SnapSHOT: The bathers, by Jennette Williams

Budapest, 2002 is copyright Jennete Williams

The Center for Documentary Studies ant Duke University awarded Jennette Williams with its first ever Book Prize in Photography. Mary Ellen Mark selected this years prize and it couldn't have happened to a kinder person.

View some of the work here.

More info about Jennette and the book can be found here: CDS Books

Scratching at the Surface

Went to visit the Met a few weeks ago to see Surface Tension, a small, concise show that put photos as objects front and center. The show is an even mix of images OF textures and depictions of terrain and photo objects that are physically manipulated.

The surface images include Miles Coolridges's Accident Investigation Site (2005), a life size (22' x 7 1/2') photograph or a strip of Los Angeles highway. Coolridge, known for his suburban landscapes and immense textural studies, brings a bit of high-tech whiz bang to the mostly lo-fi creations in the show. Digitally assembled from many images, Accident... accentuates every speck of gravel and garbage from the Highway and is all about the surface represented: cold, harsh and ignored.

At the other end of the spectrum, whith as much scale, is Christian Marclay's Memento (Soul II Soul). A lovely cyanotype made from the remnants of and old Soul II Soul Cassette tape. By far, my favorite piece in the show... but I've always been a huge admirer of Marclay's work. As a sound artist, sculptor, photographer and all around cool guy, Marclay has been instrumental in the world of music, visual arts and performance. Memento is from a large body of cyanotypes that repurpose the lowly analog cassette. It is exquisite in its delicacy and grand in its scale. Not to be missed.

There is an early photogram from Adam Fuss which was created by allowing several snakes to writhe about on a large sheet of photo paper that was dusted with talcum powder. The resultant "photo" is the most "drawn" in the exhibition and along with Marco Bruer's Spin (C-823) and Chris McCaw's Sunburned, GSP #166, Mohave/Winter Solstice truly play upon the physicality of a photograph and become less about image and more about object.

In all there are 30 works in the show which include the likes of: Eileen Quinlan, Ann Hamilton, Andrew Bush, Lee Friedlander, Tom Friedman, Pertti Kekarainen, Anselm Kiefer, Jungjin Lee, Daido Moriyama, Vik Muniz, Giuseppe Penone, Miguel Rio Branco, Lucas Samaras, Frederick Sommer, Tim davis, Wolgang Tillmans, Gerhard Richter, Anna Atkins, Robert Demachy, Walker Evans, Roger Fenton and Aaron Siskind.

Surface Tension draws entirely from the Met's own collection, so some of the work is not as contemporary as I would like, but it is a very cohesive show and is worth seeing just for the sheer variety of work. It is on view at the Metropolitan MUseum of Art in the joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography though May, 16 2010

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Sobering new work from Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan, known for his large scale assemblages of human detritus has some sobering new work from remains found at the Midway Atoll in the Pacific. Not for the faint of heart.

image © 2009 Chris Jordan

Terribly sorry for the long delay

Many apologies to all readers of this blog. I've been away for much too long and have been drowning in work, shows, etc. Thanks to all who have been emailing me with ideas and well wishes. I will be back in full swing soon, but for now go explore some of these things:

Shorpy.com has been doing the vintage photo world great good for a while now. So with Kodachrome officially dead (and no "impossible project" to resurrect it), I thought it'd be aprropriate to share some great 4 x 5 Kodachromes like the one below.

So let's have a moment of silence for Kodachrome and check out Shorpy's great Kodachrome gallery: WWII Kodachrome

The ever intriguing William Lamson had a great show recently at Perogi Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. He's equal parts video, photo, performance and draftsman. Check out more of his stuff here: williamlamson.com

I am what I am and that's all that I am

 

For well over a decade, Nikki S. Lee has been mashing up cultural identity with social cliques. Her two extended series: Projects (1997-2001) and Parts (2002-2005) dealt with Ms. Lee's questioning of identity, class and the power of women over men. Parts placed her in various social scenes (lesbians, gangs, senior citizens) and in Parts, Ms. Lee posed with men who were cropped out of the picture (save for an arm here or a leg there). While some of the images from Projects felt a little too "freshman college sociology classy," the Parts series on the other hand, deftly empowers Lee's "characters" in the images creating a fuller world. Both bodies of work fell deep into the realm of the snapshot aesthetic and helped to bridge the world of completely staged photo productions (Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdosn) with the now ubiquitous world of scripted naturalism.

Lee's most recent work (exhibited at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York) looks to expand Lee's definition of identity and removes any cultural context from the pictures entirely. The Show, Layers, consists of photographs made from layered street portraits of Lee from major cities throughout world. In the work, Lee is investigating her own identity through how others perceive/see her. From the press release:

I am interested in identity as it is affected or changed through social contexts, cultural categories or personal relationships. This interest began through personal experience. I realized that I changed between my surroundings in New York and Seoul, depending on whether I was with my family or friends. So before I was thinking about "who I am" I first started thinking about "where I am".

I agree with Lee's observation that current geographic location can affect our individual identities and that we all probably shift "who we are" depending upon "where we are." I feel it's a survival instinct; we have distinct selves that is in line with where we happen to be: our work-selves, parents-selves, tourist-selves, etc. Unfortunately, Lee's Layers is not giving me enough clues and in the end may be a bit too subtle.

The drawings that Lee commissioned from the dozens of street artists were all made on paper Lee provided (so that she could layer them to form the final image). There is no indication of where the drawing was made (except in the titles) and the photographs hide a bit of the nuances in the line work of the drawings themselves, further removing the portraitist from the equation. In the studio Lee places the drawings on on top of another and backlights them to reveal the different source drawings. Here is where things get a bit grey for me. I wonder how much of Lee's "studio-self" is affecting the order of the layers. Are the layers placed chronologically, aesthetically, by order of likeness or skill? I realize that Lee is not conducting a scientific inquiry into the role of perception and its affects on individualty, but whatever system she employs to arrange the drawings certainly adds another layer to the veil of indentity.

In the end, the works (beautiful large scale black and white prints), reveal more about the skill of the street artist than they do about Lee as an individual. They also display the uncanny influence of western style drawing techniques since there is a sameness to the drawings. You'd be hard pressed to pick out the drawing made in Madrid from the one made in Bangkok based on technique alone. Then again, perhaps Lee is saying more about our global identity than her individual-self. That her transformation through the perception of others thickens her skin and is another Layer that must be shed to find the true self.

Nikki S. Lee
Layers
was on view at Sikemma Jenkins and Co.