Ch. 7 Revived and Remade- Joan Fontcuberta

Joan Fontcuberta is a prolific artist who works in many different methods and media, including several projects which could be categorized as "fictitious history," or works of fiction that are presented in the language and style typical of documentary films, history textbooks, or museum exhibitions.

One such project, titled Fauna, is the story and "archive" of one of Fontcuberta's alter egos, Professor Peter Ameisenhaufen, a zoologist. Fauna documents Dr. Ameisenhaufen's childhood and career, and speculates about his mysterious untimely death. The bulk of the project concerns the controversial discovery of a number of previously unknown species of animals.

The Fauna project is more fully explained here and here.

Some exerpts from the project-


Peter Ameisenhaufen was born in Munich on May 5, 1895, as the first child of the explorer, big-game hunter, and safari guide Wilhelm Ameisenhaufen, pictured above (b.1860 in Dortmund, d.1914 in Dar es Salaam) and his wife Julia (b. 1873 in Dublin, d. 1895 in Munich).


Peter and his sister spent a happy childhood in Dortmund in the care of their aunt. They attended a Catholic school, where Peter was remarkable for his exceptional diligence. When he was ten years old, he traveled to his father in Africa for the first time.


Hermafrotaurus Autositarius- Not a particularly sociable animal, but pacific; it lives in the foothills and preferably in rocky areas. Its diet consists of reptiles and small wild rodents. Its pseudofalse hermaphroditism results in complete monogamy, and sexual relations with itself are quite frequent. Given the division of functions between the two branches of the spinal chord, Hermafrotaurus Autositarius could be considered to be two differentiated parts converging in a single head. One of these parts is female and particularly sensitive to gastronomical and emotional stimuli (love for its offspring). The other part is male and very sensitive to sexual stimuli (the female part is constantly in heat) and to somnolence (the male part is almost always asleep, unlike the female part, which suffers from total insomnia).


Alopex Stultus- An herbivorous animal, completely inoffensive and very timid. When it senses the proximity of an enemy, it finds a shrub of the species Antrolepsis Reticulospinosus and digs a hole in the earth, into which it sticks its head, leaving the rest of the body suspended in a vertical posture in an attempt to mimic the shrub. Unfortunately, the outcome is not particularly satisfactory and both men and predators usually capture it at this point.


Cercopithecus Icarocornu- the sacred animal of the indigenous Nygala-Tebo tribes, for whom it represents the reincarnation of Ahzran (he who came from heaven). The females give birth inside a large cabin in the village to which only the great shaman has access. The baby animals remain inside the cabin until they have completely developed their ability to fly, at which point the tribe celebrates a lavish ceremony during which Cercopithecus undergoes an operation in which it is grafted with the skin of the silver fish of the Amazon, which covers all of the pectoral and abdominal zone. Once this has been done, the animal is set free, although it never strays very far away from the village, and participates by its presence in all of the sacred festivals of the NygalaTebo. During these festivals the animal is given a spirituous beverage which it drinks eagerly, sinking into a state of complete inebriety, at which point it begins to flap its wings so madly that it hovers in mid-air with its body immobile, singing like one possessed.


Centaurus Neardentalensis


Micostrium Vulgaris- A gregarious animal which lives in colonies of varying numbers of individuals (6-30). Extremely sociable, it does not flee human contact and has shown itself to be playful and affectionate. It is only disturbed by the sound of the human voice, so it must be approached in complete silence. It has a tremendous capacity for mimicry in semiaquatic environments. It is worth noting that it makes use of "weapons" (normally very hard sticks or branches which can be found on the banks of the river) to capture the fish which make up its diet. The courtship ritual is particularly curious. The male follows the female for three days, uttering the characteristic cry of "Kree-ee-ee- ah Klook," to which she replies with vertical leaps and pirouettes. On the fourth day the female (which is three times smaller than the male) crawls completely inside the shell of the male and mating (which lasts some three seconds) occurs. During this brief period of time the shell of the male emits a tremendously intense whitish blue luminous radiation which makes it an easy target for birds of prey.


Solenoglypha Polipodida- Extremely aggressive and venomous, it hunts for food and also for the pleasure of killing. It is quite rapid and moves forward in a curious and very rapid run, thanks to the strong musculature of its 12 paws and the supplementary impulse which it obtains by undulating all of its body in a strange aerial reptation. When facing its prey it becomes completely immobile and emits a very sharp whistle which paralyzes its enemy. It maintains this immobility for as long as the predator needs to secrete the gastric juices required to digest its prey, which can vary between two minutes and three hours, as determined by the size of the victim. At the end of the whistling phase, Solenoglypha launches itself rapidly at its immobile prey and bites the nape of its neck, causing instantaneous death.


Felix Penatus


A stuffed specimen which was found without any documentation in the professor's research.

Questions:

1. What are the visual elements of Fontcuberta's work that make it convincing as a historical document? What about the written elements?
2. How does Fontcuberta's work raise questions about the assumed "truth" of the photographic image?
3. How would you compare and contrast this work with that of Yinka Shonibare, from Ch. 2?
   

Ch. 7 Revived and Remade- Nikki S. Lee

The Hispanic Project (1), 1998

After observing particular subcultures and ethnic groups, Nikki S. Lee adopts their general style and attitude through dress, gesture, and posture, and then approaches the group in her new guise. She introduces herself as an artist (though not everyone believes her or takes it seriously), and then spends several weeks participating in the group’s routine activities and social events while a friend or member of the group photographs her with an ordinary automatic “snapshot” camera. Lee maintains control of the final image, however, insofar as she chooses when to ask for a picture and edits what photographs will eventually be displayed.


The Hip Hop Project (1), 2001

The Seniors Project (15), 1999

From schoolgirl to senior citizen, punk to yuppie, rural white American to urban Hispanic, Lee’s personas traverse age, lifestyle, and culture. Part sociologist and part performance artist, Lee infiltrates these groups so convincingly that in individual photographs it is difficult to distinguish her from the crowd. However, when photographs from the projects are grouped together, it is Lee’s own Korean ethnicity, drawn like a thread through each scenario, which reveals her subtle ruse.


The Yuppie Project (4), 1998

The Ohio Project (8), 1999

Lee’s success with these projects depends heavily on the appearance of the final photographic record. Her use of the snapshot aesthetic is partly what convinces us that she belongs—along with her uncanny ability to strike the right pose. The electronic date stamp in the corner confers scientific specificity and authenticity, while at the same time marking the picture as candid and familiar, the work of an unassuming amateur. Indeed, sometimes they are exhibited as drug-store prints push-pinned to the wall. Exhibited as enlarged, framed works of art in a museum context, however, the photographs reveal the conceptual foundation of Lee’s projects. As a group or just mixed together, the projects support and define one another.



The Skaters Project (7), 2000

Lee’s projects propose questions regarding identity and social behavior. Do we choose our social groups consciously? How are we identified by other people? Is it possible for us to move between cultures? Lee believes that “essentially life itself is a performance. When we change our clothes to alter our appearance, the real act is the transformation of our way of expression—the outward expression of our psyche.”

The Schoolgirls Project (22), 2000


The Lesbian Project (14), 1997

Born Lee Seung-Hee in Korea in 1970, Nikki S. Lee chose her American name when she came to New York in 1994. (The friend she asked to compile a list of American names used those appearing in that month’s Vogue, thus Nikki S. Lee inadvertently named herself after another much-photographed and image-changing woman, model Niki Taylor.) As a child growing up in the small South Korean village of Kye-Chang, Lee was exposed to a variety of foreign cultures through the mediating vehicles of television, popular periodicals, and music. In spite of her isolation, she developed a certain empathy for other cultures, an ability to empathize with other people that is clearly integral to her projects now. Her work is also unmistakably informed by Asian notions of identity, where identity is not a static set of traits belonging to an individual, but something constantly changing and defined through relationships with other people.


The Swingers Project (53), 1999

The Tourist Project (24), 1997


The Exotic Dancers Project # 34 2000

Questions-

1. How do you think Lee's work raises questions about the nature of social identity? Do you agree withher statement that "essentially life itself is a performance?"
2. How do you think Lee's images retain what the author describes as "the work of an unassuming amateur?"
3. How would you compare and contrast Lee's work with the work of Richard Bellingham, from Ch. 5?
   

Ch. 7 Revived and Remade- VIk Muniz

Vik Muniz might be billed as a photographer, and photographs are generally the end product of his work. But in another age he might have been an alchemist, transforming base lead into refined gold. In Vik's case, lead has been replaced by light. He is clearly a visual artist who tinkers equally with light and the mechanisms of perception that decipher the messages light conveys. He tricks the eye to reveal the tricks the eye itself can play and how that trickery has been used by "shamans, priests, artists, and con men" throughout history to evoke both power and belief. Vik works with the most rudimentary materials–sugar, soil, string, wire, chocolate syrup–to reconstruct images that we carry in a vast collective reservoir of visual memory. The quality of his draftsmanship with these rude materials displays a gift for bringing brilliance and humor to the commonplace–not unlike the physical genius of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Vik photographs these images, and then discards the originals, so that we are left with a tantalizing representation of the illusion he has created.


Kitty Cloud, 1993


The Rower, 1993


Catedral de Burgos (Pictures of Chocolate) 2003

“I want to make the worst possible illusion that will still fool the eye of the average person,” Muniz says. “Something so rudimentary and simple that the viewer will think, ‘I don’t believe what I am seeing, I can’t be seeing this, my mind is too sophisticated to fall for something as silly as this. Illusions as bad as mine make people aware of the fallacies of visual information and the pleasure to be derived from such fallacies. These illusions are made to reveal the architecture of our concept of truth.”


Karl Marx (Pictures of Caviar, 2004)


Frankenstein (Pictures of Caviar) 2004


Marlene Dietrich (Pictures of Diamonds) 1994

"I'm experimenting with these things as a student of media. We're at the point where in order to perceive a phenomenon, you have to change it, like particle collisions in physics. What else can you do without relying on the actual reality of things? Art is just as important as science because it completes it; one is about phenomenon while the other is about mind. One thing is totally dependent on the other; that's why I am very drawn to cognitive science. How many artists spend their entire lives making visual objects and never pick up a book to study how the eye works? They never studied the physics of light to see how light behaves. They never bought a prism, and held it against the sun, or any of these really simple things. I'm a visual artist, not a conceptualist. I make things that deal primarily with the eyes. In that regard, I'm totally old-fashioned.”


Aftermath (Sócrates) 1998


Mars, God of War, after Diego Velázquez (Pictures of Junk) 2005


Che Guevara (Pictures of Food) 1998

“Vision is a form of intelligence, even more so than hearing. Our human eyes are not nearly as good as birds' eyes or many other animals'. Instead, we have a huge visual cortex devoted just to analyzing visual stimuli. That is our true eye. I have a theory that the intellect has evolved from our inability to see everything in focus, the eye has to move to see things and by doing so it introduces the concept of narrative and the attention that is necessary for any complex idea to form.”


I wait, after Julia Margaret Cameron (Pictures of Junk) 2004

Questions:

1. Why do you think Muniz presents his work as photographs of his re-creations of previous artworks, rather than, say, gluing all the pieces down and presenting the "original" work? For that matter, what level of this process is the "original" work?
2. Muniz states- "Illusions as bad as mine make people aware of the fallacies of visual information and the pleasure to be derived from such fallacies. These illusions are made to reveal the architecture of our concept of truth." How do you think this idea is represented in his work?
3. How would you compare and contrast Muniz' work with Thomas Demand, from Ch. 2?
   

Ch. 6- Moments in History- Dinu Li

Dinu Li writes-

Before immigrating to England in 1973, my mother decided to take me, my brothers and sister to meet my uncle in mainland China. For all we knew, it may have been the 1st and the last time that we would meet him and his family. Before setting off on our journey to our motherland, I distinctly remember my mother dressing us with layers and layers of clothing. Each of us must have worn about 5 layers of everything. We were all baffled because it was a warm day, but she did not tell us why and we just thought it was funny how round we looked. As soon as we got to our uncle's house, this mystery was resolved as our extra layers of clothing were distributed amongst our many cousins. For this commission, I was interested to find out what illegal Chinese immigrants bring with them when they leave their motherland. To my surprise, I found out that some of them had collected soil from outside their front doors and carried it with them to England in their trouser pockets. By living a transitory existence, it is clear that illegal immigrants never carry too much with them. What are the most crucial items that they decide to bring? In this project, I wanted to explore the cultural interaction that takes place when materials are moved from one place to another.











Questions:

1. How would you compare this work to the work of Nigel Sharfran, from Ch. 4? How is it similar? How is it different?
   
2. How does Dinu's work relate the sense of how these immigrants have brought only a few items from their home country, and how important those items may be?
3. How do you think the experience of viewing this work is different, having the explaniation of it's idea, than it would be without the explanation?
   

Ch. 6- Moments in History Chan Chao

Born in Burma, Chan Chao and his family left for the United States in 1978, when he was twelve years old. In his exhibition, Burma: Something Went Wrong Chan Chao’s most recent portraits, shot on personal assignment in the remote area of Southeast Asia on Burma’s border with India and Thailand, focus not on political rebellion and warfare, but rather Chao’s rediscovery of his native culture.

"Burma is a golden land, the richest country in Asia, the envy of its neighbors; its people are the kindest, most hospitable on earth," says Amitav Ghosh in his afterword to Burma: Something Went Wrong, Chan Chao’s acclaimed book documenting his trips to his native country. With his art, Chao puts a face to one of the most troubled and least understood countries of our world. While Burma (now Myanmar) is a nation in violent conflict, Chao’s technique is to create a portrait featuring the refugees, pro-democracy insurgents, soldiers and others who populate the country, against the lush, colorful, fragrant backdrop of what is undoubtedly a beautiful country. The juxtaposition informs the viewer, that this is region, although in constant turmoil, is still a "golden land."

Chao, 34, immigrated to the United States with his family at age 12 and attended school in Prince George's and Montgomery counties, eventuallybecoming a student at the University of Maryland. One of his professors, John Gosage, introduced him to fine art photography.

Portraits and studio work were Chao's specialty. In an exhibition space behind the Burma portraits is an installation of some of his earlier work, edgy black-and-white nudes, images a world apart from those ofthe refugee camps. Although the damaged bodies and faces in the exhibit's small color portraits attest to the fact that the camps can be hazardous, Chao said he never felt endangered. He went to meet relatives, not take pictures, he said.

Ultimately, though, his motive was introspective: self-discovery. "I only felt I wanted to go back when I was turning about 30," he said. "I started to reexamine myself and ask, 'Who am I? What's my background?' " So, in 1996, he bought a ticket, applied for a visa and was given aresounding "No" from the embassy of Burma. The reason, he said, is that his father supports the democracy movement there. Chao used his ticket to visit friends in Asia instead, figuring that he'd try Burma again when he was closer.

He did, this time from Jakarta, and still couldn't obtain a visa. "I was crushed," he said. A friend in Thailand offered to help, and at least Thailand was closer to Burma. "That's when I decided to go to the border," he said. "Since I was this close, I might as well try to getsome experience of going back to Burma."

Civil unrest has plagued Burma since its independence from Britain in the 1940s, and the border is riddled with refugee camps. As Chao's photos attest, the camps are multiethnic and multigenerational. People in them wear sarongs, fatigues, polo shirts; they hold guitars, guns, children. It's an existence marked by grindingly prosaic concerns and a twilight uncertainty.


Chao revisited the Thai-Burma border in 1997 and went to the India-Burma border in 1998. The Indian border was more remote, harder to reach and in the middle of its own ethnic battles. Chao felt he had to go there, he said, because it was the closest point, geographically, to the part of Burma his family came from.

The photographer credits the Burmese government with launching the project: "Had they given me a visa, I don't think I would have gotten involved so politically. I would have been more of a tourist."






















Questions:

1. How would you compare Chan Chao's work to the work of Rienke Dijkstra, from Ch. 3? How is it similar, how is it different?
2. What do you think of the relationship between the images and the title of the series, "Burma- Something Went Wrong?"
   
3. Why do you think Chan's inability to get a legitimate visa effected his choice of how to photograph?
   

Ch. 6- Moments in History Simon Norfolk

In November 2001 British artist Simon Norfolk began a journey through battle-scarred Afghanistan, following the fall of Kabul, with an indiscreet and cumbersome cherrywood plate camera. These remarkable images, as Jason Burke commented in The Observer Magazine, " …reveal a post-apocalyptic landscape devoid of people, but shot through with a surreal and barren beauty."

European art has long had a fondness for ruin and desolation that has no parallel in other cultures. Since the Renaissance, artists such as Claude Lorraine and Caspar David Friedrich have painted destroyed classical palaces and gothic churches, bathed in a fading golden twilight. These motifs symbolised that the greatest creations of civilisation – the Empires of Rome and Greece or the Catholic Church - even these have no permanence. Eventually, they too would crumble; vanquished by savages and vanishing into the undergrowth.

Afghanistan is unique, utterly unlike any other war-ravaged landscape. In places destroyed in the recent US and British aerial bombardment, the buildings are twisted metal and charred roof timbers (the presence of unexploded bombs deters all but the most destitute scavengers) giving the place a raw, chewed-up appearance.




























Norfolk writes-

Afghanistan is unlike Sarajevo or Kigali or any other war-ravaged landscape I have ever photographed. In Kabul, in particular, the devastation has a bizarre layering …I was reminded of the story of Schliemann 's discovery of the remains of the classical city of Troy in the 1870s: digging down, he found nine cities layered upon each other, each one in its turn rebuilt and destroyed. Walking a Kabul street can be like walking through a Museum of the Archaeology of War -different moments of destruction lie like sediment on top of each other. There are places near Bagram Air Base or on the Shomali Plain, where the front line has passed back and forth eight or nine times -each leaving a deadly flotsam of destroyed homes and fields seeded with landmines.

The landscapes of Afghanistan are the scenes that I knew first from the 'Illustrated Children's Bible' given to me by my parents when I was a child. When David battled Goliath,these mountains and deserts were behind them …More accurately, these landscapes are how my childish imagination pictured the Apocalypse: utter destruction on a massive, Babylonian scale, bathed in the crystal light of a desert sunrise.

Questions:

1. Norfolk photographs with a large, cumbersome, wooden camera that is very different than the small SLR-type cameras most photojournalists use. How does this make his images different from a typical journalistic image you would see in a newspaper?
2. How do you think Norfolk's images reflect the sense of "walking through a Museum of the Archaeology of War?"
3. How would you compare Norfolk's work to that of Edward Burtynsky, in Ch. 3?