Lisa Oppenheim (Source-Athens)

I've always been a fan of using classic medias such as film and polaroid when it comes to photography as they seem to carry sentimental value and personal character. In 2007 instant cameras were no longer being made and in February 2008 the company Polaroid decided to cease all production of their instant films in favor of the new digital age. Polaroid isn’t the only media that has been fazed out by new and up to date techniques. Koadakrome (colour reversal film) was also let go in 2009 due newer competing colour films that were easier and cheaper to process. It can still be found in the hands of professionals or archives because of its long term stability but has definitely been taken out of the commercial eye.

Art Review in London had noticed this change in the photography scene and drew attention to the work by photographer Lisa Oppenheim. In the 2008 article they discuss the project 'Invention without a future' where Lisa quoted 'Legions of craftspeople, such as negative cutters, printers and lab technicians, have found themselves in a world where their enormous and specialized skills have been rendered obsolete. Their knowledge is not being passed on to another generation as it was passed to them'. I like the idea behind the project and exhibited work as the photographer is trying to record the media before it becomes obsolete. Looking through her work there are images produced with not just polaroid’s but Cibachrome photograms and Lunagrams.

http://www.harrislieberman.com/lisa_oppenheim/lisa_oppenheim-2009-12.html

I think photography and installation work like Lisa Oppenheims is important to remind us of the life cycle of photography, its process of aging and where it came from. It has definitely evolved over hundreds of years and provided more reliable and newer techniques. This project and work allows us to see the modern view of out grown medias that have reached their end. They seem to have a beautiful elegance to them and represent the skills that should be remembered by every generation.

Web-Symbolic/Surreal

Man Ray

What could look like a simple still life photograph of an iron seems to be no challenge for Man Ray to transform. A lot of his work shows him playing with conventions and creating his own reality. I think his photography should be looked at more as a form of art in which he uses to create surprising juxtapositions and emphasize ideas that he could not paint or draw. Photography is seen to capture to the truth yet when you look at Man Ray’s work he seems to change an everyday object into something surreal. Taking the truth out of an object and inserting a whole new concept.

'Gift' 1921

I wanted to specifically look at the one photograph Man Ray took titles ‘Cadeau’ meaning gift. I love the concept he has created and how, first look this iron may look like any other you have seen, second look it becomes a dangerous object.

An iron can be seen to represent female domestic work. The fact that it is already dangerous because of the heat it produces to do its purpose is something we initially forget about when looking at it.

Now when Man Ray uses his experimental techniques and adds nails to the iron he transforms it, becoming a threatening object. Something no longer domestic but violent, this idea of hot metal and danger becomes provocative and an intense desire. He puts power into a woman’s hand.

I find this kind of vision he was able to build with still life much more stimulating and interesting to play with, taking an objects purpose and creating a new one.

Links
Man Ray photographs
Tate Modern

Typologies (source-books)

‘In photography there are no unexplained shadows!’ August Sander

The work and projects in this book are some of the most fascinating collection of photographs to look at. Looking through feels like trying to understand an individual’s idea of a human encyclopedia.

Using Typology with people is to divide us by culture, race and classification, the list could be endless. It’s to strip people into fragments and details that separate them from each other. In a way it’s a stereotypical way of thinking in its extreme.

Dwarves 1913

The reason I find the book so interesting is not only because of the incredible quality of the photogrphs but the whole idea behind them. There’s an interesting quote that accompanies the images in ‘People of the 20^th Century’ where Sanders has written ‘It moves from the people of the soil to the highest point of culture and down to the idiot in the finest gradations’. I have looked over and over these images of ‘the philosipher’, ‘progressive intellect’ and ‘two couples’ that are in this set and I still can't understand how he has justified the interest in each person and the connections he has made. I can only try to understand it by seeing it as the psychology of his time and social understanding.

I find some images hard to look at, as they seem like catching a deer in the headlights. They feel like awkward portraits not only to look at, but also for the subject in the photograph. As if they are being pointed at and alienated behind the lens. Sanders doesn’t seem to treat his subjects as individuals but as a network of people.

Young farmers 1914

(image taken from

http://experimentiv.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/august-sander-dwarfs.jpg)

Even though I may not agree with , or understand the true meaing behind this work, I can appreciate it's culturally significant and an important piece of history. To define and create Groupee’s was seen as important and useful around the 19^th century and Sanders work has built a comprehensive map of his own.

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)

Listen to a stranger

Recorders. One of the biggest fears this age has is privacy, a camera at every corner and a chip in our passport. The first piece of work in the Recorders exhibition at the Manchester Art Museum was Pulse Index. This work was made up of visitor’s finger prints and pulses that have been recorded. A finger print is unique for every person and is our identity. Like many others, my reaction to this idea was cautious. What happens when I let it record my finger print, is that safe, where does it get recorded? Wanting to try everything in life I went ahead with the idea any way. Which I realized to see and make all these pieces in the room art for the rest of the day I had to interact and be part of it or else I wont understand it.

Every piece being exhibited was personal to everyone that walks in and chose to interact. Pulse Room, over a hundred light bulbs hung in a black room flashing to heartbeats. Somewhat peaceful and beautiful to stand under, seeing art off a wall is a great way to soak it in. Heartbeats are something so personal that without this room we would never think of being able to see. Standing under these beating bulbs felt intimate. Hundreds of heartbeats collected and shared for all to see. After spending time in this room I wanted to know more about the way this worked and what happens to all the beats. While speaking to an assistant he said many people had been put off by the idea of the public being able to see this information and not knowing where this was all being recorded to. This makes me wonder whether this was something the artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer began to notice about his audience or whether he had already anticipated this and wanted the audience to realize it themselves.

For me all this work wasn’t about being afraid of forms of surveillance, it was about hearing the people around you and not being afraid to be apart of it. A piece 33 Questions Per Minute allowed you to type in a question and see it on a wall of small LCD screens. It was like looking at Gods beeper. I was once told ‘if you have a question then someone somewhere will have the same to’ and this came to life in this piece. Seeing what people were thinking and choose to share with the public. Hearing peoples voices on the piece Microphones and seeing their belonging on the conveyor belt (named Please Empty Your Pockets), you cant get much closer to a stranger than that. Whether I’m on the same page as the artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer on this work or not I believe it’s more about how you experience it. I became less suspicious about what could be done with the information taken in this exhibition and more drawn in by what I was experiencing and sharing.