Chapter 1, part 3- If This Is Art- Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing-

The series of photographs called "Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say" brought Wearing international recognition when it was first exhibited in 1993. This selection of five images shows the range of responses which Wearing elicited from passers-by, whom she selected at random, and asked to write their thoughts on a piece of paper. Wearing challenges social stereotypes and assumptions, and often works in collaboration with members of the public as a means of 'interrupting the logic of photo-documentary and snapshot photography.' She has said 'A great deal of my work is about questioning handed-down truths.'

Questions:

1. Do we have any real way of knowing if Wearing's images really are the honest expression of their subjects' thoughts, as they are presented?
2. How does this work reflect the obsession with confessions and privacy that is typical of reality TV shows?
   

Chapter 1, part 2- If This Is Art- Shizuka Yokomizo

by BBC South Yorkshire contributor Ali Davies, July 2004
Strike a Pose!

This following is from an anonymous letter Shizuka Yokomizo sent to various strangers, and you can see the subjects
who responded to this project at the Site Gallery until the end of August:

"I would like to take a photograph of you standing in your front room. A camera will be set up outside the window in the street. If you do not mind being photographed please stand in your room and look at the camera through the window for 10 minutes. I will take your picture then leave."

How would you react? Would you strike a pose, or would you draw the curtains?

Yokomizo was born in Tokyo and studied at Goldsmiths in London.

She essentially a photographer, but also works in video art and focuses on the gap between self and other, hence the title of the show 'Distance'.

Her work reflects the relationship between public and private and has a solitary feeling of isolation. We see images of people standing alone, playing the piano and names in lonely-hearts ads.

The 'Stranger' series shows people looking through windows.

These are somehow contrary to normal portraits, where the viewer stares at the subject, instead the subject seems to stare back at you.

It is unusual to make eye contact with a complete stranger; the experience is both original and unique. It is portraiture turned on its head, the viewer and the sitter almost swap places.

These are not portraits, however, as Yokomizo says, "I didn't try to create a personality, you don't know them, it is simply an encounter." The work sometimes seems voyeuristic.

In previous works Yokomizo took photographs of people sleeping, reiterating the theme of public and private. In a video piece 'A Boy with his father' we see a boy awkwardly posing.

Like photographer Gillian Wearing, Yokomizo is interested in people's reactions when setting up a photograph, people getting ready to pose before the eagerly anticipated shutter release.

There is also an element of the passing of time in Yokomizo's work, people waiting to be photographed.

In 'Forever (And Again)' women in the autumn of their years play Chopin on the piano, something that has taken these older ladies hours to learn.

The exhibition questions the distance we have between others and ourselves.

Although it gives you an insight into other people's worlds, it makes you think how little you actually know about the people you encounter everyday.

Questions:

1. Would you have responded to Yokomizo's letter? Would you have agreed to participate? How would you have presented yourself?
2. We migh usually think of an artist as the person who should have complete control over what they are going to present in their work- but Yokomiso is choosing to control some elements of the photograph, but has no control over others. How does this affect her images?
   

Chapter 1- If This Is Art- Philip Lorca DiCorcia

Hello Everyone!

I hope you are all having a good time shooting your projects and being oh so productive.

Just a reminder of what we are expecting here on the old blog- and it's pretty simple- just read the chapter in the Cotton book, check out the corresponding blog post, and write an insightful, interesting comment!

You will need to register for a Blogger account but that is quite simple.

SO, for our first post and discussion-

Philip-Lorca di Coricia's "Heads"

The following is a brief review of this work- (and anytime I use someone else's comments on the photographs, it will appear in this yellow font color)

MICHAEL KIMMELMAN , NYTimes, 9/14/2001

Since the mid-1990's Mr. diCorcia has helped to redefine the tradition of street photography (Walker Evans's subway pictures, etc.) Nearly a decade ago he began photographing strangers caught in his strobe light. The ''Streetwork'' series turned pedestrians into unsuspecting performers and the sidewalks along places like Sunset Boulevard, and in Tokyo and Paris, into ad-hoc movie sets, the strobes picking passers-by out of crowds the way spotlights isolate actors onstage. The lights gave their gestures a sudden, baroque gravity and made everything around them seem contrived and weirdly portentous.

For the new photographs a strobe was affixed to scaffolding in Times Square; Mr. diCorcia stood farther away than before, using a longer lens. The result: crisp and stark portraits picked out of murky blackness -- just heads, no longer cityscapes, the surroundings now blocked by the scaffolding. They are simpler images and more intimate, the paradox of standing farther away being enhanced intimacy.

The cinematic quality stays the same, though, especially because Mr. diCorcia, like many photographers today, makes big, poster-size prints: 48 by 60 inches each, high-resolution digital scans. He took thousands of pictures from the end of 1999 to earlier this year to produce 17 photographs, 13 of which are in this show. The strobe functions like the light of revelation, a high-beam from heaven, and as usual, by stopping time, the photographs incline us to look at what we see every day but fail to notice, although the longer we stare at these people the more extraordinarily impenetrable they seem.

Unaware of the camera, they are absorbed in thought or gaze absently; they are how we act most of the time, walking down the street, in a crowd, focused on something or nothing. But enlarged and isolated, their expressions become riddles, intensely melodramatic and strangely touching.

Mr. diCorcia's pictures remind us, among other things, that we are each our own little universe of secrets, and vulnerable. Good art makes you see the world differently, at least for a while, and after seeing Mr. diCorcia's new ''Heads,'' for the next few hours you won't pass another person on the street in the same absent way.


A few questions to spark discussion:

1. Are these images an invasion of privacy? How would you feel if you walked into a gallery and saw a massive image of you that you neve know someone had taken?
2. Are these images portraits, in the way you understand portraits are supposed to be?
3. What do you think Kimmelman means when he says "...enlarged and isolated, their expressions become riddles, intensely melodramatic and strangely touching"?