Thursday Posting: Removing Context

Elimination

“By removing any indication of function or use, the structures are reduced to relationships between color, shape and form.”

-Yossi Milo Gallery

Reid, Graham.  “Adrift in a Surreal World.”  New Zealand Herald.  23 Feb. 2005.

Graham Reid was the senior music writer for the New Zealand Herald for 20 years.  He now hosts his own music and travel website.  In his article he discusses the removal of context by photographer Loretta Lux.  Lux is well known for her portraits that she takes of children, which she superimposes onto made-up, fantastical looking backgrounds, letting the viewer contextualize the photographs as they see fit.  Reid explains Lux’s process, stating: “Lux's subjects, usually the children of friends, are dressed and sometimes given odd but symbolic props - a fish, a loaf of bread - then photographed under even, shadowless light. The results are faces and skin which have pale complexions and the visual resonance of porcelain. Then the work begins. Using Adobe PhotoShop software technology, Lux sometimes slightly manipulates the scale of the heads, hands or torso, and places the child's image into a plain backdrop which she may have painted herself.”  Reid’s article discusses the impact that the removal of information has on Lux’s series of photos.  By completing removing the children from their original background, she is eliminating the elements of scale as well as context.

I was first drawn to the work of Loretta Lux because I felt that her process of creating imagery was on the same lines as mine.  Although her work deals with completely different issues than mine, we are both making photographs by removing context and taking the image out of its original setting and into a new one.  This recontextualization is an important concept in my work, and it is interesting to see how different artists are using it.