AIGA-GMU visited HZDG and Design Army today, and I left each studio with a stronger drive to make my designs more conceptual and more interesting. I was completely blown away by Design Army’s campaign for the Washington Ballet. Their whimsical, fairy-tale concept combined with
Cade Martin’s jaw-dropping, award winning photographs created unforgettable imagery and actually made drab Washington DC look stunning, even sexy. Check out the campaign and prepared to be amazed!
Sean Salyards’ opening for his new series of work, Congé: Cape Coral FL 33993, is tonight! This is the poster I designed for his show. Looking forward to finally seeing all the work printed large and mounted!
Sportsmen, Boxers, Cologne 1929
Ill, Insane and Disabled, Children in home for the blind, Duren 1930
Cologne 1932
Gypsies and Hobos, Gypsy, Westerwald 1932
Farm Youths, Young farmers on way to a dance, Westerwald 1914
Autobahn bridge near neanderthal rhineland, 1936
Dan Rios gave me a book from the Corcoran library about August Sander, an influential German photographer from the early 1900s. His most famous series of photographs, Face of Our Time (published in 1929; he started photographing it as early as 1910) encompassed portraits from every level of society. When the Nazis came to power, Sander had to yield to the political pressure from the oppressive regime because his style of work directly contradicted the Nazis racially pure, triumphant and naturally superior view of the German people. Where the Nazis created a propaganda myth and then looked in vain for someone to fit that myth, Sander delighted in the eccentricities and natural differences of real people.
Fair and Circus People, Circus workers, Duren 1930
Professional Women, Shorthand typist, Cologne 1928
Society Women, Wife of painter Peter Abelen, Cologne 1926
Sander maintained his undivided attention to reality as it is because he thought that a person’s face is a window into their character, their position in life and even their soul. Sander photographed similar to painter William Leibl, who created portraits of peasants without a trace of Romanticism. “If we paint man as he is,” Leibl had said, “his soul is included as a matter of course.” Not only did Sander reject pictorialism, with its emphasis on disguising unflattering features and inserting artifice, Sander also did not participate in the other art movement directly following: the roots of modernism found in the Bauhaus school and Dadaism. He focused on ordering the life he saw around him and in the process created a series of photographs that forever allowed the world to see German culture before its complete upheaval after World War II.
Masks, from Carucci's series Closer
I haven’t encountered a photographer that has provided a more complete, deeply loving and jarringly honest portrait of a family than Elinor Carucci. Immersing myself in her work, I was shocked at the depth of understanding she allows her audience to comprehend. She photographs her own relationships and the details of her life to create a thorough study of all that is normal to her. By including portraits not only of herself but of her family and her home, she invites us to understand the variety of roles she plays in her life: daughter, wife, mother, dancer, artist, immigrant. While she has many other markers by which to define her life (such as being a dancer), Carucci chooses to show us her identity as defined by the tightly woven net that is her family.
My mother and I in a hotel room, 1998, from Carucci's series Closer
As I spent time with her photographs, I noticed I was getting attached to the people in the photos. She reveals the complexity of each relationship and each person that by the end I feel almost as if I know them better than I know my own friends. Photographs of her mother document quirks of their individual interaction but still speak about universal similarities in mother-daughter relationships. Some of my favorite photographs of the series show her mother teaching and Carucci imitating and laughing. As a whole, they show Carucci’s admiration and her fear of not measuring up, among other themes. Photographs of her father often have a striking similarity to those of her husband: Carucci frequently shows both men as loving the women in their life but sometimes uncertain as to the best way to demonstrate it. Photographs of her children reveal Carucci’s curiosity and delight in their interaction with the world around them. Their passionate outbursts have an intensity rarely matched in adulthood. Carucci includes detail shots, such as the imprint of a zipper on skin, that act as a metaphor for the larger themes. They serve as a complement to the more explicit shots, creating a body of work that is nearly as complex as the subject matter itself. In all the photographs, it is as much a reflection of Carucci herself as it is of her family.
Kiss, 1998, from Carucci's series Closer
Frequently, artists choose a subject matter that isn’t so far from their own experience that they can’t understand it but isn’t so close that they are blinded by their own nearness. What makes Carucci stand out is that she had the maturity and confidence at age 21 to photograph what was immediately within her grasp. It takes a lot of young artists a while to completely embrace themselves and, sometimes even more challenging, their origins, but Carucci was comfortable allowing others to see her in her skin and with her family.
Eran and I, 1998, from Closer
Carucci represents her life as it is, not how she wants it to be. She allows the world to see her messy kitchen, her face without any makeup, her husband’s expression after a fight, the plucking of a hair on her nipple. She photographs her family in the nude to show the beauty in normal bodies. Sensuality and flaws exist side by side with no conflict. I find that her choice to document a complete and unfiltered range of emotions allows me to see that her normal is similar to my normal.
Ultimately, Carucci’s work is a celebration of dependence. In a culture that values independence above all else, Carucci’s photographs open a window to another world-view that values love in the form of unembellished mutual dependence. Her work is foreign to us not because she speaks another language at home but because it’s different from the type of family relationships that American culture glorifies.
Bath 2006, from Carucci's recent work
Read more about Carucci:
Video Interview
The first thing I ever read about Carucci
Article in the Guardian
Sheila, from Sleeping by the Mississippi, Alec Soth
Joshua, from Sleeping by the Mississippi, Alec Soth
Turns out my favorite photographer has a blog. And an extremely weird, incredibly amusing sense of humor. I’ve been reading through his blog for a while now, and I discovered an interesting fact. Soth makes a list of things he’s interested in and then he goes out to take photographs of it. Even if he strays from his original intentions, he says it’s great to just get yourself out and taking pictures. He claims that Robert Frank did the same thing.
Best Western 2005, from NIAGARA, Alec Soth
Soth introduced me to Carrie Thompson, a photographer who has an identical style to Alec Soth. If Soth decided to photograph an aging, religious couple in Minnesota and the environment around them, this is what it would look like.
Interesting Soth Links:
A write up of Soth at the Brighton Biennial
Untitled, 2007. Brian Ulrich's, from Thrift
I’m spending black Friday in Indiana today, and I thought it’d be fitting to introduce Brian Ulrich, a contemporary photographer whose work I admire. I can’t decide what I like most about it: the fact that many of his photographs are from the midwest or his accessible and pertinent statement regarding the ubiquity of consumerism. His series Copia has three parts: Retail, Thrift, and Dark Stores, each dealing with distinct aspects of the societal impact of shopping.
Rialto Theater, 2009. Brian Ulrich, from Dark Stores
What drew me first to Ulrich’s work was the way he transforms running errands to something akin to a foreign ritual. When we look at these photographs, we are removed from the act of purchasing to evaluate the culture to which we contribute when we purchase. Everyone has gone shopping in the big box stores he photographs; everyone plays the role of the consumer that Ulrich showcases. Ulrich asks that we look at this with a new perspective tempered by the photographs of blighted, abandoned malls and the over-abundance of junk in thrift stores he chooses to show. The genius of his work is the simple obviousness of its concept and the beauty and thoroughness of its execution.
Kenosha, WI 2003. Brian Ulrich, from his series Retail
There are three specific aspects of Ulrich’s work that I admire. First, even though Urlich photographs the objects that define an affluent nation, he avoids photographing it in its grotesque opulence (see Andreas Gurskey’s 99 Cent). Instead, he shows us what is familiar, what we already know, which is a perfect segue to my second reason: Ulrich’s unshakable confidence in photographing what could have been a boring subject. Combining the curiosity of a photojournalist and the classical training of a fine artist, Ulrich manages to portray mundane shopping in an unusual way. There’s just enough familiar and just enough weirdness to intrigue and retain the viewer’s attention. Third, on a purely aesthetic level, Ulrich uses light and color in a beautiful way. Granted, he has the benefit of mooching off of another person’s work. He photographs things that are explicitly designed and lit to entice, but even Thrift incorporates a surprisingly appealing use of light.
Brian Ulrich’s photographs politely ask us to evaluate our role in a society based on consumerism, a statement that I think is particularly apt today. How ironic that the day after we celebrate gratitude and contentment, we run out of our houses to buy more stuff, gorging ourselves in the gluttony of a materialist culture. Ulrich’s sociological probing, combined with a killer aesthetic, create a body of work that can’t be ignored.
A friend just introduced me to Sufjan Steven’s music and I have to say, I’m in love. I’ve never wanted to learn the banjo more than after listening to The Dress Looks Nice On You. Steven’s lyrics elevate the mundane to something meaningful, and he includes references to his own life in very intimate, real ways. I couldn’t help but make the connection between Alec Soth’s culturally sensitive and probing photography with Stevens’ honest and eclectic music. Check out the deeply personal and semi-autobiographical Casimir Pulaski Day (and for those that prefer their music to have a stronger melodic line: Chicago)
One of the most striking similarities between Sufjan Stevens and Alec Soth is that both chose specific middle-American mundane subcultures as the subject of their work. Alec Soth’s photographed his series, Sleeping By the Mississippi, during road trips he took along the Mississippi. The work records “…the eccentricity, unexpected beauty, profound mystery, and sadness of the people and places he discovers along the way.” The culture Soth explored is often overlooked but Soth draws back the curtain to show the intimacies and subtleties that are universally experienced. Similarly, Sufjan Stevens’ songs have raw, unsweetened lyrics that reveal the details of his own life in a way that the listener can relate to. Stevens himself belongs to a Midwestern culture, and he is fascinated by the culture of his home state, Michigan. He has embarked on a mission to make an album for every state in America and has just finished the latest album in the series, Illinois. Just as Soth photographed the mundane to draw attention to its humanity, Stevens sings about the details of every-day occurrences because they are significant to him. It is the respectful and deeply curious attitude that defines both artists and causes their work to be successful. Both explore the mundane to tease out the profound.
In addition to content, Sufjan Stevens and Alec Soth treat their work’s musicality/aesthetics similarly. Both Stevens and Soth resist the urge to make the biggest sound or the brightest photograph; instead, both maintain an understated, quiet quality that asks the viewer/listener to pay attention. The lyrics and the photographs are themselves vague and ask to be defined and understood by the audience. Another interesting similarity is that Soth makes all kinds of photographs in his series (ranging from composed portraits to landscapes to found ephemera) and Stevens plays all kinds of instruments in his recording. Both artists refuse to be locked into a genre and instead incorporate the necessary elements to say the story most effectively. Neither of these artists care for glamour but rather dignified realism.
If they met at a party, I’m pretty sure they’d have a lot to talk about.
