movie response

Brian Bress:

Bress is interested in collaging techniques and the photo as a way to express personal themes where it doesn’t necessarily have to mean anything. He is not giving context for his work and in this way it doesn’t carry any baggage, maybe it means nothing. His narrative is absurd and strange and often times confusing. It is also protagonist driven, in which he plays the main character. It is a tool of expression for his own being, a way to dissect his identity and the multiplicities of identity. It reaches into a socio-political and cultural domain but it is very much an open-ended narrative. It through his disguises that he is able to heighten other aspects of the self-conscious. His many costumes and personalities as well as changing the setting and stories give us a complex and complicated narrative where we must take a closer look and dissect all the conflating elements. The video provides us with a glimpse of both separate and meshed narratives and we can begin to see their inter-relatedness. Bress drifts by in a small spaceship saying, “maybe we’ll crash into each other”, an overarching theme in this video, where settings and people collide and re-transform in relation to one another.                                        

I find this video repetitive, perplexing and a bit uncomfortable. It is visually appealing in some parts, especially the kaleidoscope set with the many patterns and cut and paste feel, and also the collapse into different worlds; but mostly it is strange and confusing.  I think Bress is challenging the notion of narrative and an entity’s independence; that independence may be more dependent than we may think. The obvious falsity of his character’s requires a deeper understanding for how people identify and a dependence on groups to define them.  It is very much about rethinking identity. 

Walead Beshty:

Beshty’s work emphasizes collaging and its prevalence in a contemporary temporal. His work represents and comments on materiality and materialism. He works in the non-familiar and abstract where spontaneity and immediacy dominate his medium. Beshty’s refusal of the camera challenges the notions of photography and pushes the boundaries of how photography can be. He is interested in the physical manifestation of the operation which revolves around the idea that the image is not fixed and represents the fluidity of his work. In this video, Beshty uses the waste products in the productive life of the studio of one calendar year. These pieces become a much broader story of the studio as a machine and the sum total of the depiction. In his work he doesn’t conceal anything but instead, accepts and applies the bi-products or waste in his photograms. By creating in this way, the work tells the history of its coming into being rather than the finality/end-result of traditional photography.  Beshty wants to objectively tell the story of the productive forces that move through the studio. As a result, the picture appears translucent and becomes more about the relationship of every thing that is used rather than one whole picture. What drives this kind of work is Beshty’s interest in the social relations of individuals and tracing all of these forces coming together. These relationships become the center and dialogue through which his work is transformed. He is motivated by an uncontaminated and unhidden desire for his art. His narrative is one that does not impose on the pre-existing but rather flourishes on harmonious aspects, openness, possibility, non-editing, etc. He creates an open question and an ‘unfulfilled promise’ that challenges the viewer to open themselves up and analyze the underlying relationships of their life. He asks us to question ‘space’ and what we put into that space. Besthy’s work is political in that it captures elements of modernity and the idea that side effects and waste, while they can be hidden, are not fixed nor do they disappear. By bringing all of this waste out in the open, Beshty, is acknowledging its existence and our experience with it. The work in this video is done on a very large scale and the photograms give it the authenticity and rawness that he is trying to convey. 

RIP: A Remix Manifesto:

Copyright laws can be extremely limiting and crush creative energy. This documentary, featuring Girl Talk, proves just that. Girl Talk creates mashups by using and manipulating other songs and voices. While the artist himself is not responsible for the sounds, he does create a unique and original work from them. Where copyright comes into play is in the legal territory. What Girl Talk is doing is technically illegal and can be grounds for a lawsuit. What this remix manifesto is challenging is the ‘war on ideas’, or this policing of something intangible and creative. Ideas then become ‘intellectual property’ and control, and ultimately, capitalism drive these laws. This creates a moral dilemma of the public domain and the documentary critiques the motives of big businesses for implementing copyright laws. More often than not, copyright is manipulated for profit. Unfortunately, we live in a world that is driven by global capitalism and neoliberalism (transferring control from the public sector to the private sector) that is motivated by financial gains and has little regard for majority of people and their ideas. Appropriation becomes a crime and art is restricted. This documentary challenges ideas of assumed authority and ownership, who owns what (who can and should own what), and where does art become ‘off-limits’. This work is a larger critique of the ‘powerful corporation’ and power dynamic over our lives. A Remix Manifesto urges us to create a new literacy for the future; where people can participate in the creation and re-creation of a culture. Currently we are engrossed in corrupt corporations and big media (like Disney) that control and own ideas and essentially the entire culture. But by building a society that is truly invested in freedom, we have to eradicate control of the past. We have to free ourselves from this culture lockup so that our future does not continue to be less and less free. It is inhibiting and detrimental when copyright laws protect corporations over the advancements and creativity of the people. We can see this in all sectors of art, including photography and the work of appropriative artists. When art and photos are banned from public use we are not able to express ourselves fully, which in turn, leads to a deteriorating culture. Society flourishes from the re-creation, re-imagination, and appropriation from past ideas. We build off of previous ideas and a society begins to function inadequately if there is a limit on our creative freedom. 


Video on Conceptual Photography:

It is debated that all contemporary photography is conceptual; raising the question ‘what isn’t conceptual photography’? Since all photographs are essentially reproductions of past photographs it becomes critical for photographers to engage in concepts instead of pure aesthetics/documentation so as to challenge, critique and examine notions of photography on political, social, economic, psychological, etc. levels. This not only adds to levels of complexity in the photograph but gives photograph new meaning. Conceptual photography implores us to question the boundaries of photography/are there boundaries, and who sets them? This photography also complicates the image by extending mystery, intrigue, interest, difficulty, obscurity, and opens up other sectors of the mind and imagination. This video delves into conceptualism as it relates to photojournalism. Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin are two photographers who embrace the conceptual role photographs can take. Their series The Day Nobody Died (2008) challenges the way photojournalism has consistently been presented to us. In this way they are trying to de-normalize what we view as traditional photojournalism. Their photographs, which are comprised of exposed photographic paper in war zones in Afghanistan, interrogate embedding and rules around taking photos in war zones. The question they want us to think about is, how much do we need to see in a photograph in order for it to be ‘evidence’? Because their work is given to us in such an abstract form and there is no evidence of death and conflict (hence the title), we are being challenged to discuss what we ‘expect to see’ in this genre of photo, how much evidence is ‘enough’, and where do art and photojournalism collide. Their refusal to actually take a photo complicates our ideas of photography and its use/benefit versus what can this untraditional photo tell us about our society and ourselves. The reception of their work was mixed but many thought it patronizing, arrogant and narcissistic, disrespectful etc. This reaction shows us what is at the heart of their work which is to engage in a debate of the controlled and sheltered stipulations and manifestations photography can be rooted in; which Broomberg and Chanarin are dissecting and trying to uproot through their versions of conceptual photography.

Jason Salavon:

Salavon pushes the boundaries of photographing by creating photographic images without actually using a camera, something we deem so central to photography. He brings up the question, what is photography and asks us to reanalyze our previous and sometimes narrow definitions of what can be photographed and what constitutes a photograph. Salavon manipulates data of different styles in order to create a new narrative. In other words, he transforms a story that we know and our familiar with and creates another story out of this data, that contains the essence of all of these familiar images. Salavon is exploring the relationships of process, content, and finality and how data can communicate this kind of aesthetic journey. By mathematically compressing these images he is able to express what happens over times through different layers, presented as structural content. The final images become the “ghostly remainders”. Salavon creates this kind of evolution of the image, and challenges us to think about what makes an ideal, or traditional photo. For example, in his centerfold images we are able to visualize the kinds of changes of composition emphasizing common centerfold traits over time. This adds both socio-political and anthropological weight to his work. Salavon’s abstract and curious images highlight culturally defining moments in our history, such as the lightening of skin, frontal nudity, thinness, etc. which reflect our collective definitions and thoughts surrounding politics of beauty, gender, sex, race, and what creates visual pleasure. Salavon wants us to analyze our collective imagery of specific events in his “100 special moments” where he takes 100 existing photographs and digitally morphs them together. These are conventional photographs of different events including: weddings, children with Santa, graduation, and little league. Because his final image reveals something so familiar, we are challenged to think about how we negotiate this space and what is natural and normal; how do we pose, dress, consider ourselves in these photographs; what is the ‘traditional code’? Salavon is trying to understand the visual code and language that is reflected on the surface of these spaces. He moves into a democratic sphere of how raw data can create an ideal photograph. In his more abstract work, he manipulates data, that while being truthful to the data, also finds an aesthetic quality. He uses banal and dry data, such as shoe manufacturing data in the US, and transforms it into a more psychedelic, beautiful, and appealing view.  He observes the trending data as shoe manufacturing is outsourced to other parts of the world. This creates a political issue of outsourcing and challenges our notions of the way in which this sort of data narrative is able to speak through a photographic medium.


Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscapes

Burtynksy in the beginning of this documentary is highlighting the monotony through: machine-like people, and too much of the same color. He is interested in the nature of the machine and in natural landscapes, what they represent and how we as a people are connected to nature. His claim, “if we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves” is evident throughout the documentary. However, as we discover, there is a certain beauty to the destruction, of this man made disruption. We view the landscape as it is changed by us in order to secure progress. These are the kinds of landscapes that Burtynsky examines in search for a definition of ourselves, and our relationship to the planet. His work critiques industrial landscapes that have inserted themselves into our lives, disturbed natural environments, and displaced people. We as the viewer are consumed by this seemingly endless operation, a complete transformation by man. We are surely aroused and provoked by the “accumulated taking” and extraction from the landscape. China’s mass recycling and harmful outcomes shock us as does the callous, almost inhuman, assembly line. The sort of contamination that exists as a result of humans becomes a toxic reminder of the fragility of nature and the monstrosities of globalization. Burtynsky’s work is hauntingly mesmerizing and beautiful representing the contradictory function of his photographs. He is asking us to question the extent of human consumption and the amount of manipulation/ destruction involved that we are not even aware of.  We can begin the journey of examination, becoming surrounded by machines existing within nature, these coalescing and interrupting landscapes. The landscape becomes an impressive pattern with complex intricacies, a combination of nature and man-made engineering. Our relationship to the earth grows into an ultimately frightening epiphany. Burtynsky is aware of his reliance on this kind of manufacturing industry and conclusively inquires and questions human development/ advancement at the expense of nature.  There is a fascination and attraction to the interfering elements and the dangers of this kind of intrusion that provides a passage to conversations surrounding the intentional conflict and intervention and need for power over the landscape. Replacement and displacement become key factors to investigate. Burtynsky’s photography overviews the change and abuse humans inflict on nature, and we are challenged to think about these micro and macro effects, as his work eventually takes on a politicized environment.  He is making us uncomfortable by forcing us to think about what we might have to give up to reverse damaging the environment, by turning it into a landscape that is unlivable. 

Andreas Gursky:

Gursky concentrates on landscape photography whether that be in a natural setting (early works) but mainly in an industrial, commercial, or some kind of technological landscape. He keeps his distance to capture as much as he can of the landscape, creating huge bodies of work, with extreme detail and content preservation. Gursky’s large format allows him to hypnotize an audience through his deadpan style technique and document style photography. The breadth and measure of his work embodies the kind of mass production that goes into making consumer goods. Gursky recognizes and critiques the predominance of capitalist consumerism and development in our society by photography the mass amount of goods in our stores and the huge, expansive, and multiplying structures that we build. We are compelled to question our consumption, the kind of landscapes we live in, and the effect of our functional reality. Globalization and capitalism our imperative and pressing motifs in Gursky’s work and we feel the urge to finally acknowledge or at least begin to understand the critical outcomes of a high-tech and global market. The anonymity and deadpan style of his work adds to its chilling effect and the viewer is made to feel small; resulting in a kind of retrospect of explicit and particular criticism toward these huge and unfeeling capitalist global systems. His digital manipulation only adds to the focus and aim of his observation and more acute examination of repetitive patterns in global perspectives.

1.Is the deadan’s detached, distant, analytical, banal approach somehow distill our cultural mood? 

This kind of style is meant to distill our mood so that we can begin a critique and an open, honest, extracting, observation. This style is used for its ability to focus on the most important ‘substance’ of the photograph and the narrative behind it, often to reach for a deeper analysis and critical approach in our understanding of the world.

2. Does it represent the way people feel disconnected from one another, even if technology makes them more interconnected than ever?                                                                                  

Perhaps it is not meant to focus on the disconnection/connection dichotomy, but more on the process of our connection, the act and systems behind what we are connecting to and as a result disconnecting from other sorts of intimacies and interactions. The critique of technology opens up multiple platforms to discuss the benefits and negative effects of the way we consume and view the world and how we are connected to it. Through this examination there begin to be dialogues of intimacy and contact, agency, eco-environment effects, unsettling realizations of change related to especially climate, consequences of: globalization, consumerism, technology, etc.

3. Is deadpan photography a refuge or reflection of emotion when we are overwhelmed with terrorism, war, ecological and natural disaster?                                                               

Deadpan is a reflection of emotion. This style is not meant to protect or preserve security. On the contrary, we are asked to reflect, think, criticize, and challenge existing accounts and records and their relation to the effects of ‘terrorism, war, ecological and natural disaster’. Often photography is born out of and is a reaction to these kinds of events and, regardless of photographic style, we are being urged to ponder and speculate the meaning behind the influence. Deadpan can be a subtler way of drawing out our reflection.

4. Does its uniformity of the style reflect our mass-produced, chain-store world?              

Uniformity is meant to confront us. We are given this sort of bigger picture and must ask how this captures and affects our own lives. The uniformity is challenging our conformity to the chain store world and regurgitated consumerism. Its focus delves into wholly investigating this kind of world and provoking us to think about and comprehend it. Where do we stand, in what ways are we just another cog in this vast, machine-like global market?

5. Has our ability to document just about anything made us do just that…?                                

With advancing technology there is a rise of documentation of everything in our lives, from the food we eat and the places we visit to raising more complex questions about our society. This kind of mass documentation through sites like Instagram, facebook, tumblr, etc. is equivalent to this mass-produced, chain-store-esque world in terms of the span, (dis)/connection, and overall positive and negative affects surrounding mass production and consumption. 

Jeff Wall:

Wall’s work embodies political, self-conscious issues that deal with racism, classism, social structures, consumerism, etc. He argues and challenges existing narratives by recreating them. This recreation of reality is an observation that delves into the truth as a psychological and emotional meaning and breakthrough. Wall’s depiction of aggression, violence, rebellion, consumer capitalism and emotional turmoil are portrayed as huge images that captivate and hypnotize the viewer and make us question the aesthetic versus the meaning. Wall’s work is sometimes digitally manipulated and pieced together to create these huge installations that engender controversy and represent the ugly and grotesque in relation to “material limitations”, something that Wall believes is crucial to his work and necessary to art. Wall’s background in painting highlights his photographs large, bright and colorful manifestations. He struggles with truth claims in the midst of complete artifice and staging. But Wall contends that this reencounter is a truthful, documentary-like presentation. We feel the turmoil and struggles and politically charged messages in his work and are also hypnotized by the gravity and proportions of his work. It makes us feel small and sort of oblivious to the bigger picture. His illuminated photos use the commercial for the purpose of making us questions and challenge the status quo and our own truths. Walls exploitation of this medium creates profound works that remain burned in our memory. His idea that photos are more interesting when they are done as representation than the actual event is as an event, is telling of our culture and the way we interpret and find meaning. His photos are microcosm and include as much as they exclude which suggests that significance and understanding are in those excluded spaces as well as what he is able to capture. Wall does explore this ‘excluded space’ in the way he structures his photograph; we are actually able to see that the room is just a set, that this whole thing is fake but the meaning is there, the heart and allusion are present. His notion that there is space outside of the photograph is a unique niche he reveals. Wall’s imitation of environment and contemplation of space give us a wide range of emotion and depth through these things that are “ugly and stupid…but somehow correct”. He brings a coexistence of: inside and outside, real and fake, human and spectral that embody his point of view as he is controlling the setting. The seam in his work that sometimes interrupts the photograph “creates a dialectic between depth and flatness” and in relation to the overall work adds the necessary ugly truth.  

Georges Rousse:

Rousse captures the “memory of the place and what happened” in this space. He puts his own art into the place to give it an illusory element. These floating creations fill us with wonderment, excitement, doubt, and questions about what is true/false. Rousse’s paintings work and grow with the photograph and allow us to explore how forms fill up the space and disappear and reappear in a somewhat “aggravated” way. The intervention of the artist in the photo cultures the imaginative aspect of our mind. The process is extremely careful and meticulous as Rousse has to imagine the space as flat and go back and forth between the painting and the viewfinder to predict how the photograph will turn out.  We watch him paint, point by point, and we can sense the intimacy, closeness and understanding Rousse has for the walls and the space which turns into a thoughtful affection. He offers himself to the space and his harmonious relationship is truly communicated to the viewer. Rousse presents the circular form to his work which gives his art more freedom and also challenges and frees the viewer from traditional horizontal and vertical discourse. The circle brings out something unique and organic in the space and because we are not accustomed to it, it brings something unfamiliar while at the same time creating a familiar and continuous comfort and tranquility, especially with Rousse’s addition of single colors. The circle creates a window into and opens up the space so we can dissect it. Rousse explains his use of the circle as “a metaphor for the eye and allows us to see” the room and deconstruct the space and depths.  He also gives a richness and complexity to the walls by adding text. His written words complicate the space through what is able to exist there. The text speaks in and through the space. The writing emphasizes and compliments the image. It is as if the walls are shouting these words, like they are exactly the things the space has been wanting to say and Rousse captures this perfectly and poetically. His light snaring and manipulation is breathtaking and creates a substance that not only feels natural for the space but evokes the mood of the sun. Light, which is so central to photography, and the nature of light, gives rise to questions about nature, origin and the world. The entire room works to embrace the sun and we are “dazzled” by it as Rousse has been able to reproduce the sun through the light and his choice of red paint. His use of the entire room is powerful and penetrates the very depths of the room. He is interested in the “inner world” of the viewer and wants to get at the heart of our inner experience and the effect light has on us and the way in which the image is able to persist through us. Rousse chooses these abandoned and isolated places which begin to be a spiritual and enlightening journey, a foreground for thoughts/the idea of “painting, space, solitude and death”.  His enlarged script on the floor no longer provides us something comprehensible, but rather, a certain word or words are illuminated for us and we give them a second meaning, “parallel to the real meaning”, but an equally moving representation.  The meditation of the work fulfills our own journey by producing the spiritual in art. Rousse creates landscapes within landscapes, an “abstract representation of reality”, which change and shift with intertwining networks, that in the end, “appropriate the nothing”.  

Vic Muniz: Waste Land

Muniz creates reality and occupies a space that isn’t his, in this ‘waste land’. He transforms photographs into 3D art and that art back into 2D photography (however, the photograph is not the end mode of the affective mood--he's resisting this temptation to merely photograph a 'thing'). Muniz is interested in portraying the transformative power of art, not just between idea turned into the physical and photographic representation, but through transforming a person’s life. He asks, how can art change people (both the viewer and those involved); (or) can it change people, and in some cases which peoples' lives can (or should) it change? He strives to make the ‘human’ connection which he depends on in the genesis of his work for the personality of his art. This is complicated by the individuals he meets through their own ideas, feelings, and representations and by investigating what makes art "art" and work "work". The way in which Muniz converts his subjects' livelihood, this “waste/garbage”, into art while appropriating other works and labor challenges the nature of ownership and implores us to reexamine the process and product of art. Who owns something, or how much and in what way? Where is ownership lost in the translation of the photograph? The realization that the material of the work does not continue to exist but it can only continue its existence through the representation of the photograph puts a lot of weight on the photograph and what we are able to experience through it. The essence of the work has to move through photograph in order for us to be moved by it, without that it becomes flat. Muniz is able to put life into the garbage by provoking us to reimagine the beauty in something composed of what we would not consider beautiful so that we can feel the magic of "one thing turning into another"; which is only accomplished through the lives of the people who help him re-create the image. The message of “we” has to come through as well as the fragility/limitation/ sensitivity of people, time and space. Incorporating people, their material and performance into the process does not necessarily guarantee that we are able to see the essentiality of the person but because Muniz actually recreates a photograph of these people and then re-photographs this, the spirit and the reality remain. His art delves into themes of classism, vulnerability, labor, possession, etc., but also shows the strength, courage, humor and tenacity of this life force. Muniz’s work is dependent on and given meaning by and through a seemingly unlikely group of people which makes its power even more affective in its persistence to compel us to take a closer look and consider what is valuable/ how is that value created. The combination of the medium and the story behind it become a stunning, arousing and profound piece of sensitive work that lingers in our mind. 

Cindy Sherman's: "Nobody's Here But Me"

Cindy Sherman forces us to acknowledge the uncomfortable by making her art accessible to the viewer in a way where we are challenged. Her photographs stare at us rather than the other way around which may scare the viewer. We no longer have the "gaze"; she monopolizes it. She does this by creating an "unsettling landscape of solitary women". While they may look like victims they force us to think about how they were victimized and the possibilities behind this. She displays the human form as strange subjects: naked, huge, rotting, creepy, dark and dead in twisted, sometimes unnatural ways that leaves the viewer questioning and having to confront their own ideas of the body (How do I feel about my own body when I look at these images? What do I think of my own 'mask'?). She grabs at as us in an almost dangerous way where we have to deal with the images she puts out and try and make sense of them even if we don't want to. As the subject is alienated we feel this feeling creeping on us too, where we become isolated with our thoughts about the images. This retreat into the perverse and different possesses us. There are influences of television, film, pop culture, etc. which Sherman uses to create drab and dreary scenes but through them they turn into "haunting, scary, perfect" images, where the camera kind of becomes a weapon. The potency and charge of her work stirs our own memories when we see the woman "experiencing or about to experience" something. The expressionless look frustrates us but the way in which the body is portrayed gives rage to the narrative (battling stereotypes). We become self-conscious of our own gaze which is returned to us in an unapologetic way by the other. We are made to feel like the violator. Sherman captures the unromantic horror of abuse and violence. We are given the opportunity to think about horrific images in a kind of ambiguous way which we give meaning to through our own thought and experience. Sherman stimulates/investigates ideas about femininity and sexuality as she combines it with ugly, scary, non-sexy, "subtle terror". Her work deals with specimens in the gross, gruesome, and graphic but captivating ways which really challenges the audience to think about whats real and true in other "beautiful", artificial images. Sherman's photography shows us the darker part of imagination/ lie.