Ch 5- Intimate Life TIna Barney

From the Cotton book-

"A useful starting point for how we consider intimate photography is structured is to think about how it borrows and redirects the language of domestic photography and family snap(shot)s for public display... Many of the photographs illustrated in this chapter have some off-kilter framing, blur, uneven flashlight, the coloration of the machine-printed snap- all are used. But in intimate photography, these technical shortcomings of domestic, non- art photographs are employed as the language through which provate experience is communicated to the viewer. The use of seemingly unskilled photography is an intentional device that signals the intimacy of the realtionship between the photographer and his or her subject."

Tina Barney (1945) was born to a wealthy American upper-class family. Her personal family relations are recorded in large images. Thus we become spectators to the lives of Barney's family and friends. However, colourful images transcend social issues as they contain a more psychological depth, an implicit story. "The insignificance of humanity and of life frightens me. And the sense of doubt, the question of the purpose of our existence, compels me to continuously seek the essence; the depth and value of life. I wish to know what other people feel, else life is too lonely."

Initially, the photgraphs seem to be snapshots, but in fact the situations are staged. Barney attaches great importance to time, consequently figure and place are remeniscent of nineteenth- century painting. However, some credit can be granted to coincidence in the images; at one point in time the action arose spontaneously. Furthermore, it seems as if some of the persons portrayed suddenly turn round or get up from their chair unexpectedly. Due to this coincidence the images look more real, even as if they were moments in real life. The images portray relationships within a family, nevertheless, at the same time the theatrical roleplay causes them to have a tense aspect.

When people say that there is a distance, a stiffness in my photographs, that the people look like they do not connect, my answer is, that this is the best that we can do. This inability to show physical affection is in our heritage.

— Tina Barney

Questions-

1. How do you think Tina Barney's photographs match Cotton's idea of "seemingly unskilled photography?"
2. How can you explain the way Barney's images seem to be both spontaneous and explicitly staged?
3. Does the apparent wealth of the people depicted in Barney's photographs have an impact on how you read them?
   

Ch 4- Something and Nothing- Laura Letinsky

Untitled #14, 1999

Letinsky's still life imagery “Hardly More than Ever” (1997-2004), is inspired by Dutch still life painting yet pushes the genre beyond its traditional intention. Her still lifes, taken in the morning light, are a residual record of previous gatherings, whether an intimate get-together or larger event. The leftovers become pieces of a vocabulary that construct a visual and emotive tableau distinctly human yet absent of people. Carefully arranged dirty plates, soiled linens, and crumpled napkins act as metaphors not only for the transience of personal interaction but also the fleeting cherished moments of our busy lives.


Untitled #10, 1999


Untitled #52, 2002


Untitled #80, 2003


Untitled #55, 2002


Untitled #54, 2002


Untitled #43, 2002


Untitled #92, 2004

In "Somewhere, Somewhere" (2003 to the present), Letinsky photographed unfurnished rooms in temporary states of transition left with remnants of activity from a previous occupant and untouched by a new inhabitant. Through compositional elements, cropping, and light, the photographs descriptive function becomes an emotive document revealing the subtle complexity of these once intimate spaces. For example, an interior of a hallway reveals open and closed doors with mirrors and reflections that complicate the architecture. Light shines through the window and off the floor where discarded wrapping tissue sits waiting to be swept away.


Untitled #116, 2006


Untitled #111, 2005


Untitled #104, 2005

Questions-

1. How would youdescribe Letinsky's use of color in her photographs?
2. The author above describes Letinsky's work, writing that the objects in the photographs "act as metaphors not only for the transience of personal interaction but also the fleeting cherished moments of our busy lives." Do you agree?
3. Do you find these photographs boring? Why, or why not?
   

Ch 4- Something and Nothing- Anthony Hernandez

Anthony Hernandez has long been fascinated with the landscape. He began as a street photographer making 35 mm black and white images of people in the urban landscape. In the mid 1980's he moved from documenting the city to making color images of unpopulated places with a large format camera.

Aliso Village, east of downtown L.A., was a low-income housing complex that was built in the 1940s and torn down in 2000. It is here that Hernandez was born and raised. The Aliso Village images are haunting and empty. They include photographs of graffiti filled walls (Aliso Village 16) and brightly painted closets (Aliso Village 14). To make these images Hernandez would sneak into the buildings when the demolition crew was not there and roam around the vacant spaces. The images evoke memories of another time, when the rooms were furnished and the dwellings populated.


Aliso Village #3


Aliso Village #9


Aliso Village 16


Aliso Village 14

by Jody Zellen

Hernandez is a gifted photographer. He closes in on his subject in order to reveal its intricate details. In the series Landscapes of the Homeless, begun in 1988 and finished in 1991, he carefully documented the out of the way places the homeless retreated to. While photographing these encampments he made sure that no one was about, so as not to disrupt the life of its inhabitants. In these works Hernandez is a voyeur looking in at a community that is obviously other. Yet it is the place, not the people, that interests him.

The resulting large color photographs are aestheticized documents of the homeless' horrible living conditions. These are places built for shelter and survival. Hernandez is not out to artify his subject but rather to point out the inherent contradictions within the urban environment. To make these photographs Hernandez scouted out places where the homeless congregate. The resulting pictures document not only the ingenuity of the homeless but Hernandez' sensitivity to their plight. Viewed at a distance, the images appear to be photographs of the natural landscape. Upon close examination the details of habitation reveal themselves. The contrast between "one's expectation of beauty and the reality of homelessness" is central to the works' impact.

Landscapes for the Homeless #24, 1989


Landscapes for the Homeless #17, 1989


Landscapes for the Homeless #54, 1989


Landscapes for the Homeless #18, 1989

Questions-

1. How does knowing Anthony Hernandez' personal history influence what you think about the Aliso Village photographs?
2. Do you agree with Zellen, when she writes "Hernandez is not out to artify his subject but rather to point out the inherent contradictions within the urban environment?"
3. How does the lack of any human presence effect your experience of Hernandez' images?
   

Ch 4- Something and Nothing- Nigel Shafran

From the Cotton book:

The photographs in this chapter show how non-human things, often quite ordinary, everyday objects, can be made extraordinary by being photographed. As the title suggests, the stuff of daily life ostensibly counts as the subject, the "something" of the pictures. But because we may ordinarily pass these objects by, or keep them at the periphery of our vision, we may not automatically give them credence as visual objects within art's lexicon. These photographs retain the thing-ness of ehat they describe, but their subjects are altered conceptually because of the way they have been represented. Through photography, quotidian subject matter is given a visual charge and imaginative possibility beyond its everyday function.


Kitchen Table (from the Dad’s Office series)


Bird's Nest


Washing up 16 March 2000, 1:30 pm 2nd photograph of the day. Breakfast crumpets and tea (more with cottage cheese and honey, Ruth’s with Marmite) with Jose and Claudio (who I think washed up)



Wastepaper Basket - Mayflower Hotel, Beruit 2003


Shannon Family Stairs (from Rachel’s Book)


Bookshelves (Archive Bookshop)

Nigel Shafran's work is characterized by the quiet observation of everyday life. His chosen subject matter is deliberately low-key and often domestic in nature: doing the dishes, his Dad's office, charity shops, flea markets. And yet, his work extracts from this something profound and consistently beautiful, the sense of a natural order in ordinary things, or, as Shafran puts it, "an acceptance of how things are."

Questions:

1. Cotton wrote: "These photographs retain the thing-ness of ehat they describe, but their subjects are altered conceptually because of the way they have been represented." How do you think this idea applies to Nigel Shafran's photography?
2. How do you think Shafran's work expresses "an acceptance of how things are?"
3. What does the quality of light bring to Shafran's work?
   

CH 3- "Deadpan" Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a wide-ranging artist whose photography takes on many forms, he feels no devotion to any particular subject, other than trying to discover what are the most purely photograhic characteristics of an image.

On his series, "Seascapes", he writes,

One New York night in 1980, during another of my internal question-and-answer sessions, I asked myself, "Can someone today view a scene just as primitive man might have?" The images that came to mind were of Mount Fuji and the Nachi Waterfall in ages past. A hundred thousand or a million years ago would Mount Fuji have looked so very different than it does today? I pictured two great mountains; one, today's Mount Fuji, and the other, Mount Hakone in the days before its summit collapsed, creating the Ashinoko crater lake. When hiking up from the foothills of Hakone, one would see a second freestanding peak as tall as Mount Fuji. Two rivals in height—what a magnificent sight that must have been! Unfortunately, the topography has changed. Although the land is forever changing its form, the sea, I thought, is immutable. Thus began my travels back through time to the ancient seas of the world.


Caribbean Sea, Jamaica 1980


Lake Superior, Cascade River 1995


Atlantic Ocean, Newfoundland, 1985


Black Sea, Ozuluce, 1991

For his series "Portraits," Sugimoto writes-

In the sixteenth century Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), Flemish court painter to the British Crown, painted several imposing and regal portraits of Henry VIII. Based on these portraits the highly skilled artisans of Madame Tussauds wax museum re-created an absolutely faithful likeness of the king. Using my own studies of the Renaissance lighting by which the artist might have painted, I remade the royal portrait, substituting photography for painting. If this photograph now appears lifelike to you, perhaps you should reconsider what it means to be alive here and now.


Henry VIII 1999


Catherine of Aragon, 1999


Catherine Howard, 1999


7. Richard III, 1999

Questions-

1. Even though these two bodies of work are very different, can you articulate any way of describing the similarities that Sugimoto takes to these projects?
2. Can you use Sugimoto's work as an example of how Cotton describes (below, first post on chapter 3) the "emotional detachment" of the deadpan aesthetic? Do you think these photographs are emotional?
3. How could you compare the "portrait" series by Sugimoto to the work of Thomas Demand, from the previous chapter?
   

CH 3- "Deadpan" Rineke Dijkstra

From the Guggenheim Museum's website-

Rineke Dijkstra documents people in transitional moments: mothers shortly after giving birth, young people entering the military, matadors still bloody from a bullfight, young club kids just off the dance floor, and preadolescent bathers on various beaches in the United States and Eastern Europe. Formally, her images resemble classical portraiture with their frontally posed figures isolated against minimal backgrounds. Despite their uniformity, however, Dijkstra's pictures deftly expose the emotional state of her individual sitters. Although she isolates the subjects in her Beaches series (1992–96) and frames them with only sea and sky, the artist reveals much about them by capturing a subtle gesture or expression in these unguarded moments that reside somewhere between the posed and the natural. In photographing the already awkward young subjects in their bathing suits, Dijkstra sets up a situation marked by a self-consciousness that parallels the uneasy passage between childhood and adulthood.


Kolobrzeg, Poland, 1992




Dubrovnik, 1996


Odessa, Ukraine, August 4, 1993


Evgenya Dec. 9. 2002


Olivier Silva, The Foreign Legion, Quartier Viénot, Marseille, France, July 21, 2000


Olivier Silva, The Foreign Legion, Quartier Viénot, Marseille, France, July 21, 2000


Olivier Silva, The Foreign Legion, Les Guerdes, France, November 1, 2000


Olivier Silva, The Foreign Legion, Camp Raffalli, Calvi, France, June 18, 2001

Questions-

1. Why do you think Dijkstra chooses to take such a similar approach to framing all of her portrait subjects?
2. The quote from the Guggenheim website claims that Dijkstra's photographs illustrate the "self-concsiousness" of her subjects. How do you think they do this?
3. Why do you think Dijkstra chooses to photograph her subjects in "transitional" moments?