Margaret Watkins (web: traditional still life approaches)

Margaret Watkins
(web: traditional still life approaches)

Margaret Watkins was born in Canada in 1884. When 25 years old, she moved to New York the centre of artistic life. She had her own studio in the 1920s and studied photography and later was a teacher at Boston's Clarence White School of Photography. She had students like Margaret Bourke-White. It has been said that she was half in love with Clarence White and, when he suddenly died in 1927, Watkins organised a memorial exhibition for him. She displayed some of his major pictures, which he had given to her in lieu of salary. White's widow sued Watkins for ownership and she had to sell her the pictures back. With hurt feelings Watkins decided to move to Scotland to look after her four aunts. Slowly all her relatives died, and the second world war started. Even though she didn't have any reason to stay longer, she couldn't go back then because at those times you could only cross the Atlantic if you really had to.
She continued to take pictures, but never like earlier in her life. Watkins never went back to New York, she stayed in Glasgow. Before she died in 1967 she gave her neighbour Mulholland, who was a journalist, a box of most of her work on a strict promise not to open it before she died. When Mulholland went in to Watkins house to look for more pictures, he found her suitcases still packed with passport ready to go back to New York.

When he opened the box he found a jumbled archive of thousands of contact sheets, negatives and photographs, documenting an incredibly accomplished career spanning the early part of the 20th century. Even though they were really good friends, Watkins had never told this part of her life to him.


Margaret Watkins took some very powerful still life images using ordinary household scenes. These include Domestic Symphony, which features three eggs, perched on the edge of a smooth, sculptural surface and The Kitchen Sink, a composition consisting of a ceramic sink containing a grubby milk bottle and other household paraphernalia.
Both of these images were featured in Vanity Fair magazine at the time.
Her subject matter for this photograph, a kitchen sink was shockingly revolutionary for a work of art. Watkins was the one of the first to turn aspects of female household responsibility, into a still life. The way she composes the objects, creates abstract patterns, shadows and reflects light.
The Kitchen Sink image was quiet popular and some say the most famous domestic photograph. It looks very simple but still it is not an image that just anyone could have composed to give such a strong impression.

Why didn't she go back? Did she feel like her work wouldn't be good enough after all those years? Maybe she had her bag packed to prove that she could go back if she wanted to, but she chose not to. She hid her early life from Mullholand and chose the relative simplicity of Scotland over the glitzy life of New York. Was she rejecting the sophisticated, prefering the beauty of ordinary life? She elevated the mundane, giving beauty to everyday objects. Her work is in one way very realistic, but also creates a world full of shape and form.


http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features/In-pictures-The-hidden-world.5866312.jp

http://hiddenlanegallery.com/exhibitions/margaret-watkins-exhibition-1884-1969/

http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/search/artwork_e.jsp?mkey=16402

Photography as identification

-book stock

In the book “Applied Police and Fire Photography by Raymond P. Siljander, Siljander talks about the Identification Photography, about where the roots of mug shots and identification photography come from and what position they had in the 80s when the book was first published.

In history , law enforcement authorities around the world have searched for a reliable means of identifying criminals. It took until the early 19th century to bring criminal identification to a reliable and scientific level.
Not long after the inception of photography, the police started to use it to take identification photographs of people after they were charged. Commonly, such images are called “mug shots”
Photographs serve a useful purpose in the area of criminal identification, even though they are some well known limitation. Photography was, and still is, simply one of several identification methods.
Even though police took “mug shots” for years, photography was preceded by various other forms of identification methods, with different approaches, depending on time, place, culture and the effectiveness of the method.
It is very interesting to see that some of the oldest methods are still being used today in some form. For example, more then 2000 years ago, the ancient Chinese used finger prints as a approximate form of identification, and finger prints are still used today. Some ancients cultures used methods of scarification while others used tattooing. Siljander says that those methods are also still used today in some places and in some cultures. But the result of scarification and tattooing can be manipulated just as a cattle brand can be altered with a running iron.
Personal descriptions of a person have no doubt been used since the beginning of time. This is still used today even though, like other methods, the accuracy cannot be relied upon.

When photography was effectually developed as a science, police began to use it as a tool for identification purposes. It did not take them long to realise that both a frontal and profile view was the preferred format.
In Siljander's opinion, identification photographs serve a useful purpose and will no doubt continue to be used for a very long time. There will probably never come a time when they are not used, but he says they do have their limitations. It has been said that everone has a double, and it is very true that people can bear a strong resemblance to another person. Another shortcoming is that the appearance of people changes over time, some very significantly. Here is an example of the same person; the second image is taken 22 years after the first one.


The history of identification methods is long and clearly hasn't finished yet. Only time will tell what happens next. “Mug shots” will probably be around for a long time to come.

In my opinion, the book is very good but out of time. Siljander explains the history of mug shots quite simply. The book was published in the 80s and therefore there is nothing about digital photophaphy. Even criminal and identification photography changed technically with the introduction of digital cameras. He talks about the photography as if it were the photography of today, whereas it would be a better description of the photography in the 80s. It is slightly confusing, because there are a few things that have changed over the time.

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

Recorders: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Recorders: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

The installation art exhibition was quite untraditional, a new form of cultural art. It shows what a big place technology takes in our civilization. Every piece of art had its own space, so nothing was covered by another piece. Rafael Lozano -Hemmer took normal objects and put them out of their normal environment, so the context changed and something new was created. For example the pulse room. In the pulse room are 100 light bulbs and cylindrical sensor handles. You have to keep holding the sensor for 15 seconds to read your pulse then your heart pulse will be transferred in to the light bulbs and the whole room will be lighted by your heartbeat.

I felt really engaged to this piece of art because it connects technology and my own body. To see how such a strong natural bodily function like a heartbeat is translated in to a simple electrical process. A whole room full of flashing lights recreating my heartbeat. Your heartbeat is something really personal hidden inside you which is usually only shared in intimate moments but in this piece you display it to who ever is in the room. It becomes public.

Another of Rafael Lozano-Hemmers pieces is called microphones. In a circle are standing 10 microphones when you speak in to a microphone your voice gets recorded and different voice answers, this other voice belongs to a previous participant. I could not really connect with this piece. The voice comes out of the microphones what is like listening to a voice without a body, which makes the microphone the body.

You can clearly see how influenced Rafael Lozano – Hemmer is by science. In one way he shows how close we are to technology and that we can‘t survive without it. The fact that he uses technology as art and we don't question if it is art or science shows how flowing the borders are between those two. In all of this work you are involved in the installation: without you there is nothing. You complete it by taking part in it.