They don’t always happen, but when they do, it’s magic.”

— Andy Marcus, 70, an owner of Fred Marcus Studios, Manhattan

Mr. Marcus has been capturing wedding moments, sometimes 200 to 300 a year, for more than five decades. “An unexpected moment is a wonderful surprise, it’s unique and organic,” he said. “Everything comes together at once: the lighting, the composition and the visual. It contains emotion but tells a bigger story at the same time. Capturing one for me happens every 100 weddings or so.”

Here are 12 photos from 12 photographers who share their most unexpected moments while explaining what made them so special. There is nothing from a shot list. No step and repeat. No portraits. These are moments that happened when real life got in the way, and someone was there to document the unscripted and unplanned.

“We were looking to take photos in Bryant Park and the bride’s feet began to hurt. Her new husband chivalrously carried her on his back and I knew this would be an iconic moment. The two of them, moving forward in life together while the passers-by go about their day. To me, this photo is quintessential New York.”

— Dave Robbins, Brooklyn

“At this particular wedding this little kid stole the dance floor for about 30 seconds. I pushed through a couple of people to get a close, low angle. I wasn’t prepared for this moment, but fortunately I had on a wide enough lens to capture the whole scene. Besides his awesome moves, there was the varying expressions of the onlookers — everything from delight to disinterested. To me that’s part of what makes the whole shot come together.”

—Eli Turner, Washington

“This couple was pretty stiff all day so when I pulled them out to take some portraits during the reception dinner before the sun went down, I wasn’t expecting a ton of movement. The groom spun his bride and dipped her down toward me. This shot stands out because the moment is so pure and undirected.”

— Clark Brewer, Nashville

“I was able to capture this quiet moment, maybe an hour before the party was over, when the bride stepped away from mingling to be with her dying mother. The wedding was planned in a week because of the bride’s mother’s poor health. I rarely capture photos like this, and I imagine I won’t ever again.”

— Phillip Van Nostrand, Manhattan

“ I was outside about to take my couple off to shoot some portraits when this other bride, who was getting married in another ballroom, popped out to say, ‘Hi. I just wanted to say happy wedding day and tell you, you look so beautiful!’ They had a really nice sisterhood moment, and I grabbed the shot.”

— Julie Lippert, Boston

“This father of the bride was so overcome with emotion upon seeing his daughter as a bride on her wedding day that he leaned over, grabbed a curtain and wiped his tears. The bride laughed out loud and said, ‘Dad, we’re at the Ritz!’ Many fathers try to hold it in, but he was so in the moment. As a photographer, you’re always looking for this.”

—Perry Vaile, Charleston, S.C.

“This was shot in a parking lot while it was snowing. We were crossing from the ceremony to the reception site, in front of the valet booth with cars all around us. It was a cold, stormy, dark night, so we were trying to hurry. I saw the image in my head and asked the bride and groom to hold hands and hold still, then snapped just as a car pulled into my frame. This photo explains their connection and interaction and what the day and their life can be together.”

— Clane Gessel, Manhattan

“ I’m always looking for truthful moments where people are unguarded and the camera is invisible. I hadn’t caught what I was looking for that day, and I didn’t give up on the story yet, so I followed them to the subway and got on the G train with them, because they were going home. I was so focused on how they were body-wise, we were all in this bubble of post-marital bliss and this private display of affection in the midst of this public subway car. ”

— John Dolan, Manhattan

“I was taking my equipment out to do décor shots, and I leaned over the glass ledge to see the room. I was about 100 feet above the floor, and spotted the couple privately rehearsing their first dance and thought, ‘that’s the shot.’ This image tells the whole story: the location, the position of the couple, the lighting, the chemistry, this bird’s eye, voyeuristic angle during an important moment on a special day. If the whale wasn’t hanging above them, it wouldn’t have been the same shot.”

— Brian Marcus, Tenafly, N.J.

“A wedding is an emotional roller coaster. The party is the culmination of that ride, where everyone lets loose and forgets their inhibitions. The party was coming to a close and I noticed this flower girl face-planted and limbs sprawled out on the dance floor. Her gesture reminded me of how I feel at the end of every wedding, so I clicked the shutter. Only afterward did I notice the rainbow confetti and her matching dress, which is what ties this photo together.”

— Sasithon Pooviriyakul, Manhattan

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from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/wedding-photographers-share-their-favorite-moments/

[alwynhydehn2a-blog]

Coming Clean

"How does the flyer/poster advertise the exhibition?"

 “What is the suitability of the gallery space? How is the exhibition laid out?"

The series of images were spaced out over a handful of double-sided partitions, with generally three pictures to a side. As with almost any photographic exhibition, this gave the viewer enough physical space between pictures to assess and appreciate them individually, without detaching the images from one another. The relatively sparse spacing also allowed for the viewer to appreciate the chronology of the images; it was clear to see the development of the photographer/photographs in that earlier images were less photographically influenced than others – raw, compositionally quite random, questionably exposed and rather striking. The later photographs were made with a more conscious effort towards composure and narrative.

 “How has the work been mounted? Is it appropriate for the work?"

The work was mounted in exhibition standard dark frames with an amount of white negative space surrounding each piece. I found this display appropriate because it forced a uniformity and professionalism upon the images, some of which we can only assume were taken by MacIndoe whilst he was under the influence of heroin. The uniformity of the images invites the viewer to discern differences in tone and meaning of each image without being given a helping hand.

 “Who made the work?”

Graham MacIndoe, Scottish photographer who had previously struggled with substance abuse.

 “Who did they make it for, who is the audience?”

MacIndoe describes (in an audio-visual recording available at the exhibition) how his series of photographs developed from an undirected outlet to an organised folio – I would assume that his intended audience developed in a similar way. His work has been appreciated by all kinds of people, because almost anyone can relate to or can be intrigued by the striking emotion he depicts; his pictures are simply interesting. Perhaps he had an agenda of his own though; to make an example of himself to inspire those who also suffer from addiction to break the cycle.

 “Is the work for sale and who might buy it?”

The collection of twenty five pieces were bought by The National Galleries of Scotland (or by whomever they may be a subsidiary of). The artistic value of the collection is one which I feel belongs as part of an exhibition, as it is, for the public to ruminate over. Because of this I don’t think the work would likely be bought by an individual in the same way that a piece of fine art may be.

 “What information is available about the artist?”

I was pleased to find that MacIndoe has continued as a photographer and, after consulting his rather sleek website, I found that he’s been quite busy, and has a reasonably sized portfolio. However, it is apparent in much of his work that he isn’t totally photographically competent. I found many of his portraits lacked direction and finesse. Despite this, there are a few images which leapt out at me; one or two that held the same character and striking nature that his Coming Clean series conveyed. There isn’t a huge amount of information about his personal life that is easily available (although his exhibition featured a brief recollection of past events in his life in his own words, which was interesting.), but his photographic ventures can be easily found. He is now America-based and has released several photographic collections, one of which details his account of the life of immigrants in America.

Several of his polaroid images particularly impressed me with genuine character, style and interest.

“Who organised the exhibition and who selected the work?

The exhibition was organised and composed by the National Galleries of Scotland after they bought a number of his pieces in 2015.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: A Forest of Chaos and Control

Albert Oehlen, “Bäume” (2004), oil and paper on wood, two sections; 265 x 385 cm (© Albert Oehlen, courtesy the artist, photo by Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris)

CLEVELAND — Albert Oehlen’s largest US museum show to date, Albert Oehlen: Woods near Oehle at the Cleveland Museum of Art, presents the single motif of the tree to examine the artist’s method of imposing formal and conceptual constraints on his painting in order to detonate them.

Trees frequently figure in Oehlen’s work. As a formal device, it allows freedom of invention, but the invention is structured by internal logic. Curated by Reto Thüring, the museum’s curator of contemporary art, the exhibition features 45 of Oehlen’s large-scale paintings, produced over the past 30 years, as well as contributions from other artists, selected by Oehlen and his friends and collaborators: curator Julie Sylvester; art critic Diedrich Diederichsen; artist Christopher Williams; and musician Michael Wertmüller (the latter two contributing their own work).

Albert Oehlen, “Untitled (Baum 2)” (2014), oil on Dibond, 375 x 250 cm (© Albert Oehlen, collection of Larry Gagosian, photo by Lothar Schnepf)

Woods near Oehle fills half of the museum’s lower level with the artist’s monumental canvases. The contributions from other artists, most contained within a screened-in space, make the show seem larger still. The unifying theme of the tree conceptually threads the pieces even when it is not visually apparent. This strategy pushes aside some of the diversity of Oehlen’s oeuvre, but it also makes it easier to focus in on his working methods.

Several of the exhibition’s works belong to a recent series of “Baum” (“Tree”) paintings, for which Oehlen limited his color palette and simplified his compositions. In “Untitled (Baum 2),” done in 2014, a black shape composed of climbing tendrils and descending bulbs hovers in front of a gradated scarlet rectangle on a white ground, while in “Baum 18,” from the same year, a cyan rectangle overlaps and partially obscures an animated black line that spans the height of the canvas, preening and stretching its limbs.

Part of the exhibition’s success is that, while Oehlen’s development as an artist is evident — most obviously in the transition his colors and shapes have made from smeared and muddy to contrasting and crisp — it brings to the fore how much his post-2000 works relate to the architectural and dynamic elements in his earlier canvases, and the way the earlier compositions accentuate the chaos brewing in the contained minimalism of the recent paintings.

Three more untitled “Baum” paintings (numbered 54, 55, and 56, all 2015) are structured around a central tubular shape that vertically bisects the canvas, crisscrossed by horizontal “branches” and frenzied streaks and splotches of watery paint. In an untitled canvas done years earlier, in 1989, similar tubular shapes, in shades of brown and green, fan out from the center across a muddy ground.

The 1989 painting is a sharp contrast to the pristine white grounds of the later works, but the correlation is evident — in all the paintings, geometric shapes in solid colors sit atop a blank or murky ground, creating the illusion of two separate planes.

In “Untitled (Strassen)” (1988), a red stripe zigzags across the canvas, creating two triangles, with broken blue lines descending from their peaks, resembling streets (Strassen, in German) disappearing into the distance.

The painting is dizzying, as the red and blue strips assert and recede against a swirl of muted grays, whites, and yellows. The contrast between the triangular lines and the background is like a hallucination in a dense fog.

Albert Oehlen, “Untitled (Baum 57)” (2015), oil on Dibond, 250 x 250 cm (© Albert Oehlen, promised gift from the Scott Mueller Family, photo by Stefan Rohner)

Oehlen picks up the diagonal motif again in “Untitled (Baum 64)” (2016) and “Untitled (Baum 57)” (2015). For the latter, two forms — one a dark, amoebic mass, like an oil spill outlined in yellow, and the other, a diagonal made of interlocking black-and-tan rectangles — abut at the center of the painting, peaking at the top, while three horizontal lines jut outward, simultaneously compressing and pulling apart the composition.

Just as Abstract Expressionism captured physical tension and menace as well as the postwar zeitgeist in works like “Woman, I” (1950-52) by Oehlen’s great inspiration, Willem de Kooning, “Untitled (Baum 57)” embodies the entropy of two systems pressing against each other in space. If “Woman, I” was an expression of its time, “Untitled (Baum 57)” is one for ours.

The works included by other artists are organized as a kind of group show within Oehlen’s survey, most tucked in between two screens. The tree motif is most prominent in Diederichsen’s picks — a video by Jackson Mac Low (Tree* Movie, 1961/1972/2009); black-and-white photos of barren trees rotated upside-down by Rodney Graham; and a video by Harun Farocki (Parallel I, 2012) — as well as a collaboration between Oehlen and Wertmüller, which pairs a five-minute atonal composition with flickering lights projected onto a potted tree against a translucent screen.

The remaining works have little apparent connection to the theme, but they reflect the exhibition’s broader project of examining Oehlen’s use of pictorial devices and self-imposed restrictions, as well as the influence of past art.

Oehlen has modeled a set of paintings on “Tramonto Spaventoso” (c. 1940-49), a painting from his personal collection by Modernist artist and agitator John D. Graham. He also included a small John Chamberlain sculpture from the CMA’s collection that nicely suggests what the paintings might be like in three dimensions. Elsewhere, curator Sylvester juxtaposes two de Kooning paintings from the late 1980s with some of Oehlen’s light, expressive charcoal sketches.

Well over life-sized, these sketches are the only works of Oehlen’s in the show whose image does not justify the size: the jutting lines and insistent color blocks in works like “Untitled (Baum 64),” and “Untitled (Strassen)” are strengthened by their grandiosity, while the diaphanous line work of the sketches feels weighed down. Yet they reveal another side of Oehlen’s aesthetic, one symbiotic with Surrealist automatism and nature.

Albert Oehlen, “Untitled (Strassen)” (1988), oil on canvas, 275 x 375 cm (© Albert Oehlen, private collection, photo byArchive Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris)

One of the most surprising and engaging aspects of Woods near Oehle is the economy of the compositions and colors in Oehlen’s post-2000 painting, many of which are pared down to only two or three elements against the white ground, often gleaming with jewel-like colors. (Oehlen’s work continues along these lines in a concurrent show at Gagosian in New York.)

Albert Oehlen, “Untitled (Baum 18)” (2014), oil on Dibond, 375 x 250 cm (© Albert Oehlen, private Demsa Collection, photo by Stefan Rohner)

For the collage-painting “Bäume” (2004), Oehlen’s canvas is a large photographic image of a tree-lined path, glistening with sunlight. In the middle of the pathway he has painted an imposing tree, along with luminous yellow ovals and snaking orange lines to one side. The painted tree’s obstruction of the dappled path and the spray-painted look of the orange lines add an element of prankishness to the image, like a graffiti-tagged billboard, that harks back to Oehlen’s early work.

Oehlen uses collage in a handful of other works, including the jarring inclusion of the head of Chucky, the killer doll from the Chucky franchise of kitsch horror films, on top of a painted tree. The Chucky painting is an anomaly in a show that otherwise emphasizes craft over subject matter, but it provides a glimpse of Oehlen the trickster, responsible for such paintings as “Untitled (A. Hitler)” (1986) and “Self-Portrait as a Dutch Woman” (1983). (The latter was included in the New Museum’s 2015 Oehlen exhibition, Home and Garden.)

The collage counterpoint to the Chucky painting is “Frau im Baum II” (2005), which centers on a classical image of a woman’s face, nestled in an outgrowth of roots and branches, with a branch’s single leaf resting on her forehead.

In this work, as in “Bäume,” the fusion of the collaged imagery (the face, leaf, and branches immediately surrounding the face) with painting (extensions of the roots and branches) is both enchanting and strange; the craggy roots have a creatural quality that threatens the demure face.

Blocks of scarlet behind the head and branches articulate a geometric space that seems at first absent from the visual maelstrom of Oehlen’s earlier pieces, but in “Frau im Baum II” and much of the work on view, what may at first look like random, undirected energy and forms unfolds into a compelling interplay of chaos and control.

Albert Oehlen: Woods near Oehle continues at the Cleveland Museum of Art (11150 East Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio) through tomorrow.

The post A Forest of Chaos and Control appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[jamesagrant]

Undirected Portrait, [from the project Interventions]

The subject was stopped at random on Kingsland Road and simply asked if James could film him. As soon as he accepted, James gave him no other direction other than telling him to "stand there."

By James A. Grant