Photo Journals!

Recently Arianna Huffinton wrote a piece for the Huffington Post's arts section that largely served to criticize museums' use of the internet as a tool for disseminating art. [Click this link to read her op-ed.] She suggested that when people look at works of art online, versus having the traditional art viewing experience at a museum, they are robbed of the opportunity to understand the art at a level deeper than its aesthetic worth.

While I understand where Huffington is coming from, I think she fails to recognize that while the internet, and social media technologies specifically, can strip art of its depth, (a point well proven by her example of the possibility of pressing a button that says “like” or “dislike” about a piece of art without an explanation or discussion,) the internet's dissemination of images of art does provide people who wouldn’t ordinarily go to museums with the opportunity to see art (and hopefully think about it on their own, even if they don't discuss it publicly). And who knows, perhaps such experiences do in fact draw people into museums, though if nothing else, I would claim that viewing art online is better than not at all.

On a side note, Huffington's point is apt for many industries, (not just art,) media being the most detrimentally affected victim. What I mean is that on the one hand technology is great for the media industry in that it has enabled unprecedented numbers of people to know what's happening in the world - for example many people who might not read the newspaper, still see news headlines on their AOL newsfeed. The down side of this is that there isn’t always “important” news to be disseminated, so the constant news-casting that is a product of the plethora of available technologies, has caused the most mind numbing things to be broadcasted in "dull" moments, for example how much money Bernie Madoff’s underpants sold for at auction.

So, perhaps a way to reconcile both of these matters is to invest in more photo journal type columns. (Yes, yes, you are right there's always an agenda at hand.) For example, from time to time there is a photo journal in the New York Times. Such pieces always catch my eye, perhaps because they are out of the ordinary, but more likely because I, like many people am drawn to visual stimulants. Seeing a big picture in the Times, or many pictures as is the case with a photo journal, sparks my curiosity about the topic at hand. Thus, photo journals are a way to spread art (in a context that necessitates, or at the very least is conducive to, explanation), while also disseminating meaningful news, (at least I hope since it certainly would not be interesting to see photos of each of Bernie Madoff's pairs of panties).

On that note, below is my very own photo journal that documents the view from the balcony of the villa my family stayed in in St. Maarten in late December. Though lacking in any artistic edge or important current world news, it does captures the importance of leisure time, so I hope you will enjoy! (Although, come to think of it, I could go ahead and make a pitch for some environmental cause, since you gotta admit this is downright gorgeous and certainly worth preserving for future generations to witness if nothing else!)

Performance

Jimmy DeSana, Marker Cones, 1982. Silver dye bleach print. Whitney Museum of American Art.

Yesterday Mitch and I visited the Whitney Museum of American Art, where there's currently an exhibition on performative actions captured through photo or drawing. We particularly liked Jimmy DeSana's Marker Cones (1982), which you can see above, because it reminded us of an experience of our very own, which you can see below.

I initially loved the idea of capturing the essence of a performance in a snap shot, but after seeing DeSana's work and recalling all of the laughter brought about by getting stuck in a traffic cone with Mitch one silly college night, I was reminded that a still can never capture the full range of emotions that come with an experience. I'm not sure if that revelation was disenchanting in the sense that it made the exhibition less meaningful to me, or if it just meant that the works in the exhibition were a type of art other than performance, but it certainly made me nostalgic for my good old UofM days for the first time since graduating nearly a year ago...

Perfect Imperfections

I found this photograph on deviantART.com, it is by an artist named Siols. To see more of her work, check out her website. In case you can't read it, the quote on the model's legs says "I am far from perfect but I will be perfect for that imperfect someone who is perfect for me."

Beauty

I can't pinpoint what it is about this photograph that is so captivating to me, but I've been sitting with it here on my desktop for over a week now, so I thought that with or without anything to say about it, it's worth sharing.

I found it while scanning the MoMA website. It's by American artist Lee Friedlander, who's known for photographing musicians, working poor, and sexual/erotic but none-glorified nudes.

This woman has a beautiful body. Not a perfect body, but a real body. A body that appears to have been taken care of lovingly - she hasn't under eaten, or over indulged, she hasn't been ravaged by painful beauty trends, but she also hasn't disregarded any aesthetic sensibility.

This photo is like the artsy version of the "Dove Campaign for Real Beauty." For those of you who don't know / remember, in 2004 Dove launched a campaign shot by Rankin, who I'll dub 'photographer of regular people,' intended to broaden the stereotypes of beauty by featuring regular women, (as apposed to professional models,) of various shapes, sizes, colors, and ages. The women in the advertisements were not thin, but they were also not unhealthily overweight. They were just regular women, doing what they could to feel good about themselves in a culture that is overly focused on body image. Simultaneously, Dove founded the "Self-Esteem Fund," which has positively effected millions of women and girls, through the programming and funding of self-esteem building workshops, which you can learn more about on their website.

Unrelated in terms of subject matter, but related by artist and medium, the photograph below is a more recently shot Friedlander work that has captured my mind.

I've always loved trees because in Jewish culture, and for that matter in many cultures, they symbolize life, hence the Tree of Life. Trees have this amazing capacity to be reborn each year, to start fresh each spring, proving their commitment to life; they become stronger and more beautiful despite having just endured another painful winter, another painful moment. They sprout branches and buds filled with fresh flowers and foliage, as if giving birth to new life which then floods the earth with a colorful petal and leaf shower, just as people conceive of ideas and send them into the world, creating and inspiring.

Incase the mere elegance of Friedlander's tree in not enough, he also captures the shadows it creates rather magnificently through his wide-angle lens, thus producing the illusion that the ground is not just grass covered soil, but rather the earth – round, full, and boundless.

While I was in Venice, I read Toni Morrison's Beloved, a painful story of a broken family doing the best they could despite the relentless hardships of slavery and the supposed freedom that should, but doesn't, come with being an emancipated slave. I highly recommend the book, if not simply for the heartbreaking, provocative story, also because Morrison is one of the most eloquent writers I have ever read – there’s something about her use of metaphors, creative and poetic metaphors… I brought that up because at one point in the novel she describes the shadows of the family holding hands. This idea, or metaphor, continues to captivate me because it expresses the notion that even when things aren’t perfect in reality, or they aren’t perfect right now, beauty, happiness can still be found – a piece of wisdom everyone can appreciate.

Morrison’s insight on shadows led me to do some research on the mysterious silhouettes. I found that in Jungian psychology, the shadow is a part of the mind filled with weaknesses and shortcomings, the types that we repress. Ugh, have shadows become my latest fascination as unconscious suggestion that I need to be doing a better job self-reflecting, self-critiquing? Do I need to become more self-aware? I don’t know if I can handle that!

So, Jungian shadow theories aside for now, here are a few of my own thoughts on the subject of shadows: perhaps they speak to a longing for insights about the past and the future as they fall behind us and then run ahead again; perhaps they remind us to seek meaning in that which is not perfectly clear, to accept that an outline is a good start; perhaps they serve as a metaphor for the connections between light and dark moments; or perhaps they are nothing more than a beautiful subject for a photograph.

1. Lee Friedlander, Nude, 1980. Gelatin silver print. MoMA, New York.
2. Lee Friedlander, Tarrytown, New York, 1992. Gelatin silver print. MoMA, New York.