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.

The Laconic Egalitarian (with a camera at least)

For as long as I've been making photographs I've shot mostly in color; I don't think I shot a roll of black and white film until I was in college and after my requisite black and white courses I was back to color. Specifically I was working with the dye transfer process. I loved the lusciousness of the prints and how I could manipulate colors, the pureness of the colors themselves and how flexible it was. Because I was not studying art or photography at the time I took great liberties when preparing my separations and was not following the rules of the process as closely as I should have been. As a result my images were very hyper-hued and "unnatural"- just the way I liked it. My dye transfer days didn't last long; I was in college and couldn't afford the film and chemistry and refocused my studies back to architecture (which also didn't last long). All the while I remember wondering if anyone used the process for "real" work. Of course someone already was: William Eggleston.

I was given a copy of  William Eggleston's Guide and was instantly hooked to the imagery: the openess of the compositions, the sheer weight of the everyday, the attention to the mundane and of course the COLOR.  Eggleston's embrace of color in all of its natural and artificial forms is his trademark and has made him a powerful force in photography for over 30 years. His influence can be felt (both directly and tangentially) in film, art, photography and advertising. His deceptively casual "eye" can be seen in the photographic works of Philip Lorca Di Corcia, Catherine Opie, Katy Grannan, and countless others.  Contemporary filmmakers like Gus Van Sant, Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson certainly owe a debt of creative gratitude to Eggleston as well. Now, after 32 years since his one and only major American exhibit, Eggleston is being formally (re)introduced to the art world in an expansive exhibit at the Whitney: William Eggleston: Democratic Camera—Photographs and Video, 1961-2008. The exhibit features over 150 works  of photography and video executed in both color and black and white. It has received accolades from all circles of fashion, culture, art and beyond; I'm sure it will be extremely successful when it starts touring later in 2009. Everyone should check it out. Really, if the show comes to your neighborhood, run, don't walk to be first in line. 

When you do see the show, try to look beyond the images themselves and consider this: William Egglseston DOES NOT, HAS NOT and NEVER will shoot snapshots. Eggleston has never championed a "snapshot" aesthetic and in afterword of The Democratic Forest he writes: 

I am afraid that there are more people than I can imagine who can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which they can identify. They don't care what is around the object as long as nothing interferes with the object itself, right in the centre. Even after the lessons of Winogrand and Friedlander, they don't get it… (t)hey want something obvious. The blindness is apparent when someone lets slip the word 'snapshot'. Ignorance can always be covered by 'snapshot'. The word has never had any meaning. I am at war with the obvious.

Eggleston has always been about the quest for the sublime in the everyday and finding perfection in the commonplace. He is not looking for the truth in his images - that would be an inefficient waste of energy. Instead, Eggleston is sharing with us his bookmarks and souvenirs from his travels and experiences. Which like any collection, is carefully cataloged and considered before acquiring. There are no accidents, no snapshots, no regrets. There is only a deliberate, methodical way of seeing and photographing only the essentials; that is, everything.

William Eggleston: Democratic Camera—Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 is at the Whitney Museum of American Art until January 25, 2009.

It then travels to these fine places:

Haus der Kunst, Munich

February 20-May 17, 2009

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

June-September 2009

Art Institute of Chicago

February 20-May 16, 2010

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles

November-January 2011

The lure of scars

Making photographs has always been a scientific endeavor. While discussions of photography tend to always circle back to IMAGE, we should remember that to get to that image the photographer had to go through a rigorous process of exposure, composition, developing and printing. This process (traditionally) takes quite a bit of time and (until recently), a tremendous amount of labor. In fact, 19th century photographers had to be equal parts image-maker and chemist, since the luxury and convenience of self-contained photography had yet to be invented. These early pioneers had to drag hundreds of pounds of plates, glass and paper just to create the kind of images that most of us are accustomed making with a small 35mm film camera.

For the most part, we are isolated from the toxic fumes and chemicals of photography. We capture image, have the film processed and order some prints and frame the picture. No muss, no fuss. The process of printing is a build-to-order industrial machine that requires little input form most photographers (except for aesthetic choices). The mixing of chemicals, creation of film and paper, and disposal of said chemicals is none of our concern (unless one has a personal darkroom of course). Yes, we have the luxury of image without the tedium of photograph-making.

I'm considering these things because I just saw some work by the photographer, J. Henry Fair at MASSMOCA. His work is part of an exhibit entitled: BADLANDS: New Horizons in Landscape. The exhibit features architects, sculptors, painters, designers and photographers working with or against landscapes. Fair uses his photography as a bridge of sorts: documenting what he sees as, “ (an addiction) to petroleum and the unsustainable consumption of other natural resources.” Of course these photographs, these Industrial Scars (as he calls them) do wind up being very lush and beautiful and the commentary is sometimes lost to the gorgeousness of the print.

Take the image, Expectoration (displayed above), a photograph of an aluminum refinery in Darrow, Louisiana. It depicts the runoff from bauxite processing (bauxite is an aluminum ore that is stripped mined to process into aluminum). Fair’s photograph is filled with vibrant reds, siennas and browns there is a very painterly feel to it. It’s a joy to behold as an oversized image (about 5ft tall and 8ft wide) and draws in very quietly. In fact, Fair’s message of sustainability and ecological turmoil almost disappears into the image. Viewers are lost in the beauty and I several “Oh, that’s what it is…” faces during my visit to MASSMOCA. The revelation that the images were documents of somewhat “sinister,” events taking place did not seem to sway any of the viewers, most still found the work beautiful and alluring.

Most of Fair’s images are aerial photographs and in many more in common with a Diebenkorn painting than a traditional aerial landscape. The pictures were also not retouched and the colors were as they were found in nature (according to Fair). I found myself studying all the images intently and truly enjoyed them as images. However, once I began to consider their meaning and scope of Fair’s message, I had to wonder:” As a process, how much has photography hurt the environment?” We use copious amounts of silver, platinum, sodium sulfide, metol, acetic acid, etc, etc. Even Fair’s own work requires the use of helicopters, large trucks, and planes to reach remote destinations. In his age of the “carbon footprint,” how should photographers and other artists deal with the environmental of our planet? After all, we are makers of things that have mostly aesthetic and very little utilitarian value. We add to the discussion, but how do we add to the solution? At what point does the mass of objects that are created for sheer pleasure become scar-tissue on the planet?

I have no idea, but I certainly enjoyed Henry J. Fair’s photographs, and for now that is enough.

- S.B.

* I am not throwing digital photography/printmaking/processes in the mix here.