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. 

Monday Post: Anne Hardy

Anne Hardy is British artist born 1970.  After graduating from Cheltenham School of Art with a BA in painting, she then went on to obtain an MA in photography from the Royal College of Art in 2000.  Hardy is currently living and working in London.  She is best known for her large-scale photographs of bizarre, seemingly existing spaces.  However, Hardy actually constructs each of her sets for her photographs, usually from junk found in markets.  According to Wikipedia, “Hardy puts these everyday objects together and transforms them into unusual, almost dreamlike environments which can be unnerving with their themes of abandonment and desolation.  The fabricated scenes of Hardy’s work reflect and comment on modern life in the western world, how people try to manipulate the space around them and how objects bought can too frequently be taken for granted or thrown away.”  The Saatchi Gallery, which represents Hardy states about her work:  “Strange, fantastical and a wee bit unsettling, Anne Hardy’s photographs invite glimpses into imaginary places, each suggesting fictions of a very surreal nature. . .  . her subjects suggest the not-quite-right ambience of madness or dreamscape; a sensation heightened through the unnatural intensity of artificial light.”  

Images:

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/anne_hardy.htm

Gallery representing artist:

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/anne_hardy.htm

Interview:

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/galleries/worlds_of_interiors/

Seung Woo Back

Back was born in 1973 in Taejon, Korea.  In 2000 he attended Chungang University in Seoul for his BFA and MFA in photography.  Back is well known for his “Real World” series, where he creates a weird fantasy world by composing multiple objects and buildings.  Tokyo Art Beat says the world that Back creates “is strange, cynical and distorted.”  They explain that “"Real World" is a series of photographs taken in a South Korean theme park that features miniatures of world famous tourist places. Fake architecture and the realistic Seoul landscape coexists there, and the rather calm images evoke an odd sensation and suggest the envy that South Koreans turn towards outside countries.”  Besides his Real World series, Back has also made another series titled “Blow Up,” which features enlarged photographs extracted from on original film made in North Korea.  Tokyo Art Beat states, “Like sneak shots, the images play skillfully on their viewers' voyeuristic interests. The reality of the country, different from the scene we normally see through sometimes exaggerated media reports, gradually slips out from the blown up images.”  Back has had these series exhibited all over the world, from Paris to Seoul. 

Images:

http://english.ganaart.com/artists/back-seung-woo/images/

Gallery/Website:

http://english.ganaart.com/artists/back-seung-woo/images/

Disney World’s Utilidors

Segregated

“Walt Disney wanted to keep the boring business of running a theme park separate from the magical show guests come to see. The tunnel is why you never see a pirate sauntering through Tomorrowland.”

-Grayson Kamm, First Coast News

 Grayson, Kamm.  “Hidden Places: Beneath Walt Disney World.”  First Coast News.  2007.  Accessed 18 Nov. 2008 < http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/florida/news-article.aspx?ref=rss&storyid=81978>. 

Kamm’s article is a rather ‘enchanted’ look at the business side of running Disney World.  Since Walt Disney created a sort of constructed utopia, there are many aspects of this theme park that must be constantly controlled and monitored.  Below the park is a mile-and-a-half long tunnel containing offices and hallways.  Kamm states “Walt called the tunnel the "Utilidor" -- short for "utility corridor". His Imagineers packed it with pipes and tubes that, for example, suck out trash from drop-off points around the park to a collecting station far away from the fun.”  Kamm also states that at Disney World, no one ever uses the word ‘employee.’  “Everyone -- from a character to a custodian -- is a "cast member" playing a role.”  And since there are no ‘employees’ there are also no uniforms.  Everyone wears costumes specially designed at Disney, which are then “manufactured all over the world.”  And it’s not just the cast members that need costumes.  Kamm mentions that “Every day, a special team inspects the clothes on the parks' audio-animatronic figures -- ones like the founding fathers at the Hall of Presidents in the Magic Kingdom. A crew works overnight repairing any holes or rips they find.”

Reading this article about the business side of Disney World was fascinating, because it really demonstrated how vulnerable an utopian environment is, and all the variables that must be constantly monitored, as to not ruin it.  I noticed that this article mentioned the special or gratuitous titles that are given to the workers at Disney World, which is similar to a blog I did earlier about the Houyhnhnms, where vocabulary also played an important part in the balance of their utopia.  While Walt Disney’s theme park functions on an utopian level, it also shows that factors such as overflowing trash and torn costumes would ruin his created environment in an instant. 

http://www.vacationdaysmagazine.com/blog/uploaded_images/wdw_corridor-703259.jpg

Hannah Starkey

Hannah Starkey was born in 1971 in Belfast, England.  Starkey’s photographs use actors placed in deliberate settings that “reconstruct scenes from everyday life with the concentrated stylisation of film” (the Saatchi Gallery).  Also contained in Starkey’s photographs are “women engaged in regular routines such as loitering in the street, sitting in cafes, or passively shopping.”  Her work manages to capture these mundane yet daily activities with an air of ‘relational detatchment.’ According to Saatchi Gallery, “Her still images operate as discomforting ‘pauses’; where the banality of existence is freeze-framed in crisis point, creating reflective instances of inner contemplation, isolation, and conflicting emotion.  Starkey enhances the feelings her images create through a careful and controlled of composition and setting.  Saatchi Gallery states that “Starkey often uses composition to heighten this sense of personal and emotional disconnection, with arrangements of lone figures seperated from a group, or segregated with metaphoric physical divides such as tables or mirrors.”  Starkey currently lives and works in London. 

Images:

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/upload/2007/06/hannahstarkeyil.jpeg

http://www.portfoliocatalogue.com/40/01.jpg

http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/artist.php?art_name=Hannah%20Starkey

http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/artist.php?art_name=Hannah%20Starkey

Gallery representing artist/artist website:

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/hannah_starkey.htm

Interview:

http://www.wallpaper.com/news/Interview:_Hannah_Starkey/1295

Vacancy and Landscape

Unihabited

In everyday language, land or a building described as "empty" or "vacant" means there are no structures or people visible, or the building is currently unoccupied, or that neither have apparent productive use.

-Carla I. Corbin, Landscape Journal

Corbin, C.  “Vacancy and the Landscape: Cultural Context and Design Response.”  Landscape Journal 22.1 (2003): 12-24. 12 Nov. 2008. 

http://lj.uwpress.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/1/12

Carla Corbin is an associate professor of landscape architecture at Ball State University, Indiana.  In her article she discusses what constitutes a ‘vacant’ landscape, and the implications it has culturally.  Corbin states: The declaration of vacancy or emptiness erases important dimensions of a site: natural processes and characteristics above or below the scale of conventional perception, cultural history or meanings that may not have physical presence, and systems that are not recognized as having immediate functional purpose.  Corbin examines vacancy and landscape in terms of culture, discussing how certain areas are perceived, valued, and described.  She also explains different theories behind vacant areas, and how designers and architects should approach these sites, pointing out specific problems that come with vacant landscapes. 

As I continue working with very controlled urban landscapes, the idea of vacancy and abandonment are very strong elements in my work.  Reading this article by Corbin was enlightening because I was able to read an expert’s view on theories regarding vacancy and landscape.  I thought it was rather interesting when Corbin described vacancy as “an open landscape that lacks scenic appeal or distinguishing features,” because even though my images are ‘vacant’ in a sense, I would like to think that they contain enough information and color to give them appeal.  Reading this article helped me to better define my concept.

Image:

http://www.corkingallery.com/files/Chad%20Gerth%20-%20Division%20&%20Latrobe%20lo.jpg

Laura Letinsky

Laura Letinsky was born  in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1962.  She studied photography at University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, where she recieved her BFA in 1986.  She then went on to recieve her MFA from Yale in 1991.  Letinsky has had work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottowa, to name a few.  Letinsky’s first series of published photographs were titled Venus Inferred, and consist of intimately engaged heterosexual couples, in Letinsky’s attempt to show the viewer what love looks like.  According to the Museum of Contemporary Photography, “Letinsky’s pictures of love are composed of Necco Wafer colors – peach, blue, green and yellow – and contained within an elegant formality. These visual attributes are fully unleashed in her most recent series, Morning and Melancholia, still-life compositions discovered in the remains of daily meals that reference Dutch and Flemish painting.”  The Museum of Contemporary Photography then goes on to say that both series of photographs “offer an extended essay on fragility, the domestic arena and, according to Letinsky, the photograph’s transformative qualities.”  Letinksy is currently teaching at the University of Chicago, where she serves as a Professor and Chair. 

Images:

http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/uploads/Letinsky1996_223.jpg

http://mouthtomouthmag.com/mermaid.jpg

http://www.flowerseast.com/Originals/MISC/39364.jpg

http://nymag.com/images/2/daily/entertainment/08/04/11_ac1_lg.jpg

Interview:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://mouthtomouthmag.com/mermaid.jpg&imgrefurl=http://mouthtomouthmag.com/letinsky.html&h=470&w=600&sz=297&hl=en&start=12&um=1&usg=__HIHUm5ZYuRIBj2BFqkrfEhaJSQU=&tbnid=dbvl6Dv08cdbYM:&tbnh=106&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlaura%2Bletinsky%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den-us%26sa%3DN

Gallery Representing Artist/Artist Website:

http://www.josephbellows.com/artists/laura-letinsky/bio/