Category Archives: USA

║ Carrie Will ║

Posted on by

Flash

© Carrie Will, from the series I Am Redundant

2

© Carrie Will, Rikki and Carrie, Fire Island, from the series I Am Redundant

“I am redundant, half of a whole, a freak, identical and lucky. The relationship I have with my twin sister is tightly woven, beautifully strange and difficult to explain. This has led me to explore a visual language that articulates the intimacy and the oddity of being a twin.  Having been subjected to stares and double takes my whole life, I use photography to exaggerate the gaze of others and to illustrate the interconnectedness of our identity.  It is difficult to see yourself as an individual when no one else does. My photographs aim at grasping the idea that I am one person as well as two and discovering what that looks like.”

To see more of Carrie’s work click here

║ Benjamin Orion Rush ║

Posted on by

01_benrush_museum

© Benjamin Orion rush, Kelvin, from the series Field Notes: Statements & Sketches

09_benrush_museum

© Benjamin Orion rush, Kelvingrove Hall, from the series Field Notes: Statements & Sketches

“New England-born artist Benjamin Rush presents selections from two new ongoing bodies of work in “Field Notes: Statements & Sketches”. Central to the exhibition are images created in museums, libraries, and galleries both in the US and overseas. With a large format camera he seeks out surreal compositions of not only the display of these institutions, but also of these authoritative spaces in states of undress and change. The images stem from Rush’s fascination with the idea of knowledge, and the governance that possesses, frames and presents it.

The “Sketches” portion of the exhibition appear as selections from a body of 170-and-counting images that Rush has taken with a 1960′s Polaroid Land Camera. Rush says: “My life these past few years has been very unsettled and hectic, this more casual approach to image-making keeps me considering my environment. I’m always fascinated by how things look as photographs. I was curious how my interests and aesthetic might become evident without any particular intent across a large group of images taken over many years.”

These images describe Rush’s connection to the art and history of photography on many levels. “Frankly, I sometimes wonder if I’m just addicted to the way this particular process smells and behaves, ” he says. “Obviously it’s almost immediate but, unlike digital, when you peel the print open – the print is wet and fragile for some time, it’s a very tactile experience”.”

Source: Dakota Ridge Gallery

To see more of Benjamin’s work click here

║ Eric Weeks ║

Posted on by

world_14_big-star

© Eric Weeks, Big Star, from the series World was in the face of the beloved

world_25_anne-street

© Eric Weeks, Anne Street, from the series World was in the face of the beloved

“I have been photographing my wife Stacy, whom I married four years ago this fall. My relationship with her is the closest, kindest and most successful of my life. My photographs of her are a celebration of this accomplishment.

This work is about a character who is becoming one within the given landscape. She is someone who is okay with who they are and where they are in the world, while at the same time, she questions her place in the universe. She is my protagonist. Although I do not directly intend to expound on the tenets of Zen Buddhism, there is certainly the suggestion of that kind of spiritual tranquility. I want my photographs to offer a respite from all the courser conundrums of humanity.

In short, I want these photographs to speak about ideas of beauty: the beauty of this woman in these attractive clothes; the beauty of the landscape and the figure relating to that space; the beauty of color relationships; and also about the beauty of analogue photography.(…)”

To see more of Eric’s work click here

║ Susan Worsham ║

Posted on by

Untitled-1 copy

© Susan Worsham, Lynn watching Dr. Phill, from the series Some Fox Trails in Virginia

2

© Susan Worsham, Hearse in my childhood driveway, from the series Some Fox Trails in Virginia

3

© Susan Worsham, Untitled, from the series Some Fox Trails in Virginia

“This series of photographs is taken in and around Virginia, the place in which I grew up. The title comes from a book written by my father’s ancestor, to show the lineage of the Fox family in Virginia. For my own purpose, it acts as a metaphorical map, of the rediscovered paths of my childhood home.

At the age of 34, I came back to Virginia to care for my mother, who died shortly after my return. As the last of my family passed, I turned my lens to old friends, and their new families. I photographed the house in which I grew up. The man that lives there now houses snakes in my father’s old office, and rests them in my old bedroom, while he changes their cages. My mother always promised that there were no snakes in my room, and now that she is gone, there are. A hearse sits in my childhood driveway, representing the passing of my father, and suicide of my brother.

These photographs are not meant to be purely autobiographical, but rather representations of how I view things, based on my own experiences, and those of the people that I have met along the way. My boyfriend Michael, stands on the street I grew up on, bridging the gap between past and present. Lynn, the first stranger that ever sat for me, continues to pose for me, along with her son Max. I have been photographing her for sixteen years now.”

To see more of Susan’s work click here

║ Michael Lundgren ║

Posted on by

ruins01

© Michael Lundgren, Untittled #1, from the series Ruins

ruins14

© Michael Lundgren, Untittled #14, from the series Ruins

“As an artist, I have always been drawn to the field of landscape. It is the perfect subject with which to explore our history and our desire, two urges bound deeply together in the mythology and experience of the American West. As well, working in wild places always feels like coming
home.
For seven years I worked exclusively on a series entitled, Transfigurations. I began this work in 2000 as a graduate student at Arizona State University—culminating in a monograph published by Radius Books (October 2008). Born from a long-term relationship with the desert, these pictures refer to the heart of these places, not by description, but by metaphor. If I have learned anything from Postmodernism, it is that photographs are not the thing itself. Photography’s burden of representation has been lessened and yet I am still able to access real experience with these pictures. While this work is about being on the surface of the earth, the images do not proceed by literal content; their meaning comes from an engagement with the transformative capacity of photography. Through sequence they speak of a search for the elusive, through layers of
phenomena unfurled as a story of desert experience.
These photographs are a lust for the primitive, for what lies behind personality. They are a search to understand beauty and terror, which are bound to one utter certainty—change. In the desert nothing is static, even rocks move. Through intuition, I hope to photograph the impossible, to fix the fugitive on film.”

Excerpt from artist’s statement

To see more of Michael’s work click here

║ Deborah Paauwe ║

Posted on by

brokenmelody

© Deborah Paauwe, Broken Melody, from the series The Crying Room, 2006

crimsonautograph

© Deborah Paauwe, Crimson Autograph, from the series Double Dutch, 2002

“Deborah Paauwe’s imagery circulates between art photography and erotica as the artist seduces and assaults the gaze. Paauwe engages with a labyrinthine gaze that Lacan charts as a map full of traps and misrecognitions

In this series of photographs the artist accentuates the screen aspects of the Lacanian gaze, framing this quite literally for the viewer by using a veil to shroud and figures. The body is seen through a screen of translucent material, enticing the voyeuristic desires of the spectator. The bodies are soaked in and through the veil, making indents and traces in the material, as the subject becomes index.

The veil produces a sensuous affect at the same time as it shrouds the image giving it an auratic, ghostly shield. The veiling of the female form has sensual, religious and ideological aspects: it is simultaneously erotic and sinister

The erotic aspects of the photographs position them within a discourse about the objectification of the female form for the male gaze. The images are both dangerous and playful. They capture a coming of age, a transition from childhood to adult sexuality, and they engage with and unsettle the gaze through association with larger issues. Paauwe plays with the gaze and the construction of the female subject by getting her models to perform scenes. The performative aspects of the photographs need to be considered – it is this artifice that separates the images from ‘real’ life. There is no document being recorded. These are not real scenes captured by the camera as a mute witness. These pictures are made as art. Some consciously reference the history of photography. Porcelain, for example, could be read as a feminisation of Edward Weston’s famous photograph of his son, Neil, titled Nude Torso (1922), that was appropriated by Sherrie Levine in the 1980s to make a statement about great masters and authorship. However, Paauwe’s rendition goes beyond parody. It is a homage to the flesh but whereas Weston and other modernist photographers stressed the form of the image, Paauwe seems to make the flesh ephemeral. The touch of the fingertips on the chest is delicate but haunting. The tips of the fingers appear bruised or dirty and they set up an unnerving contrast to the clean white flesh and the lace bodice.” (…)

Anne Marsh

To see more of Deborah’s work click here

║ Nicholas Prior ║

Posted on by

1

© Nicholas Prior, Untitled #44, from the series Age of Man, 2003

2

© Nicholas Prior, Untitled #30, from the series Age of Man, 2003

“This project explores the subject of childhood as a social construction. It is influenced by Freud’s writting  on The Uncanny and the idea that an adult can not look back on childhood as a child, which implies an impenetrable and mysterious chasm between adults and children.”

Nicholas Prior

To see more of Nicholas’ work click here

║ Jean-Christian Bourcart ║

Posted on by

1

© Jean-Christian Bourcart, Untitled, from the series Stardust, 2006

04

© Jean-Christian Bourcart, Untitled, from the series Traffic, 1999-2001

“In Jean-Christian’s photos, which are sometimes printed almost lifesize, he opens the door but a bit shyly, not intruding, as if hanging back in the doorway. The empty rooms are portraits in themselves, full of clues to the occupants’ identities. They are touching, in the womens’ almost pathetic attempts at creating an air of eroticism with their posters, their fake satin sheets covered with towels instead of blankets offering nowhere to hide, and their heart-shaped pillows. The Hawaiian room, the Elvis room, the heavily equipped S&M room, the Empire room with the gilt mirror and flocked wallpaper, the tropical room: they exude isolation and loneliness.

Stuffed animals piled on a couch suggest a girl barely out of childhood, striving for some emotional comfort. One man stares into a room romantically decorated with roses and fragile paper fans. As he sizes up the commodity, Jean-Christian captures something arrogant in his body language. The women are often strongly defined individuals, unlike the men. Only occasionally does JC reveal the men as vulnerable, as in a photo where the client is naked and the proud woman is fully dressed. In the true light of the place, the red underlit glow that pervades nearly all the pictures, it is impossible to see eyes, and rarer to see features but so much is revealed through the nuances of stances and postures in the girls’ bodies.”

Nan Goldin

To see more of Jean’s work click here

║ Inbal Sivan ║

Posted on by

baroque
© Inbal Sivan, Baroque, 2003

nude

© Inbal Sivan, Nude, 2007

“Inbal Sivan’s images borrow heavily from traditions in art history, including aspects of the “male gaze.” It entails inactive women looking at some vague point off-camera suggesting that they are not engaged with their audience (or with anything) but rather have appeared, conveniently, to be looked at. Ironically, the art Sivan references in her work has been made almost exclusively by men. The images created by these men are laden with burdens; long-standing conventions of art history, sexual interest and social gender roles. As a female artist, Sivan feels less encumbered by these things. While her awareness of the “traditional” female archetype influences her aesthetic, she takes hold of the freedom to transcend that aspect of art featuring women. For example, in Untitled (Nude), Sivan is in control of all facets of her photograph i.e. posing and placing her model in a contrived setting thus enabling her personal vision of what a portrait or a nude should be: simply a personal investigation of beauty.

Source: Gallery 10G

To see more of Inbal’s work click here