Is This What You Do with a Backstage Pass?

I was on trip to DC recently and spent a few hours wandering around the museums there. Some beautiful venues (albeit a tad outdated architecturally and very conservative). Imagine my surprise when walking into the National Pottrait Gallery I see a sign that screams RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture. Whoa, I thought, a survey of hip hop culture in DC at a museum more famous for an hall devoted to paintings of 42 old white men. I know that’s a bit harsh, the museum has an extensive of collection of paintings, sculptures, video art, and of course photography. Actually, The National Portrait gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum share the same building. So there is a wide variety of work in building.

Still, seeing the RECOGNIZE! exhibit there was refreshing and exciting, because whether you love or hate hip hop, you can’t deny it’s impact on global culture, media, advertising, speech, et cetera. So as I made my way to I was imagining what kind of work would be presented (I didn’t bother to actually READ the names of the representative artists). I suspected some graffiti, maybe posters, flyers a few paintings, but I was really expecting tons of photography. After all, hip hop boomed in the 80s and early 90s (around the same time that the 1-hour/disposable camera culture was mushrooming) and more than most other music/lifestyles hip hop was (and is) driven by IMAGE. So the photographic reproduction of hip hop starts and wanna-bees was essential to the spread of the culture. Unfortunately, I was mistaken in my assumptions that the exhibit would be a survey of Hip-Hop portraiture, instead the exhibit was a small group show representing singular approaches in the fields of photography, painting, graffiti, film, and poetry/installation.

Overall I actually enjoyed the exhibit, though. The painter featured was Kehinde Wiley, whose neon mashups of French Rococo and heroic paintings with hip-hop stars were a joy to behold (even though the ceilings were way too low for the scale of his paintings). There were also three very engaging video pieces by Jefferson Pinder. Unfortunately, the photography section of the show was a bit of a letdown. The work featured was from renowned landscape photographer David Scheinbaum, whose beautiful landscapes and panoramas are delicately composed and intriguing. The work Scheinbaum had in Recognize! is from his ongoing series documenting hip-hop performers, shows and audiences. While the idea and the heart is certainly there, the images themselves lack the verve and energy that is, well, typical of hip-hop shows. The photographs displayed were very cold and static; Scheinbaum even manged to take the zing from ROOTS drummer ?uestlove. Two images I did find nice were a shot of rapper Jean Grae:



and a nice motion shot of MF Doom.



These images do a bit to capture the sprit of these folks and the shows; they squeeze the mass of the sounds, lyrics and bravada into a concise moment and hold you.

Scheinbaum admits to being an outsider to the world of hip-hop; he approached it intially as a parent of children engulfed in the culture and not a fan (although I do get the sense that he is a big fan now). He also cites the work of Roy DeCarava for stylistic inspiration. Perhaps that’s one of the problems with these images, DeCarava was a renowned Jazz photographer and while not as well known as the venerable Herman Leonard, some of DeCarava’s images were equally powerful and in many ways more poetic and meditative. Of course, hip-hop shows leave very little time for introspection and I need more insight into the flow of the spectacle and not a glimpse of the pipes and walls of the backstage area. Which leads to me another niggle I had with Scheinbaum’s work, it felt a bit “fanboy’ish” as if he were seeing these people as celebrities and stars and no as poets and musicians. There was a sort of a Naturaist’s eye at work in some of the images and not a photographer's. It was hard for me to understand why the Gallery chose these particular works, when the likes of Jamel Shabazz and Martha Cooper are in dire need of a broader audience.

Seeing Scheinbaum’s work here actually reminded of Charles Peterson’s seminal series, “Touch Me I’m Sick.” His series documented the very early days of Seattle’s grunge scene and is a benchmark for contemporary music photography. It showcased the musicians’ and fans’ spirit, DIY attitude and really helped outsiders see waht was driving the music. I feel as if Scheinbaum's has the potential to be that, but for now is in a sort of stasis mode, like a lyric waiting to be born or a line needing to be spit.

- SB

The out of focus works of Uta Barth and Hirochi Sugimoto

Most photographers pride themselves on how sharp an image is, but Uta Barth and Hiroshi Sugimoto create thought provoking bodies of work by doing the opposite.


Uta Barth’s color photographs from the series “Grounds” (Adbusters, 2003) provide numerous examples of her soft focus approach. In one of her images, the photograph just catches a glimpse of the edge of a windowsill with a curtain draped over its ledge. Blurred but clear enough to reveal the shapes and forms as identifiable, the small unframed mounted image seems to drift toward nothing in particular. It reminds one of the quite moment just before sleep when one gives up on focusing. Muted color tones reinforce the sense of calm in the image by their understated presence.


Another image from that series is a soft focus shot of a green wall with two small framed art reproductions hanging in the upper left, a fragment of a dresser in the bottom right. The prints hanging on the wall are reproductions by Vermeer, but are only generally alluded to since it becomes less identifiable in the photographic print. As the viewer stares at the soft image, a self-consciousness of “looking” is what tends to emerge.

Hiroshi Sugimoto’ architectural studies, created between 1997-2002, purposefully utilize blur. By setting his large format focal length to twice infinity (!), he searches for “…superlative architecture [which can] survive the onslaught of blurred photography”. (Sugimoto, 2006) One example of such work is an approximately four foot by five foot very blurred black and white image of the World Trade Center. Rather than irritating the viewer with a soft focus effect, Sugimoto manages to create a minimalist, engaging charcoal-like study of forms and monochromatic tones. Not a piece of Sugimoto’s compositions are wasted.


The image of Villa Savoye feels like a future Jetson-esque world yet to be realized. The hazy structure rises on its own legs into a sky of ever deepening tones of grey. The grass below becomes smudged by it’s own lack of specificity or focus. This piece, typical of Sugimoto’s work, challenges the viewer to see in an unfussy way.

Both Barth and Sugimoto’s images are compelling but for different reasons. Barth’s color images are disorientating and disquieting. One recognizes the spaces, sort of, but they seem to be the background of another subject about to step into the frame. As a result, we are somewhat self-conscious of the passing of time as we stare at her images. Her work also imparts a psychological dimension because of the vague familiarity of place. By contrast, Sugimoto’s formalist studies of monumental structures defy physics as one watches them seemingly disseminate in our midst. There is an “all-over” quality to his work that gives no more sense of importance to any other part of the composition. For instance, famous structure is equally as important as sky, as grass, as whatever is in the frame. While Barths’ work is about nowhere in particular Sugimoto’s is about the particular.

But regardless of intent or subject matter both artists manage to push us into a new place of blurred form rich in possibilities and meaning.

-Michel Varisco

Bibliography:
Uta Barth. essays by: Pamela M Lee, Matthew Higgs, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe.New York: Phaidon Press, 2004
www.phaidon.com/Default.aspx/Web/uta-barth-9780714841533

Hiroshi Sugimoto. Designed by Takaaki Matsumoto, essays by: Kerry Brougher and David Elliott,
Washington D.C. and Tokyo: Hirshorn Museum, Sculpture garden, the Smithsonian and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2007. hirshhorn.si.edu/sugimoto/programs.htm

Image samples:

www.artsjournal.com/man/images/Chrysler.jpg

web.ncf.ca/ek867/sugimoto.wtc.jpg

www.edwardmitterrand.com