The first style I chose to review was fluss by Michael Lange. The mysterious cover offers a great look into the content between the covers. The images pictured are intriguing and gripping, but it is less about their visual presence and more about how they interact with the viewer psychologically. It is not that the images are not visually interesting, they are extremely interesting. Rather, it is the unknowns that the images present. The moody, seemingly always foggy, images create a sense of visual tension. They make the viewer uncomfortable. They make the viewer question what it is they are seeing. Lange seems to capture shapes are all soft and undefined. It is almost as if he has capture visual reflections in a muddy puddle -- the shapes are their, but the color and shape is dead, missing. Lange utilizes a horizontal orientation in each of his pieces, which is fitting as every work captures some form of landscape, often vegetation. Digging deeper, I decided to look up what fluss meant. Fluss is German for flow. A flow implies a sense of motion, an element of water. Some of his works employ employ water directly and literally to convey a sense of fluidity, others moreso indirectly. Moisture in the air or a lack of camera focus seem to, at times, stand in for a body of water -- for the fluss.
The second collection of work I chose to review was Richard Ross’ Architecture of Authority. This diverse collection captures a variety of social scenes. Ross explores the meaning of the word Authority (to a degree, he even pushes the envelope definitionally on the word architecture.) The biggest theme in the collection seems to be national borders. Ross is interested in the way in which a country is defined. He’s investigating how countries, especially at their borders, demand (and are granted) authority. Borders represent separation. Authority implies power. By putting up borders, humans garner authority. Prison cells (pictured) are obvious, physical, examples. However, there are example such as a confessional booths at the vatican, also represented authority. Stylistically, Ross employs a horizontal style like Lange (Never vertical; at the most, square). He seems to do this as a way of showing simplicity. This simplicity says, “See, they only only thing here demanding authority and respect is the demand itself. Your eye can wander, but it escape.” The viewer can’t escape the photo because of the authoritative message. The boarders will stop you, the chains hold you, even the priest can keep you from salvation. Ross is exploring authority in the obvious places, as well as the less obvious. We as viewer, even in a photograph, can never escape authority because it is all around us.
The final collection I am reviewing is one by Carrie Mae Weems. This incredible collection covers an enormous range of styles and emotions. Wae Meem address, directly, issues she has with the treatment of black individuals. However, she handles the serious subject with a sense of humor (sometimes genuine, sometimes dark and slightly uncomfortable). There’s a brilliant collection of images about midway through the book. Pictured is a large paneled table, with a lamp overhead. Wae Meem is a subject in all of these works. The setting, the table and the lamp, as well as Mae Weems location, at the far end of the table, never change. However, the world around her does. I use the word world rather than scene because these photos have a sense of intimacy -- she’s inviting the viewer in, we aren’t just viewing a photo, we’re entering her home. In these photos we see happiness and love, as well as sadness and despair. The complexity of the photo does not come from a photographic technique as much as it does from the characters in the simple frame. Mae Weems is steadfast, as her world around her changes -- something as humans we've all experienced. Her work is beautiful not for her style of image capture (while it does have an impact), but for the beautiful people in the frames and the complex motions they not only display, but they make the viewer feel.
No comments:
Post a Comment