Unpublished Bodies of Work

My last post mentioned the work of Lucy Hilmer, whose website shows examples of three bodies of work she made that were shot over long periods of time. Seeing her work has made me think a lot about the fact that I also have three long-term projects going that have never seen the light of day. They are: 1. My "birthday" series. Every year on my birthday I put my camera on a tripod and shoot either one roll of 36-exposure film or 36 digital images that show what I do that day from the moment I get up in the morning to the moment I go to bed that night.

2. My "post-partum" series. This series actually began while I was pregnant, when I photographed a nude self-portrait once a month for the duration of the pregnancy. I wanted to track what my body looked like as the months progressed. After giving birth, I was fascinated by the changes the pregnancy had wrought to my body, and wondered how it would age over time. So every year on the anniversary of the birth, I take a nude full-length self-portrait in front of a white backdrop: one from the front, one from the right side, one from the back, and one from the left side.

3. My "sister-in-law" series. This series started the year before my sister-in-law got pregnant. I took a shot of her in front of her house one summer. The next summer, she was nine months pregnant and I thought it would be interesting to pose her in the same spot. The next year, I thought it would be fun to pose her with her and her toddler. And all of a sudden, a series was born. All three of her children are now grown and out of the house, but every summer I am back there, posing her in front of her house, and thinking of how much time and history have passed since I started.

I haven't exhibited any of those series- I am making them just because I want to make them- but enough time has gone by now that I going to start taking a more serious look at them, both as discreet bodies of work in and of themselves, but also in comparison to each other. It's another way to discover what I have been thinking and saying as an artist over long periods of time.

Artists I Like- Lucy Hilmer

It's great when friends send me links to the work of artists with whom I am not familiar. Lucy Hilmer is the latest artist that I have discovered through my friend Laurie. Hilmer has three series on her website, all of which address the issue of time and aging. The first series, "Birthday Suits", consists of pictures that she has taken of herself every year on her birthday since 1974. In them, she wears a pair of underpants, shoes and socks, but is otherwise nude.

The second series, "The Wedding House", shows Hilmer and her husband standing in front of the house in which they got married in 1984. They go there every year on their anniversary to make take a picture commemorating the event.

The third series, "My Valentine", is a series of 21 photographs, all of which chart the first twenty-one years of her daughter's life on Valentine's Day. The pictures depict her husband, who has on a black sweater, and her daughter, who wears white, and a rose.

Because I have shot a number of series in this manner over the course of many years, I have a real appreciation for the discipline required to get out your camera and take a shot every year on the same date. Hilmer's poses hint at what is going on in her life in any given year, without giving too much away, and I really respond to that. The fact that her work is in black & white makes it relatively timeless, as does the fact that her clothing in her "Birthday Suit" series is exactly the same from year to year. This work is for anyone who has ever been interested in the relationship between photography, time and memory.

Artists I Like- Dario Robleto

The best things often happen when you aren't looking for anything to happen at all. On a whim, I turned on the radio to an NPR station the other day, and almost instantly forgot my surroundings because I became so focused on the interview I was hearing. Dario Robleto, a conceptual artist who makes primarily sculptural pieces but does not limit himself by media, was talking with Krista Tippet for On Being, a radio show and blog based on examining the fundamental question: "What does it mean to be human, and how do we want to live?" What Robleto had to say about memory, art, depression, history, relationships, etc. spoke to me deeply. He values words as much as art objects and it's clear that he thinks a lot about the origins and execution of his work. What else can I say?! Listen to the podcast and prepare to be moved.

Thoughts on the Aesthetic Experience

When writing up my last post about the importance of presentation in relation to the viewer's reaction to art, I was reminded of an interview that a former student of mine and fellow photographer, Kayla Wandsnider, conducted with me a few months ago. She was curious to know my thoughts on the nature of the aesthetic experience. I told her a story that once again speaks to the power of context and presentation in the experience of art: KW: I believe that environment can play a substantial role in an aesthetic experience. Do you think that this is true?

JAS: Yes, totally. An experience I had in Salzburg, Austria, comes immediately to mind. It was a very gloomy, rainy day and I was cold and wet and tired. While walking down a narrow street in the inner city on my way back to my hotel, I decided to go into a church I happened to be passing. The building was nothing special on the outside- in fact, it was so plain that I almost didn’t recognize it as a church. I went in because I simply wanted to sit down and rest for a while.  At the exact moment that I entered, the opening chords of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor rang out unexpectedly, filling the church with glorious sound that seemed to cascade torrentially out of the heavens. At the same time, light poured down through the church's long, slender windows, in stark contrast to the overcast gloom outside. I was completely paralyzed with shock. I hadn’t expected it to be so light inside, hadn’t known that music of any kind would be playing, hadn’t anticipated that I would suddenly be experiencing something so moving, so beautiful, so arresting. I could hardly breathe, it was so overwhelming.

I sank slowly into a pew as the music continued to play, not really seeing anything, living completely in the moment. It felt like time was suspended.

The combination of the location, the weather, the light, the music, my physical state and, yes, the unexpectedness of it all, led to one of the most profound aesthetic experiences of my life. And it wasn’t about the church building, it wasn’t about the music itself, it was an experience that came about because ALL of those things put together transported me to…. Somewhere Else. I will never forget it.

Click here to read the entire interview.

The Importance of Presentation

There was a great article in the New York Times a couple of days ago that ruminated on the nature of museum artifacts and the power they have to emotionally move viewers, as well as to intellectually stimulate them. There are a number of shows currently up in NYC that succeed at these tasks more or less successfully. Part of the article discussed that the manner in which these artifacts are presented to the public makes a huge difference in how the public perceives and experiences them. If one can view the artifact in close physical proximity, "The artifact becomes a spur to the imagination: It reveals history as something lived, and thus as a result of choices made. We come more alert to the ways things are, and how different they might yet be..."

But, it goes on to say:

"If an exhibition is staged so we are placed too close to another world without being given tools to make sense of it, the effect is disorienting rather than clarifying. The artifacts can amaze, but we can't use our imagination to go further."

Exactly! The full article can be found here.

"The Paradox of Art as Work"

In a NY Times article published on May 11 titled "The Paradox of Art as Work", writer and critic A. O. Scott examines the relationship between art and money. One part of the article in particular stood out to me and is quoted here: "In the popular imagination, artists tend to exist either at the pinnacle of fame and luxury or in the depths of penury and obscurity- rarely in the middle, where most of the rest of us toil and dream. They are subject to admiration, envy, resentment and contempt, but it is odd how seldom their efforts are understood as work. Yes, it's taken for granted that creating is hard, but also that it's somehow fundamentally unserious. Schoolchildren may be encouraged (at least rhetorically) to pursue their passions and cultinvate their talents, but as they grow up, they are warned away from artistic careers. This attitude, always an annoyance, is becoming a danger to the health of creativity itself."

He goes on to make other excellent points that I won't go into here. But I myself have experienced time and again that attitude he describes about art being seen as "unserious", and it annoys me just as much today as it did decades ago when I first experienced it. If the work artists do is "unserious", then I'd like to be able to wave a magic wand and eliminate any and all things visual, aural, written, etc. that have been created by artists throughout the centuries and see what would be left. How many buildings would be missing? How many sounds? What would the world actually look and sound like without the works of artists?

Then let's talk about artists being "unserious"!!!

Artists I Like- Michael Somoroff

Artists often take on the challenge of trying to convey the absence of something. I am no different in this respect, for my work frequently wrestles with the notion of memory, which is inherently fleeting and notoriously changeable as time passes. My Tears of Stone project set out to convey the enormity of loss in the massive number of casualties in World War 1, without actually showing people grieving. So I was instantly intrigued by Michael Somoroff's work "Absence of Subject". Somoroff carefully chose certain images by German photographer August Sander to work with and created a body of work that is visually arresting and thought-provoking. Sander was most famous for his body of work titled "People of the 20th Century", a collective portrait of the German people from all walks of life taken during the Weimar Republic.

In each of Sanders' images (seen in these images on the left), Somoroff has digitally erased the human subject(s) originally found in them, leaving only the background and surroundings for the viewer to contemplate.

Because these photographs are shown together, the viewer immediately compares the two and is asked to engage with the issue of "subject".

How important is the human subject to our reading of this photograph? What happens to the meaning of the photograph when that subject is erased? What is lost or gained through this manipulation? Is familiarity with Sanders' work important to understanding Somoroff's? Does the fact that Sanders' photographs were taken in the 1910's-30's inform our reading of this very contemporary treatment of them? I love it when artwork provokes questions like these!

"The Gap"

Ira Glass, producer and host of the radio show "This American Life", put together a short video about "The Gap", which any creative person experiences at one point or another. The Gap happens after you've had an idea and a project has been started, but you are now in the middle of it and don't quite know where you are going and how it's going to turn out in the end. This is the point at which you get frustrated and begin to lose faith in what you are doing. Thoughts of quitting arise. Doubt gnaws at your brain. Here's a link to the video.

Right now, I am in The Gap with my current project. And the only way to deal with it, as Glass says, is to just keep going. Keep making work. Keep shooting, processing, printing, questioning. Just keep moving forward.

In past experiences with The Gap, I've discovered that it may last a short time, but it also can last for quite a long time. Regardless of how long it lasts for any given project, one has to have faith that it will all work out and that the end result will be satisfying. And if it isn't, well, then isn't that something we can learn and move on from as a starting point for what we do next?

Creativity & Being Uncomfortable

My most recent posts have touched on some of the technical issues that I've been having with my current project. The question of what camera to use has loomed large, and has gotten me thinking a lot about comfort zones. The questions I have wrestled with are: "Am I too comfortable using the panoramic and/or square format? Would I challenge myself more by using a different format camera?" The answer I have come up with, at least for now, is, "No" to both questions. One of things I love about using the panoramic or square format is that I constantly feel challenged to further explore their possibilities. Rather than feeling predictable, they force me to rethink what I am doing every time I use them. I have never felt that way using 35mm, 6x7 or 4x5 cameras.

But the larger question here is: "Will my work improve if I force myself to work in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable?" My answer to this is: "Yes." I also believe, however, that if I am uncomfortable with everything I am doing, my brain grinds to a halt. What works best for me is to make myself uncomfortable in limited-but-ever-changing ways throughout the course of a project. I've found that throwing only one or two wrenches into the works at any given time does an amazing job at putting me off my stride and forcing me to reconsider what I am doing.

Being uncomfortable is part of the sometimes-painful process of bringing new work to life, because it leads to uncertainty. But I've found that I ultimately grow more creatively when I force uncomfortableness upon myself and that makes that it totally worthwhile. Here's a great article that speaks to this: "The Creative Benefits of Exploring the Uncomfortable".

Rectangle vs. Square Format

Because I have been wrestling with what kind of camera to use for my current project, I have also been confronted with the issue of the square vs. the rectangular format. This is not a new phenomenon for me. Back when I was in grad school, I had a lot of trouble trying to find my voice as an artist. At the time, I used 35mm, 6x7, and 4x5 cameras, but never was comfortable with any of them. It wasn't until my father gave me an old panoramic camera that had belonged to my great-grandfather that I began understanding that format can make a huge difference in the kind of work you do. This camera, an Al-Vista Model 5D, took 5" roll film and took a picture with roughly 160˚ angle of view. (I used this camera with cut-down 11" x 14" sheet film exclusively for the Shadowing the Gene Pool series.) From the start, I discovered that the long, slender panoramic format gave me a creative voice that had been missing. There was something about how I could arrange things in space that completely spoke to me, and since that time I have used a variety of panoramic cameras and loved them all. The fact that panoramic images are rectangular isn't lost on me, but I don't seem to be limited by them creatively in the same way that I am by less-long rectangles.

I didn't start using square format cameras until much later, but discovered when I did that they, too, allow me to work with space in a way that allows me to speak with my pictures in a way that the conventional rectangular formats (35mm, 6x7, 4x5) never have. As a beginner, I never realized the powerful impact that an image's shape and dimensions can have on the meaning of a photograph. Now that I do, I choose my tools for any given project with great care.

Thoughts on Film and Digital

As I've been working on my current project, I've been thinking a lot about the tools I'm using and the results I have been getting from them. In brief, I have not been happy. I've been using a 35mm DSLR camera and LOVE getting the instant feedback that only a digital camera can give me. Plus, they are high resolution, the color is great, but.... most of the images just don't cut it. Why? Because all photographic equipment and media has a unique "footprint". This footprint is created by a number of factors, including, but not limited to the camera format, the lens used, the aperture used, and whether the camera is uses digital or film for recording the image. In my experience, images shot on film look different than ones shot digitally. I am not talking about resolution or sharpness or even color/grayscale quality here. I am talking about things like the richness and spatial depth that a film image inevitably seems to have that digital doesn't. (At least the images that I take reflect this!)

Don't get me wrong- I would "mortgage a kidney" (as one fellow photographer put it) for a medium format digital camera with a square sensor that rendered an image like my film cameras do. But that camera doesn't exist right now. I realize that I am placing myself in the middle of the film vs. digital debate here, and that many readers will completely disagree with me. But I have no time for that debate- for me it's not an issue of whether film or digital is better. The issue is: What equipment will yield the kind of visual results I want? For now, the answer for me is to use a medium format film camera and scan the resulting negative so that I can print it digitally.

Making the Familiar Strange

In my last post, I quoted a sentence that was in reference to Seamus Heaney's poems: "He takes the familiar and makes it strange." This sentence describes perfectly what I am trying to do in my current work. Because this is no easy thing, I have been thinking a lot about what it is, exactly, that can make the familiar into something strange or unsettling. In researching this, I came upon this blog entry by Pat Thompson, Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. She writes about how de-familiarization is about "seeing things differently, and understanding them differently." The ability to convey to viewers/readers/listeners this different understanding of something familiar is key.

Musicians are challenged by this concept any time they do a cover version of a well-known song. Sometimes they produce a more-or-less faithful rendering of the original, but other times, the cover version causes the listener to hear something in the song that had been previously unknown. I can think of two examples that illustrate this perfectly.

The first is Whitney Houston's "How Will I Know". Her original was a perfect piece of pop confection that speaks to the angst of young women just starting on their journey of negotiating relationships. Her a cappella version, although not a cover version by someone else, reveals the concerns of a grown woman who has already lived a life and experienced failures in love.

The second example is Chris Cornell's cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean". There is a gritty, desperate aspect to Cornell's version that was absent for me in the original. I had become complacent about the song until I heard Cornell's version, which caused me to relisten to Jackson's original and rethink what i thought I knew about it. I found far more angst and anger there than I had heard initially.

In both cases, the experience as listener was revelatory, exciting and..... strange. You are familiar with the subject, but because it is being presented to you in a way that is different from the norm, you feel like you don't know it at all. It is this sensation that I am aiming for in the photographs I am creating right now.

Describing Your Work to Others

Although I believe I am a fairly articulate person, I always seem to stumble when someone asks me what my work is "about", or what kind of artist I am. I inevitably end up using far too many words to answer those questions. In the January/February 2014 issue of Intelligent Life magazine  (which is published by the Economist) author Christina Patterson describes how Nobel-prizewinning poet Seamus Heaney used words to create maximum impact. There was a sentence in that article that is the perfect description of what I attempt to do with my work:

"He takes the familiar and makes it strange."

That sums it up perfectly, particularly in regard to the project that I am currently working on. Here's an example of my most recent work-in-progress that I feel effectively does that:Now I just have to drill that sentence into my head: "I take the familiar and make it strange." and use it whenever I'm asked what kind of work I do. If only I could do that to the degree that Seamus Heaney could!

Same Object - Different Uses

If you give each of 5 different artists the exact same object to use in her/his work, you are guaranteed to get 5 different results. I've always been interested in this idea. Take for example, band-aids. I recently saw this picture by Eric Klemm, which used a lot of band-aids:

What I see in this picture is vulnerability, sadness, a fierce barrier that has been put up between the world and this child. The fact that the application of the band-aids was so deliberate and purposeful makes it the antithesis of playful. They work as a defense against some unseen threat, and imply impending injury of some kind to me.

Compare the use of the band-aids in that photo to one that I took, which is from the "Shadowing the Gene Pool" series:

In this picture, the band-aids serve quite a different purpose. Rather than being a barrier, they are used almost like tattoos, markers of power and strength. The body English of the little girl adds to that effect. They say, "Yes, I am vulnerable, but that's irrelevant."

I'm sure if I searched the Web for "children with band-aids" I would find countless pictures which would use the band-aids to express different things. That's why no photographer should ever shy away from photographing anything. It's not WHAT you photograph, it's HOW you photograph it that will make it fresh and exciting- or not.

Humor in Photography- The Tutu Project

A friend of mine sent me a link about The Tutu Project, and I instantly fell in love with these pictures. A project of the Carey Foundation, "The mission of The Tutu Project™ is to support the fund raising efforts of The Carey Foundation for women with breast cancer. We strive to bring laughter and understanding to a community that has endured far too much." Photographer Bob Carey's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003. Having lost his mother to the disease, Bob needed something to distract him and started to photograph himself in various locations around the world. Working on this project has become a form of therapy for him, and I can see why.

Using lighthearted humor and the visually unexpected (an overweight, middle-aged man dressed only in a pink tutu!?!) are great tools for getting the viewer's attention and prompting them to ask questions about what they are seeing. Add to that Bob's outstanding sense of composition and you have a body of work that is eye-catching and funny/whimsical. Add to that the fact that these photographs are being created for a greater good, and you have a slam-dunk success.

Planting Seeds....

In the mid-1990's, I was invited to exhibit images from the Stargazing project in Sao Paolo, Brazil. A catalog was published that included an image from that work. Fast forward to two days ago, when I received the following message from someone in Brazil through my Facebook page, which I have edited somewhat:

"A few weeks ago, while looking for references material to start drawing the graphic design of my first EP (CD) - I'm an actor, singer, producer (former MTV latin america) and performer, born in Sao Paulo - came to my hands,  the book "Fotografia Pensante" (edited by) the valuable and genius Luiz Guimaraes Monforte!"

He goes on to say that he found my photograph in the book as he leafed through it. Then he wrote:

"The impact that this image generated in my heart was so intense, that there is more than one week can not sleep! Seriosly!"

The idea that someone couldn't sleep for a week because of an image I made was.... well, way cool!!! But what struck me most about this is that once you put your work out into the world, you never know who will see it, when they will see it, or if it will resonate in any way with those who do see it.

It reminds me of the seeds of desert wildflowers that lie dormant for decades until just the right conditions occur that cause them to finally germinate and bloom. So plant the seeds, just get your work out there, and see what happens.

Work-in-Progress- 11/11/13

Today is Veteran's Day in the United States, a day that I have paid deep attention to ever since I worked on the Tears of Stone project. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the Armistice was signed that ended the "war to end all wars". Or so they thought.... and hoped. Here is one last excerpt from Stone Work, the book by John Jerome that I have been quoting here recently, and which relates to my approach to my current as-yet-unrealized project. I could have written these words myself:

“I haven’t learned to let go of the need to control, direct, keep the canoe (or anything else) pointed straight: the westernized, apollonian requirement that one master things, apply more power. I keep fiddling with the throttle.

            Of course I like effort, but that is not a sufficient excuse. I like effortlessness more, or claim to. What I like most is the search for that, for the effortless way, for those little physical moments when it goes just right: epiphanies, again. What I like best about stone work is working at it slowly and carefully, figuring out how to get the stones and get them into place with never the strain of a heavy lift. I like trying to make stone work effortless, which is satisfactorily impossible, and therefore endless, task. You can put a lot of effort into finding the effortless way.” (Jerome 135-136)

PhotoEye Blog Interview

I was recently interviewed about the Seeking Perfection project for the PhotoEye blog. Here's a link to the interview. It's always a struggle to put into words the thought processes behind my work, but always a rewarding experience. This is because I find that I learn something different about my work and about my approach to making pictures when I either talk about it or write it down, than when I simply think about it. I really enjoy that sense of discovery as it helps to move me forward, even when I have long since completed a project.

Work-in-Progress- 10/27/13

I'm currently working on a project that has gone from nebulous to partially-formed in the past few months. But I am still wrestling with how to make it sing, am still in the middle of it, trying to figure it out, which means that I am frustrated by my apparent lack of progress. (Even though I know that every time I work on it, I am making progress.) I love this excerpt from John Jerome's book Stone Work, which talks about seeking a breakthrough:

“It is when I am finally stopped, when the sentence falls right, when what I’m trying to say finally comes off my tongue, when I understand what someone is saying to me, when the pieces fall together and what was muddy confusion is suddenly clear:  the eureka moment, when some conglomeration of ideas comes together for you, that otherwise, until then, you were unable to link. A connection made that you can’t explain, that just . . . furthers you, somehow.

            I used to have a wonderful quote about this moment pinned above my desk, but I lost it. Insert your own wonderful quote here. Mine was about that moment before which all is confusion and despair, and after which things suddenly become clear and there’s never going to be any confusion anymore. It doesn’t work out that way, of course, but the moment when you think it will is worth preserving. It is what I work for, I think.

            The physical epiphanies available in working with wood and metal and stone are no different from those other little instants when some flicker of truth comes in. when the information from some sense organ or other succeeds in breaking through. I always thought these moments were supposed to be intellectual, the product of pure abstract thought. But they come to us through the sense organs. It was the taste of the apple, I think, that flipped us out of Eden, into the world.” (Jerome 108-109)

Thoughts on Learning to See- #2

I worked solely in black & white until quite recently. It wasn't until I started the Seeking Perfection project that I began working in color. Until then, I didn't have a feel for it, didn't know what to do with it- I just didn't have a voice in color. I therefore find the following quote from John Jerome's book Stone Work really interesting: “By noon it has turned into an absolutely crystalline, deep-blue, clear-sky, windless February day, unimaginably clear and bright. The clarity comes, I believe, from the deepness of the blue above, its darkness…This morning the woods are wet again, and I can definitely see the pink haze. The woods are still basically gray, but you can pick up the tinge, the hue, of growth…When I come outdoors I see nothing but gray first, but the longer I look, the more color comes welling up. It’s as if my black-and-white eyes are being awakened from their winter sleep, as more color begins to appear in stuff that for the past three months I have dismissed as dead gray. This is wrong, of course, there’s always plenty of color, even in the snow... Maybe in deep winter I have, more or less despairingly, tuned it out.  Maybe true color is just another one of those other rich experiences out there that I never quite have.” (Jerome 194-195)