┐ Kirsten Hoving └

Posted on October 22, 2012 by N

“Night Wanderers is a series of photographs envisioning the cosmos. I photograph objects and nineteenth-century photographs frozen in or placed under disks of ice to create the feeling of galactic swirls of stars, galaxies and spiral nebulae.

For this series, I have been influenced not by the work of other photographers, but by the collage and assemblage art of the American artist Joseph Cornell. In the course of writing an art historical book on the artist, Joseph Cornell and Astronomy: A Case for the Stars (Princeton University Press, 2009), I became aware of the artist’s deep and abiding interest in astronomy. I also came to understand his creative process, which involved juxtaposing objects in often unexpected ways. His working method encouraged me to take risks, to experiment, and to be willing to destroy one object to create another. He also taught me to appreciate the stars.

Using ice as a still life object is always a challenging process. I partially thaw the ice to create transparent and translucent areas, then work quickly to photograph it. While I choose objects and photographs that recall earlier times (an outdated globe, old cartes-de-visite) to help remind us that star light is old light, the ice that encases them underscores the elegance and fragility of our place in the universe.” Kirsten’s statement

More of Kirsten’s work here

This work made me think of Laura Marling‘s Night Terror, so here it is:

┐ roots & fruits #10 – Cláudio Ferreira └

Posted on October 21, 2012 by N

“And yet, the absence of the subject does not have to be interpreted as a deficiency. Quite the opposite, it could indicate a new quality in the revolution, in a henceforth molecular revolution, and the primacy of multiplicity within it. When the subject is missing, it has not just gone amiss, as a gap (still) gaping and begging to get closed. In view of the composition of the molecular revolution there is no need for unification, or for the representation of a unified (class) subject by leaders, party and vanguard. The rejection of the primacy of the class, or of a specific class (be it the proletariat, or a middle-class threatened by decline) does not in any way imply tuning out the hierarchizing differentiation that takes place more radically than ever in current capitalist production. Differential capitalism striates the differences, hierarchizes and valorizes them. And yet molecular multiplicity raises no hopes in any of the imaginings of resistance against this machinic-differentiating capitalism that undertake to homogenize and totalize differences. Even in their negative manifestation there is no way back ahead of multiplicity, but only its dis/continuous unfolding.

But even the subject, the one, the whole, where it is no longer absent, is not the consequence of a process of collecting, forming, unifying the many, the singular, the dispersed, to be composed into a molar block. It does not follow a logic of addition, but one of subtraction. It must first be extracted from the uncountable multiplicity, detached, dis-counted in order to be one. The one emerges only when the logic of counting, classifying and identifying lays its grids on the multiplicity; when the uncountable is domesticated in the process of counting.

The subject can appear only through subtraction from the multiple.”

excerpt from Making Multiplicity: A Philosophical Manifesto, by Gerald Raunig. continue reading here

More of Cláudio‘s work here

┐ Scott Alario └

Posted on October 19, 2012 by N

“I’m in the process of building a folk tale for my daughter. It is a paternal inevitability to make up stories for one’s children, and for me, doing so has recently become the passion in my creative practice.

There are two photographs I remember from my childhood that play directly into this work. The ﬁrst is a studio portrait of my father’s mother, made immediately before leaving Italy to immigrate to the United States. We would call the photograph the “gypsy picture” while I was growing up, and in doing so the image has taken on a magic, epic role. In the picture, my grandmother stands stoic as an eight year old. Her timeless eyes represent so much to me. In her face is the face of the 100-year-old woman I know now and it’s the face of my daughter. It is one of wisdom and will, and it ﬁlls me with awe.

The second picture that I carry in my mind is a portrait of a Sami family, reindeer herders of northern Scandinavia. Magic ﬂ ows out of this image, too. It comes from my mother’s mom, whose Norwegian bloodline is only ﬁ ctitiously connected to the Sami. Although I imagine being related to these people, the image hangs in the house like an offering to our ancestry. I see the face of my late uncle in the proud, piped and weathered hero of the portrait. Having a child has got me thinking about the importance of cultural myth and ideas of ancestral wisdom. In my baby I can see our connection to the past, as well as the potential to leave bits of ourselves to posterity.

My recent work deals with my fear of failing as a father, and attempts to make something of the successful moments. I use photography to engage my daughter. Together we construct images, she leads at times, and at others I beg her to stay still. She has become, simultaneously, the impetus, a participant, and the audience. Ideas for pictures come through play; dressing in costumes we make, becoming characters, going back into nature, erecting forts, and telling stories. Inspired by those two relic-like portraits, and driven by a deep love, these images are a collaboration with my whole family through time.”

Scott’s statement. More of his great work here

┐ roots & fruits #7 – Inês Beja └

Posted on October 14, 2012 by N

Inês is a chameleon or, as she puts it, a shape-shifter. From my point of view what she is now is a creative force: obsessive, eager to learn, aiming for the perfect tool, the perfect dress, the perfect light, the perfect shot. I believe these are arguments enough to keep an eye on her and see where all this passion (borderline destructive force?) can take her.

Her work made me think of a written piece of work, so instead of dragging on parallels between her work and that of self-portrayed women in the history of photography, here it is:

“(…)The initial idea that images contributed to women’s alienation from their bodies and from their sexuality, with an attendant hope of liberation and recuperation, gave way to theories of representation as symptom and signifier of the way problems posed by sexual difference under patriarchy could be displaced onto the feminine.(…)and while feminist critics turned to popular culture to analyse these meanings, artists turned to theory, juxtaposing images and ideas, to negate dominant meanings and,slowly and polemically, to invent different ones.

(…)The juxtaposition begins to refer to a ‘surface-ness’, so that nostalgia begins to dissolve into unease.An overinsistence on surface starts to suggest that it might be masking something or other that should be hidden from sight, and a hint of another space starts to lurk inside a too plausible facade.(…)The sense of surface now resides, not in the female figure’s attempt to save her face in a masquerade of femininity, but in the model’s subordination to, and imbrication with, the texture of the photographic medium itself.

(…)For Freud, fetishism is particularly significant (apart, that is, from his view that it ‘confirmed the castration complex’) as a demonstration that the psyche can sustain incompatible ideas, at one and the same time,through a process of disavowal. Fetishistic disavowal acknowledges the possibility of castration (represented by the female, penis-less, genital)and simultaneously denies it. Freud saw the coexistence of these two contradictory ideas, maintained in a single psyche, as a model for the ego’s relation to reality: the ‘splitting of the ego’, which allowed two parallel, but opposed, attitudes to be maintained in uneasy balance.(…) This ‘oscillation effect’ is important to postmodernism. The viewer looks, recognizes a style, doubts, does a double take, then recognizes that the style is a citation, and meanings shift and change their reference like shifting perceptions of perspective from an optical illusion.“

excerpt from Laura Mulvey’s article A Phantasmagoria of the Female Body: The Work of Cindy Sherman

Inês’s portraits can be seen here

┐ roots & fruits #3 – João Henriques └

Posted on October 12, 2012 by N

“Id is a photographic series about place and identity, whose images where done in my home town, Tomar, Portugal.

The term Id, besides pointing to the notion of identity also refers to a Freudian term that designates the unconscious place where images are formed, one that might contain the information not only about the past but also the future, a place where the notions of time are weaved into a multidimensional net.

Questions about the origins, what might be beside them and the way in which self- identity connects with the place where you are born are raised through this images.”

João’s statement

more of João’s work here

┐ Martin Seeds └

Posted on September 5, 2012 by N

“I never set out to document anything. It was more of a search, an investigation. I wanted to understand more of myself. To find others like me. I needed to be sure that I wasn’t the only one.

In 1986 I left Northern Ireland for London and for work. I brought me a diploma in computer studies, a strong accent and £50 that I think my father gave me at the ferry terminal. When questioned about my origins in London I rarely had much more than a terse answer. I didn’t have a strong sense of what culturally defined me as being from the North of Ireland. If I did venture into that definition a violent history emerged. And it was difficult to reject that violent element of my heritage without rejecting much of the culture and history. Over the years I returned ‘home’ to Northern Ireland many times and felt with each return increasingly alienated, to the point where I now view my home country as a detached outsider.

But there must be others. I’m sure we, the ones from over there, all get asked the same questions; of origin and of history. And therefore some of those others, like me, must also doubt their answers. Of belonging? There are those, the numbers of whom are unknown to me, although I suspect there are many, that do not answer or give a faux “…it doesn’t matter…”. So much is buried in such a dismiss. For many don’t want to embark down the tiresome road of “…going into that nonsense…”.

I reached the seminal point of detachment in 2010, when I returned to Belfast for a family Christmas. Arriving in the morning and tired from my journey, I slept until mid afternoon. During my sleep there was a heavy snowfall and on waking I stared at this new white landscape from the bedroom window. It felt, for a moment, that a troubled history had been wiped clean but I realised that the snow, although deep and heavy, lay lightly on the surface and was like myself without roots. At that point I knew I did not belong here and because I didn’t feel I belonged elsewhere I needed to understand my sense of displacement.

I am convinced however that there exists within us all a deep sense of origin. It is stronger in some cultures, less deeply buried perhaps. To be clear I’m not talking about nationalism, no, that is something else. That’s wrapped up in political ideals and tied to legal boundary posts. What I’m referring to is more a primeval notion of origin. An unconscious apolitical reference point, which influences much of our choices.

On my recent trips to Northern Ireland I visited familiar places. I was trying to find some resonance of myself engrained in the substance of these known locales. I looked in museums, the repositories of local history and culture, hoping to find some clarity as to my origins. I visited the border country between the north and south of Ireland. Thinking that by looking across that troublesome boundary line to another supposedly different place it might jolt a notion of longing through knowing I didn’t belong there; but in fact it was hard to see where one country ended and the other began. I journeyed to Stormont the seat of political power and once there, I walked the peaceful woods surrounding that contested white building. Throughout all of this, I explored the faces of my fellow countrymen. These faces would surely harbour some common trait, characteristic or expression that I could recognise as my own.

For we as humans have need of a reference point – a beginning? We require that ‘A’ to start from and ‘B’ to arrive at. You see I think we like straight lines, they are easy to negotiate and are convincing in their simplicity. History has, for example, a habit of being drawn as a straight line for that very reason. Well, I read the history; several versions of it. And yes, each drew its own straight line. And I got sick of the sight of it to be honest. It wasn’t telling me anything I wanted to know. It told me someone else’s story. So I went back there. I went back to find my own ‘A’.”

Martin’s statement

More of his work can be seen here

┐ Lauren E. Simonutti └

Posted on June 25, 2012 by N

Lauren passed away this April. An homage would be irrelevant compared to what she set off to uncover and offers us. Thank you for the enlightenment! A must see, hear and feel that reminds me of David Nebreda’s work, more than anything else due to the relation the author establishes with the work.

Madness strips things down to their core. It takes everything and in exchange offers only more madness, and the occasional ability to see things that are not there….The problem with madness is that you can feel it coming but when you tell people you think you are going crazy they do not believe you. It is too distant a concept. Too melodramatic. You don’t believe it yourself until you have fallen so quickly and so far that your fingernails are the only thing holding you up, balanced with your feet dangling on either side of a narrow fence with your heart and mind directly over center, so that when you do fall it will split you in two. And split equally. So there’s not even a stronger side left to win…..Over three and one half years I have spent alone amidst these 8 rooms, 7 mirrors, 6 clocks, 2 minds and 199 panes of glass. And this is what I saw here. This is what I learned.

Lauren’s statement

More of Lauren’s work at Catherine Edelman Gallery

┐ Pierre Dalpé └

Posted on June 13, 2012 by N

“Capitalizing on the multiplicity of an individual’s personality and the many selves housed within all of us, Pierre Dalpé approaches each of his subjects with a duplicitous heart: he twins his subjects within the frame to expose the construction of identity while questioning the authenticity of the photographic image. Interested in the process of transformation, Dalpé collaborates with his subjects to express different facets of their personalities. Through this partnership, he is able to coax out identities that lay just below the surface, blurring the boundaries of who is real and who is not, producing family portraits derived from a single subject. Capturing two and sometimes three personas, Dalpé manipulates these portraits in a digital environment, placing them side-by-side within his frame to expose the construct of “truth” in documentary photography. By playing with era, gender, costuming, setting, subtle theatrics, poses, and appearance, Dalpé constructs images that both take advantage of these superficial elements for their formal qualities, and question their authenticity for the viewer, ultimately challenging his audience with the very elements that make up his photographs. The simultaneously historic and timeless quality of his images further adds an aura of nostalgia to the viewer’s experience, authenticating the image through its masquerading historical context.”

introduction to “Pierre Dalpé’s Duplicitous Heart”, by Dayna McLeod

Pierre’s web home here

┐ Noel Rodo-Vankeulen └

Posted on May 3, 2012 by N

@ Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, hood, from the series Flower City (work in progress)

@ Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, gray, from the series Flower City (work in progress)

@ Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, twin, from the series Flower City (work in progress)

In Flower City I’m focusing on the area where I live (Brampton, Ontario), a relative nowhere city transformed by a failed greenhouse industry, as a stand in for photographic experience. I’m really interested in how the medium functions as both art and photography, specifically how these two distinct aspects of a greater whole can alter and mediate what we see.
For the whole series I’ve worked with a large format camera and shot everything on black and white film, making the body of work a cryptic play not only on the ambiguous nature of photography itself, but showing the medium’s specific nature of looking. There is something archaic in using a 4×5 camera and how it can render basic and minimal compositions of people, places and objects as almost alien or distanced. In this respect I’ve specifically chosen to photograph subjects that range the gamut from quasi-exotic to the completely mundane. I’m interested in how these two extremes can have the same presence and become almost mythologized or iconic.

excerpt from Mossless magazine

More of Noel’s work here

┐ Deborah Luster └

Posted on February 21, 2012 by N

“The city of New Orleans is a topographical/ architectural/material/cultural phenomenon with a diverse population participating in raucously colorful and fascinating pursuits and rituals. Homicide is a cultural fact of the life in the city as well. In her second book, Tooth for an Eye: A Chorography of Violence in Orleans Parish, Deborah Luster explores the city in a new way, creating a compelling portrait in the form of a photographic archive of contemporary and historic homicide sites. Following on from her first book, Prisoners of Louisiana, Tooth for an Eye explores the themes of loss and remembrance in a series of tondo photographs that offer an opportunity for the viewer to enter deeper into the idea of the city, a place where life and death coexist, neither free of the other’s infuence.”

More of Deborah’s work here

┐ Lesley Dill └

Posted on February 20, 2012 by N

As a young teen, Dill had a vision, one that she had kept hid den until this project, “I grew up in Maine and had a bedroom window that looked out onto some woods. One morning when I was fourteen and was getting dressed for school, I sat on the bed and looked out the window at the dark leaves against the sky. Somehow, my whole visual screen was suddenly filled with a sort of weblike spiral of images that appeared black on white or white on black. At that moment, I was given to understand the world. I understood pestilence, sorrow, and the hugeness of everything. I understood that there was a pattern threaded through all things – and that it was all right. This was accompanied by a feeling of bliss, which I had never experienced before.”

Excerpt from text by curator David J. Brown. Continue reading the essay here

Lesley’s work can be seen here

┐ El Plus En └

Posted on February 1, 2012 by N

“We wanted to focus on the ‘in-between’, the volatile state of mind in which instability manifests itself, where an uncertain state of mind can produce dark and bizarre outcomes,” says Norman. “The idea is all about letting go; you have to fall out of reality to engage with the pictures – the pictures are there to trigger thoughts inside your head,” adds Adam. “I think the best way to view this work would be to spend an evening with it. It’s a very tricky project to explain because, essentially, we were looking into our own thoughts and what occurs in our own minds. But hopefully the essence of the picture is captured, and therefore a viewer can translate that to their own thoughts and interpretations.”

source: British Journal of Photography, article by Diane Smyth

More of their work here

┐ Victoria Jenkins └

Posted on January 25, 2012 by N

“A characteristic claimed to be unique of photography has been its ability to record the visible, material world, its perceived objectivity and accuracy has lead to a utilitarian application of the camera as a tool for documentation, and this can be traced back to photography’s early history. Parallel to this is a history that echoes with illusion and trickery; photography carries a false empiricism, for which we may allow our guard to be dropped.

The photographs presented here are rooted in the language of rational investigation, employing quasi-scientific laboratory style conditions in to which a series of still lives, fictional archival images, are constructed. A commingling of varied sources occurs: vernacular imagery of magic tricks, home science experiments, divination practice, superstitious belief and forensic investigation. The intent is to play on the conflicts in the languages that are being appropriated: logic and absurdity, revelation and trickery, illustration and illusion, but also that which seems concurrent despite the apparent polarities: the image whose authority is asserted through a shrouding in secret language and gesture.

This collision and coinciding intends to produce a series riddled with ambiguities, the oblique amongst clarity providing a slippery surface on which to form the photographs narratives.”

More of Victoria’s world here

┐ Caï Hongshuo └

Posted on November 28, 2011 by N

“L’œuvre photographique de Caï est cohérente et stylistiquement reconnaissable. Focalisé sur les jeux de lumières et de contrastes proposés par le noir et blanc, l’artiste nous propose des clichés semblant sortir d’un univers fantastique et onirique. Il se passionne pour la zoologie et nous offre un regard différent sur la faune et la flore. L’animal et le paysage sont ainsi transfigurés par le biais d’un appareil à rayons X.

Ses photographies sont révélatrices de l’attachement de l’artiste aux traditions culturelles de son pays. Le noir et blanc offre une palette réduite où la maîtrise des nuances et des subtiles dégradés se révèle dès lors indispensable. Les motifs et compositions de l’œuvre de Caï sont majoritairement des fondements de l’iconographie artistique chinoise : les natures mortes dépouillées, les paysages, les jardins et leurs étangs, l’animal saisi dans une attitude décorative, la narration émanant d’une représentation simple, les petits formats des œuvres (typiques des œuvres anciennes appréciées par les intellectuels de l’époque).”

source:Espace Art 22

More of Caï’s work here and here

Nihilsentimentalgia

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