PRODUCT PLACEMENT - The Photobooth that is Jill Greenberg

My two favorite axioms from art school are: 1. Photographs don’t lie, but photographers do. 2. If you can’t make it good, make it big; if you can’t make it big, then make it shiny. Jill Greenberg’s work is all lies and glisten, but in her case it’s mostly a good thing.

While primarily known as a commercial photographer, Greenberg has been making several in-roads into the world of fine art photography in recent years. Her signature style of hyper-perfect detail, blown out highlights, and top-notch photoshop skills has graced the covers of VIBE, TIME, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, WIRED and a host of other magazines. She has been honing her "digital dieting" skills for many years and some of her imagery slips easily into the white wall world. Her meticulousness polished in the commercial world serves her well in the fine art realm. Greenberg’s prints are painstakingly created and the photographs themselves are nuanced almost to a fault. As a photographer, what I find most intriguing about her images is that they are all essentially the same. The subject changes of course, but the lighting, background and exposure are all mechanically exact. Which renders her subjects (people, monkeys or bears) as nothing more than products. While photographers like David LaChapelle or Gregory Crewdson stage elaborate scenes or tableaus for their images, Greenberg relies on gestures, titles and her expertise as a manipulator to coax the viewer into her realm.

A recent pairing of her series Ursine and End Times at ClampArt in NYC is a prime example of how Greenberg’s homogenizing techniques work.

For the now infamous End Times series, Greenberg photographed dozens of crying babies and used them as stand-ins for her view of the current political landscape here in the United States. Her views are not at all rosy. Each image is linked with titles like, “Grand Old Party,” “Four More Years,” “The Truth,” “Deniability.” Each title refers to the George W. Bush administration and its impact on our world and the future world of the children depicted. The series caused quite an uproar when it was first exhibited last year and remains high on the list of what’s wrong with art in the blogosphere. I won’t talk about issues of child exploitation, psychological projection or abuse here (there is more than enough of that already about these images), rather I’d like to focus on whether or not these images work as photographs and commentary. There were six images on view each was 50” x 43” so every pore, tear drop and mucus flow was terribly enhanced. The proportions and scale of the heads in the frames is are almost hieratic in style and the series‘s reference to politics could reference ancient Rome, but I doubt that Greenberg was considering this when making the work. Her primary conceit that the images are a reaction to the re-election of George W. Bush fails for me because of the simple fact that without the titles the images are unbranded and become well photographed pictures of crying babies. I will say this about the babies, they were all (except for Greenberg’s daughter) professional actors. Each with managers and agents; that’s end times for you.

Speaking of professionals, the bears in Ursine were also professionals, each working for food. For these images, Greenberg headed to Canada to photographs bears of all kinds (Grizzly, Black, Polar, etc). The photographs were made outdoors (Greenberg brought her Photobooth outside). The resulting images are gorgeous. Seeing every hair here works; the bears run the gamut of emotions- as if they were acting... well okay, they were acting. There is joy, pathos, anger, ferocity and shame. All served through gestures and careful manipulations of the bears by their handlers and of course further manipulations by Greenberg and here Wacom tablet. I found Ursine more engaging and intriguing than End Times. The bears’ movements and actions are universally understood and required no footnote (the photos of the bears are all untitled). When viewing the groups side by side one could easily transpose the titles from End Times to the photos in End Times and the resulting images would be as powerful.

Greenberg’ latest offering is Performance, photographs of young girls (one her daughter and one another pro) hanging from harnesses. Says Greenberg, ”This work is an exploration of ‘Performance’ in all its meanings; the child performer, or the child performing in school; in real-world achievements; rating their beauty and behavior as well as the act of being a girl where femininity is often a performance. These photographs are also about the frisson between the innocence of little girls and the rigging and gesture of their bodies. These gestures may appear forced or mannered but they are natural and athletic. Both of these little girls—one my daughter and the other a working child model/actress—have been performing since they could smile. They are self-conscious of their body and beauty, yet their performance is rigged.” Sally Mann, watch out.

SB

Philip-Lorca diCorcia in situ

Philip-Lorca di Corcia learned early on as a student at The Museum School in Boston, a "fundamental anti-romantic lesson that meaning in photography derives as much from concept and culture as from serendipitous inspiration." (Bennett Simpson, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston) He later studied at Yale where Walker Evans, the great documentary/fine art photographer taught for decades. Both schools influenced diCorcia’s future work and ideas profoundly. diCorcia’s photographs cut across various styles of photography including staged, conceptual and documentary.

Early work was almost completely staged using family and friends as models, later moving on to, hustlers, prostitutes and nude dancers. In diCorcia’s street photography, however, documentary and staged processes are blended to create his own definitive results. In the series “Streetwork” for example, he uses the actual street scene as a stage set for his event to unfold [some images here]. Hidden strobes set to sync with his medium format camera, many feet away, are used to create the distinctive lighting. He arranged as much as he could and then waited for the moment when his subject would step across this landscape.

Photographing people on the street is nothing new and the masters are numerous. What diCorcia shares with well-known street photographers like Henri Cartier Bresson or Gary Winogrand are glimpses of unsuspecting humans found on the streets. DiCorcia’s "chosen moments", however couldn’t feel further away from the spontaneity of Bresson or even the “Uneasy Streets” of Winogrand. It’s distinct from these artists’ works because of the added artificial lighting and lack of spontaneity that’s felt in the image, reinforcing his peculiar style and content. Winogrand’s “Uneasy Streets” for example, are sprinkled with subtle mockery and humor, while Bresson ties into representing human emotional ranges in identifiable clips. What diCorcia’s work presents for us in this series are glimpses of the modern man’s dilemma -ennui, struggle, fear, blankness and the feeling of a frozen moment, the moment between the moments. In a way, his work is more reminiscent of Lee Friedlander’s reflections of himself in mirrors on the streets of New Orleans- partly staged and ambivalent in emotion.

“Heads” is another intriguing series of photographs by diCorcia, of people traveling through the city (completely unaware of being photographed) with just their heads and shoulders captured against a blackened background where the light falls off. Their expressions are usually dull, troubled (with the occasional positive thought). What is fascinating is the randomness of the heads and the privacy of their moment as diCorcia steals the image so successfully. The dramatic lighting makes each individual glow in what seems an omniscient moment. The lighting in this series is comparable to the Renaissance painter Caravaggio. The randomness of his subjects also recalls the film work of Andy Warhol who shot hours of unedited film of people walking on the sidewalks of NYC, challenging the viewer to perceive something of interest in the mundane. By contrast, diCorcia, who shot thousands of photographs for this series, consequently edited them down to 16 final prints.
Of the multitude of artists that do use the public sphere to pull from, diCorcia stands out even more substantively with his unusual point of view and obvious influence on those who follow. Through his work, we find representations of modern human’s banal existence revealed through a non-judgmental lens under perfect lighting and masterful compositions.

MV

Spirits in the Material World

While most photographers are concerned with pictorial information, documentation and representation in their work, Eileen Quinlan is interested in ghosts and making pictures of nothing. Her models are smoke, mirrors, reflections, surfaces and photographic film. The resulting images are not about something, stand in for naught and tell very little. The pictures themselves have more to do with constructivist abstract painting and the process of photography than to any photographic reference.

Quinlan's ongoing series, “Smoke and Mirrors,” began in 2004 with an interest in paranormal and spirit photography. Initially, Quinlan sought a narrative bend to her photographs, attempting to manifest spirits and specters with smoke. During this process she began using mirrors, reflectors, foil and mylar in the hopes of adding volume and dimension to her unruly subject. During these experiments Quinlan began to focus less on narrative and more on the formal aspects of her subjects eventually arriving at her current body of work: non-objective photographs.

There are elements of Quinlan's that do reference a few photographers before her. Quinlan's bold colors and stark geometric shapes recall the work of Barbara Kasten and her use of reflections and foil certainly corresponds to the early work of James Welling. In the end, though, Quinlan's work only superficially parallels the work of both these artists; Kasten's work wholeheartedly references architecture and Welling's early work (while somewhat no-referential) relies heavily on form and the sculptural quality of the material. Quinlan's work, however, seldom refers to her materials or references them; her true subject-matter is the process of photography and the nature of image-making. Even though both Kasten and Welling deal with photography as a subject in their respective works, neither photographer allow their photographs to speak directly to the viewer as Quinlan does. Where Kasten and Welling's prints are beautiful, pristine wonderful photographic records they do not always break the mold of precious object. Quinlan's images, themselves lush and gorgeous, do not hide flaws, scratches and dust. The images are fully grounded in photography and its ability to record. There is no hidden flaw in Quinlan's photographs, no need to hide what is there - no misrepresentation, because the photos do not in fact represent anything. Here is where Quinlan's work is most successful, she has taken these tools of representation (the camera. and indeed photography) and created a totally non-representational response.

In our world where image is everything, truth can be veiled by pictures that totally misrepresent the facts, images can be manipulated to obfuscate and mislead and we simply cannot trust everything that we see, Eileen Quinlan's work is a visual breath of fresh air. Her “Smoke and Mirrors,” hide nothing and reveal all they have about
themselves to us. Because the images represent no ideals; mask no meanings and offer no theories they can be looked upon without being gazed. They are remarkable little spirits framed and hung for our pleasure.

Eileen Quinlan's current body of work is on view now through December 9 at Miguel Abreu gallery in New York.
You may see some of it here:
miguelabreugallery.com

You can also find more work here:
suttonlane.com/artist.php?a=eq&p=home

And an interview here:
zoozoom.com/magazine.aspx#type=story&id=414


S. Boonchai

Consciousness raising imagery? The work of Chris Jordan

A seemingly simple premise... turning statistic abstractions into photographs. But incomprehensible figures that seem impossible to elucidate? That's what Chris Jordan does. He makes the invisible, unimaginable figures into visual messages that pull at our consciousness.
In some ways, ignorance is bliss. To read statistics or hear them on the radio allows for dismissal of their significance, an apathetic yawn perhaps. "How can I wrap my mind around those numbers?", we ask ourselves. So we go blank, and glaze over. But, in the back of our mind we worry that those figures are something to reckon with, that they might eventually catch up with us.

Chris Jordan started his journey in art photography appreciating trash. In hot pursuit of color and form, he traveled through dump sites jumping over fences with an 8x10 camera when no-one was around. In conversation with friends, his work read of more than color and form. Based on an image of a massive garbage pile a conversation formed around consumerism. He listened intently and realized here was something he could pursue that tied into his concerns. Enlightened, he was off shooting with a goal to entice such thoughts from viewers.
But it didn't stop at the piles of tires, bottles and discarded cell phones- it continued in every direction, with air jet streams and prison inmate uniforms and uninsured children. Imagine 9 million uninsured children which is the American tally for 2007... Now look at an endless array of 9 million toys piled up filling gallery walls from top to bottom. Now get closer and really see them and let your mind wander to the personal for a moment, a child in your own life perhaps. It's an intellectual game, and from a distance it's even an abstraction ironically like the statistics. However, one is enticed to come a little closer by the sheer beauty of the images. And then a little closer yet. The personal, aesthetic and political merge.
Here we are, one person in a sea of people.
Here's this representation- one prison uniform in a 10 foot panel of 2.3 million folded prison uniforms representing one year of America's incarceration rate, the highest in the world. And then we back up again, feeling a bit ashamed, and reemerge into the abstraction of the sea of blended forms.

M.V.

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The Arles photo festival

The organizers of the Arles Photo Festival humbly state that the festival is "developing and each year reflects strands of contemporary creative output across the hugely diverse field of photography." And this year's show seemed to span the hugely diverse field of photography. The theme was "India". Works by Indian artists such as Dayanita Singh in her series "Go away closer" and Jeetin Sharma stood out as Indian shows not to miss. But, a lot of the work in the India Gallery/warehouse seemed to follow the curve of traditional and already existing postmodern photography trends, so there were fewer “aha” moments.
However, a nearby warehouse in Arles featured, the Danshanzi District of China and this is where a lot of energy was. Playing on the word "China", Huang Rui, a socially committed artist coined the phrase "chai-na" which means "demo here." He is the founder of Danshanzi District in North East Bejing, which is a center for open dialogue by artists to reflect on the rapid industrial and physical changes their community is undergoing. The works by Chinese artists such as Miao Xiao Chun and the Gao Brothers stay with me, probably for reasons of aesthetics and a shared sensibility to massive change in an urban landscape.
Miao Xiaochun created a seamless billboard sized panorama of a modern Chinese cityscape so detailed in every square inch of the photograph it was both exciting and scary. One could peer into hundreds of windows in a beehive like arrangement of the modern Chinese city-overwhelming in its repetition. Is this a gigapixel image that sees space better than our unaided eye? One could study it for days and still find surprises in each window. The Gao brothers in "Another World" produced a series of poetic and haunting images that incorporated "affectionate irony" in their studies of partially demolished buildings. The large color photographs included monochromatic grey buildings that were sliced open with vividly colored humans standing singly in each opening or space. The subjects' questioning expressions could be interpreted in many ways. The pictures reminded me to not forget the human beings amidst such extreme physical changes in a city. Coming from New Orleans, with our own brand of the Dashanzi District, jokingly referred to as the "Post-destructivist movement," I related to the complex anxieties that the artists in that part of China are trying to somehow reconcile. There were many more images in this series that were thought provoking- too many to mention here. Check them out!

Michel Varisco