Szabo Symposium : Paul Roth and Frank Goodyear

On Thursday, October 30, 2008 Paul Roth and Frank Goodyear gave a lecture on the work of Richard Avedon, specifically his work dealing with power. The lecture began with Colby Caldwell giving a brief introduction to Avedon’s work. Included in that introduction was a quote by Avedon: “The photograph is a record of the transaction between the photographer and the subject. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.” I found this statement to be quite pertinent when thinking about the issue of the “authentic moment” in the landscape which I am trying to show the audience in my current work. According to Avedon’s above thought, the simple fact that the work is a photograph is showing that I am having some sort of interaction, or transaction, with my subject, the landscape. While this is a fundamental idea, it makes me think more clearly about the fact that the interaction is already present in the work; it is the nature of the interaction that I am trying to convey. The second half of the quote also has resonance with my current working process. Over the past few months I have been trying to create photographs that accurately and honestly depict my interaction with the landscape. Avedon’s thought that photographs are accurate, that they capture a moment in time accurately encourages me to further loosen some of the rules that I have set up for myself in creating the photographs.

Frank Goodyear took a very interesting approach to studying Avedon’s career and creative process by interviewing the subjects of his portraits. I found the descriptions of Avedon’s working methods to be quite interesting and very different from my own. When I work in portraiture I have the model come to the location and work with them for about an hour, usually a bit less. I do my best to make the sitter feel comfortable and talk with them throughout. I feel as if I have some power but most of my power as the photographer is put into trying to make the sitter feel comfortable. This is in stark contrast to Avedon. His portrait sessions were characterized by words like brief, intense, short, and awkward. Such intense differences in process interest me.

Another aspect of Goodyear’s talk that interested me was the varying opinions about who controlled what happened in the portrait: Avedon, or the sitter. For example, during his discussion of James Carville who was photographed by Avedon in 2004, he said that Avedon seemed to allow people to photograph themselves and Carville himself said that Avedon “allowed me to be myself.” However, other sitters such as Jerry Brown felt that Avedon knew exactly what he wanted from the portrait going into the shoot. This dichotomy fascinates me as I often oscillate between the two working methods.

Paul Roth’s discussion of Avedon’s work was fascinating. His complete and thorough knowledge of Avedon’s methods, personal life, professional life, working process, and thought process was impressive, interesting, and enlightening. During Roth’s discussion he quoted Avedon as saying he was trying to “take the lying and the romance out of the picture.” I think this attempt can be clearly seen in Avedon’s work, especially during the years that he worked in his “mature” style using an 8 x 10 camera and a white backdrop. This style occludes a lot of visual information that could be used to draw connections or characterize readings of a portrait, leaving only the face, body position, clothing, and hair to relate information about the portrait. In the past I have worked in this way, using a white wall as my back drop and black and white photography to leave out the information brought to a portrait by color and surroundings. Earlier this semester I planned to work on a portraiture project that studied exactly what objects and location brought to a portrait. Revisiting this idea seems even more interesting now. Aspects of color versus black and white, setting, props, and clothing, among other things, could be manipulated in order to test what a portrait conveys through the different components.

A Lack of Ego: Hannah Finlator's Interpretations of 15th Century Women Painters

“Thinking has come to life again; the cultural treasures of the past, believed to be dead, are being made to speak, in the course of which it turns out that they propose things altogether different from the familiar, worn-out trivialities they had been presumed to say.”

This quote by Hannah Arendt almost completely governs my perception of Hannah Finlator’s paintings. Finlator closely and meticulously studies the work of 15th century women painters. She sketches the works, and with varying degrees of interpretation and alteration incorporates these sketches into under paintings and finally into finished works. Finlator uses art historical sources as references in an attempt to answer questions such as: How can I show the past as exerting influence on the future? I find this question interesting in relation to Finlator’s work. I consider what Finlator does, to a large extent, to be appropriation. It may not be direct copying of others’ images but in my mind it is close enough. So, Finlator is asking, in simple terms: how can I show the past’s influence on the future? How can I emphasize the ever-present effect of what has happened before on the now? And in some ways, Finlator’s answer is quite literal, maybe even obvious. Her work duplicates the past, just as “history repeats itself” and we often imitate what has come before whether it be in family structure, architecture, farming, or business. However, Finlator adds a twist to the work that complicates this seemingly straight forward answer. Finlator changes the works, adds additional characters, changes symbols, and adds texts to the paintings. These changes are what, for me, give the work interest and make them more dynamic. One of these changes is the inclusion of self. During the lecture Professor Friebele asked Finlator to discuss her inclusion of herself in the paintings. I, too, had noticed that there was a recurrent character that seemed to be depicting the artist. The figure, most often show in contemplation, was a mysterious presence in the mundane scenes of rural life in the 16th century.

Another aspect of her work that Finlator discussed was the diptych format that she sometimes uses. This topic resonated with me because I am currently investigating and struggling with different actualizations of my work that include singular images, diptychs, and series. Finlator commented that her works can stand alone but create something altogether different when placed in a diptych set up. The idea that works don’t have to be one or the other is a simple one but nonetheless one that I have not yet considered very thoroughly.

An additional conversation Finlator delved into concerned her choice of 15th century women to study. Among other reasons one of Finlator’s deciding factors was that the paintings these women created were not for monetary gain, they were not meant to be bought or sold, they were not commissioned; the women created the work for another reason entirely, simply to create the work. I feel that this idea is often lost in the modern art world. It is okay to make a work of art for the sole reason and purpose of making a work of art.

Here There and the self

On Monday, September 8, 2008 Boyden Gallery hosted the opening of Patrick Kelley’s exhibition of his recent work. The show, titled Here There, consisted mainly of extended panoramic images and words.
Kelley began his lecture by sharing his artistic history which led up to the current work. Mostly, he discussed the history of text and words in his work. I found this quite interesting because over the summer I became almost obsessed with the context, concentration on, visual differences, and subtleties of text and have been trying to figure out a way to work this fascination into my work. Kelley’s use of indexical words, especially in the work with “multiple heres” interested me because indexical words are seemingly unloaded of feeling and emotion and could serve as an adequate vehicle for examining the characteristics of text described above.

I also was interested by Kelley’s ideas about the audience’s completion of narratives that Kelley set up. My work often has a narrative quality because of the inclusion of people (often the same people repeatedly) in my work. Kelley’s use of words to complete his narratives may be an avenue I’d like to explore.
Kelley has created flip books throughout his career. Last year I tried my hand at making flip books and while it was extremely difficult I enjoyed the process and delighted in the final product for many of the same reasons Kelley did: the intimacy of such a small object, the interactivity and physicality of having a little book in your hand, and the turn over of control to the audience. I’m thinking that maybe I should consider my draw to these qualities when thinking about the output for my photography. While printing larger is something I see value in, maybe I should also try printing much smaller and continuing to make photobooks.

An additional aspect of Kelley’s talk that resonated with me was his discussion of how some of his works aim to “externalize an internal image in the mind.” I am not sure, but I think that this may be deeply related to my ideas about actually versus perceived memory.

Another topic that Kelley discussed was how the “failure” of his original idea produced the works in the show. I think that the tension created between him having complete control over his tool, Maya, and producing a “failure” is an interesting one that resonates in my work as well. Over the summer I created some works that were out of focus, blurred, or dark, qualities of works that I would normally consider failures because I did not have complete control over my tool. The works, however, shocked me. I liked them; other people liked them. I think that maybe I need to define failure more clearly for myself and separate other qualities from it that get lumped to this idea of “failure” simply because they have typically negative connotations.

-Anne