Photography as identification - Web Resource

Street portraits by Michael Itkoff

Itkoff is an American fine art and documentary photographer currently living and working in New York City. He is one of the founding editors of Daylight magazine (http://www.daylightmagazine.org/) and also regularly contributes to The British Journal of Photography magazine.

His 2009 photobook entitled, ‘Street Portraits’ uses photography as identification in a very interesting way. The idea itself is somewhat simple – Itkoff discovers busy, urban areas within a city and with the help of an assistant, asks strangers to stand in front of a white background whilst he takes their photograph.

http://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?catalog=dq129&i=&i2=&CFID=14705472&CFTOKEN=12255223

The execution of the shot is what sets Itkoff apart from other somewhat generic contemporary street photographers. Striking white backgrounds are usually used to add ambiguity within the context of an image. However, Itkoff shoots a full body shot of the subject and also chooses to incorporate elements of the background environment. This interesting juxtapose between isolation and containment forces the viewer to question the subject both as the individual and also as part of the context of the city environment.

http://www.michaelitkoff.com/streetportraits.php

Itkoff presents some interesting ideas surrounding what the city means to him – As a city dweller himself for most of his life, the majority of his body of work surrounds themes based around the city. Each person occupies their own isolated space but also exists outside this boundary, as part of the whole that is ‘the city’. Itkoff identifies and celebrates the ordinary, everyday, mundane individual but also recognises the importance of that individual and the many varied types of people that inhabit city environments.

'In his approach Itkoff is rejecting the pretension of hidden artifice, and the effect is powerful — each subject exists in a shared space, but this is a space which itself exists in everyday reality. '
(D.Espest: Photoeye magazine, Jul 2009 isue)
I find Itkoffs work incredibly interesting. The images I find most intriguing are the ones in which the exact location of the city is somewhat ambiguous – graffiti backstreets with derelict buildings that could exist in any city across the world. When you remove the iconic sights that we associate with particular cities (for example, yellow taxi cabs and fire hydrants in New York City) does this alter the way in which Itkoffs work is viewed?

Below, Itkoff discusses his work and early influences and discusses up and coming fine art photographers that have featured in Daylight magazine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=TbknRB8uHhc

The Abject Body:

The word abject means extremely bad unpleasant, degrading.

The turn “abject art” has only been used since 1990 and comes from the book: Pouvoirs de I'horreur. Essai sur I'abjection (1980) by Julia Kristeva.

Julia Kristeva describes the abject as that which disturbs identity, system and order and does not respect borders, positions rules. It is that which defines what is fully human and explores boundaries between self and other, challenging our bodily identity. Most of what is abject centres around the body. Things like: excreta, urine, vomit, bodily fluids and open wounds: those substances which are disturbing because they turn our insides out, dissolving the acceptable perimeters between inner and outer, living and dead, human and animal, male and female, clean and defiled, natural and supernatural.

It is not wrong to say that the abject consists of those elements, particularly the body that transgresses and threatens our sense of cleanliness and propriety.

In practice the abject covers all the bodily functions, or aspects of the body that are deemed impure or inappropriate for public display or discussion. The abject has a strong feminist context in that female bodily functions in particular are abjected by a patriarchal social order.

For example Cindy Sherman's work disrupts the order by presenting it in such a glossy, easily accessible manner. If you don't put her work in an aspect of feminist theory, a lot of her work can be taken on a shallow level in which the patriarchal order isn't disrupted. However any deeper reading of her work shows the viewer how to access her image. You can see how easy it is to construct gender roles and expectation.

The work of John Bortolani and Marcorea Malia is about the main body, wearing wounds and soar of life on the other side. In contrast to the myth of eternal beauty that resists battle against time with these photos you want to demystify this concept to show that race is human all too human. Johns Bortolani and Marcorea Malia work is about transforming reality.

http://sweet-station.com/blog/page/23/

http://ellipsesonwhitewalls.tumblr.com/

http://www.kettererkunst.com/dict/abject-art.shtml

The body as an aesthetic object

SPENCER TUNICK
http://www.spencertunick.com

 "I guess people want to do something else with their bodies. Using your body to make a shape as an art object is a very pure experience and it's a wonderful thing."I don't use the body as a sex object, but as an art object. And the body is used in a new way in my work. It's used to make a mass sculpture. It's liberating, it's an unbelievable situation to be in, and I think other people feel the same way. " (spencer tunick)

People are used as a large sculptural form taking the body as an aesthetic object and a living art installation. Using the body in this way, seems to detach the notions of sexuality and sensuality, why is this? It may be that the body is free from social significance, and therefore giving endless possibilities and freedom for Tunik to place his installations anywhere. 

SARAH GERATS
http://www.foammagazine.nl/portfolio?foto=91
http://www.sarahgerats.be/index.php?/sarah-gerats/for-her/


 Sarah gerats work looks at the male gaze and our views surrounding this. With an expected response to the male gaze ( a returning look), hidden by a reflection of the body, the body takes on a submissive and purely aesthetic role. allowing the viewer to feel comfortable to continue with his gaze. 
What does this say about the female body as and aesthetic object today? 







ELINOR CARUCCI
http://www.elinorcarucci.com/closer.html
Caruccis's images are beautiful. aesthetically pleasing, contradicting the pain supposed with the aesthetic object and renders it more remote and unreal: such are the dangers and paradoxes of the aesthetic. Carucci’s work constantly prods us to ask ourselves what the differences are between the beauty of a person and aestheticisation as a procedure to which the photographer may, or may not, submit her work. Carucci’s photographs are graphic. That is, her subjects are drawn as simple shapes within the frame, and she has arranged them just enough to tell us what she wants us to know. 

The body as an object of medical research - The work of Nick Veasey

As I was having difficulty finding any information on this theme using library journals, I widened my search to include online photography journals. This enabled me to set search criteria and narrow my results.

The British Journal of Photography's January 2011 issue featured the work of Nick Veasey. His seemingly simple images of x-rayed objects exposed onto photographic film have an interesting aesthetic - these types of images are most commonly seen in a medical environment, however Veasey presents them as large scale prints, often stitching multiple frames together to create one piece. These giant detailed, somewhat graphical images become quite striking with the clean, crisp white x-ray lines against the heavy black backgrounds.




www.keef.tv/archive/blog/art

The process used by Veasey to create his images prevent him from using any living,human models (due to the high levels of radiactivity in the x-ray machines) therefore Veasey uses deceased bodies in the precious eight hours prior to rigor mortis. The skeletons captured in the images appear to be completing human actions - reading the paper, greeting friends, cycling etc. All these actions require movement and I like how Veasey creates an environment where these lifeless figures appear to be still living and breathing.

Although Veasey doesnt use the physical body an object of medical research, his images use medical equiptment to change the way we view the body. His work also explores themes surrounding surveillance and privacy issues in the technological age we are surrounded by. Veaseys ingenious process, coupled with the sheer detail and clarity his images create makes his work current, relevant, engaging and incredibly creative.

What is Abject

The abject, in ways is the feeling of threat. Its a loss of distinction, when our minds can see a similarity but don’t want to. Revealing the thoughts is it real or an object, is it horrifying or human?

Artist Jane Alexander has created a piece called ‘Butcher Boys’ which challenged the viewers minds with the abject figures that were made and placed so life like. She helps give people a clearer understanding of why we may reject what seems unnatural to us with the human body. Why is it we find disfigurements of the human body so hard to look at.

‘In Butcher Boys, the viewer faces a sculptural tableau of three highly realistic, mutilated, pale, bestial figures seated on a simple bench, similar to those placed elsewhere in the gallery for museum visitors. The Boys' twisted animal horns, cleaved backs, exposed spinal columns, mutilated faces, and castrated genitalia seem to manifest the disfigured social body of South Africa under apartheid; although the significance of Alexander's practice seems to be the horror and repulsion that she causes us to experience, the challenge that she poses to us as viewers is to deconstruct this sensation -- that is, to consider why we feel this way in the presence of the figures that the artist produces.

Indeed, in spite of their bestial horns, frequently disfigured faces, and castrated genitalia, these figures do not horrify us because they are inhuman; rather, they are horrifying because they are fundamentally human. Their hands, skin, musculature, life-size bodies, familiar postures, and expressive affect are recognizable as like our own, regardless of whether we want to acknowledge this similarity.’

Tenley Bick’s words from his article on Alexander’s piece describes the feelings we experience when presented with the abject clearly. Tenley presents the idea that we are so struck by these kinds of disfigurements and images because it could be or happen to us and if so we want to ignore this idea.

(Quote and research found on www.athens.ac.uk, Horror Histories Apartheid and the Abject Body in the Work of Jane Alexander, author Tenley Bick)