Parsons Time Rosie
Tuesday 13 May 2014
DOCUMENTARY:
CASA Magazine – West Village
22 8th
Ave
b/t 12th
Street and Jane Street in West Street
New York
New York
1.
STATEMENT
One
man’s mission to preserve published material – in an ever-developing digital
age what is the role of printed matter. Resource for any published magazine –
small niches and well-known names.
As a
student, Ali the own invited us to come on Tuesday evening, to take home the
magazine’s he doesn’t sell – he is a hub of knowledge and willing to share with
students in the area.
Do
students still want magazines?
Role of
the coffee table book?
Do we
enough space to printed magazine’s when we can view them so easily the digital
archives?
2.
PRIOTIRY
ELEMENTS:
-
Interviewing
owner
-
Interview
regular customers
-
Questions:
where do the magazines go once the next issue comes in?
-
Where do
the magazine’s come from - Storage?
3.
LIST OF
SHOTS NEEDED
- Establishing shots
- Environmental
background shots
- Close-ups
- Transition
shots
- Visual
textures
4.
STORYBOARD
- Environmental background shots
- Close-up
- Transition shots
- Visual textures
5.
SCHEDULE?
(Dependent on Ali)
- When can Ali do it? Thursday 20th
AM.
Wednesday 16 April 2014
ESSAY BY ROSIE KANE
5. Whilst
every photograph involves a certain degree of abstraction from the three-
dimensional fabric of the world, some images are clearly more abstract than
others, and in different ways. Compare the use of abstraction by two
photographers. Be sure to discuss the layers of meaning produced by the work as
well as its formal properties.
The politics of emptiness: abstract photography, as
abstract art, is independent of visual references and free from political
noise. An abstract image is a creation
of the artist’s impression of the truth upon which the viewer can contemplate
their own references; for its critics, it creates an emptiness and anxiety over
a fear of the unknown and absence of political doctrine.
Just as an abstract painter takes the core
elements of an image and redefines it as a collection of its essential shapes,
so the abstract photographer eliminates many of the elements, which he or she
believes to be external to the overall statement that they wish to make, and
thus the politics of emptiness. This
reduction of effects and sensations delivers a freedom and changes the dynamics
of the experience from reality to expression. This paper considers how two
photographers found freedom through abstract photography, letting the ‘chemicals
work to freeze that moment through their action’.
Siskind, an American documentary
photographer, became politically disengaged during World War II, and abandoned
the idea that a photograph is a reflection of the world. Wolfgang Tillmans’ abhorrence of American
politics is reflected in his work for his first solo exhibition in America ‘Freedom from the Known’ at the Museum
of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, in which he said he was ‘extremely removed from
literal political content… in a country whose politics fill me with a great
deal of fear and anger’. Tillmans’ goes
on to discuss how working with the abstract provides a deeper but more indirect
commentary on the politics he finds frustrating:
“There is a glaring dichotomy of working with pure
abstraction, which is extremely removed from literal political content, and the
personal sense of urgency that dominates much of my waking hours. Yet I feel
the purely abstract works and non-direct political content photographs are my
freedom of expression, my resistance to feeling completely dominated by the
fall-out of a world bent on reviving ideologies.” Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang
Tillmans, born in 1968, is a German fine-art
photographer. In 2000, Tillmans was the first photographer - and also the first
non-English person - to be awarded the Tate Annual Turner Prize.
His work came to international prominence during the 1990s
when he moved to the London; he has since divided his time between London and
Berlin. His
diverse body of work is characterized by observation of his surroundings and an
on-going investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations.
Wolfgang
Tillmans’ most basic leitmotif is to treat all pictures, including abstract
ones, not as isolated phenomena but as always interrelated. Tillmans is very much a generalist, with an
encyclopedic array of subject matter, which can be seen in his works. Just
looking at his sprawling installations [See:
Image 1 - Museo del Banco de la
Republica, Bogota, Columbia, Oct - Jan 2013] we are able to see this broad display of subject matter from still life,
portraiture, landscape and beyond. But photography is in many ways only the
beginning of Tillmans’ art. Indeed, over the last decade he has made an
important body of abstract works that are ‘not made with camera’ (the artist’s
phrase), yet are still directly related to the process of photography. In both
a practical and philosophical sense, therefore, Tillmans engages and works with
the photographic image on every conceivable level: as a consumer and reader of
images, an editor of images, producer of images, as their printer, replicator,
publisher, curator, installer, and also as their mechanic, anatomist,
politician, sculptor, technician and connoisseur. Bracewell M, (2010).
'Everywhere, all the time and at once: the art of Wolfgang Tillmans' (In: Serpentine Gallery (ed), Wolfgang
Tillmans. 1st ed. London: Koenig Books. pp.9-15). He is thus the creator and director of an
extensive lexicon of images, examining every characteristic of their form, in
both terms of medium and object. So to the question of what might be the
meaning of abstraction for Tillman’s larger enterprise? What might Tillmans’
work mean for abstract art, one possible answer is: abstraction aids Tillman’s
quest for generality, for a broadness of scope and vision.
We see this broad scope and vision in 2006
when Tillmans undertook his first exhibition for an American museum – MOMA. The
exhibition was titled ‘Freedom from the
Known’ and was unlike any he had done before as it focused primarily on the
artist’s purely abstract photographs. It explored the presence abstraction has
had within his figurative and representational work. Most of these works are
camera-less pictures made by the direct manipulation of light on paper; to
achieve them Tillmans manipulated huge sheets of chromogenic C print paper with
light in the darkroom, rather than on a negative. Tillmans provides us with a
selection of earlier photographs providing a context and passage-way from
figurative to representation imagery to abstraction. (2006). Wolfgang Tillmans:
Freedom from the Known. [ONLINE] Available at:
http://momaps1.org/exhibitions/view/109. [Last Accessed 20.05.13]. One huge print entitled “It’s Only Love Give it Away” features
crisp yet fluid lines suggestive of feathers swaying above soft purple hues or
eyelashes, the picture conveys romance to me.
Tillmans large-scale abstractions, up to ten feet high, were presented
in frames – a departure for an artist who pioneered a style of installation
based on pinning and taping pictures directly to the wall. The elusive,
transitory images in the abstraction, when framed can be seen as objects in
space, displaying both buoyancy and weight. For Tillmans, photography has as
many sculptural possibilities as it does representational, aesthetic or
political. By using paperclips to hang them it highlights their bodily
materiality and weight – thus appearing as visual events for the eyes to
consume and as sculptural objects with a powerful physical appearance.
To me, one of the best things about
Tillmans’ abstract pictures is that they are nearly impossible to talk about by
themselves. In exhibitions they appear mingled with other photos in the
branching sequences of his installations supported by the back and forth
dialogue of perspectives. The abstractions help to generalize and broaden
Tillmans overall artistic concerns of the capacity of his medium. Emphasized in
the abstraction is the plasticity all of the works share, a compatibility that
Tillmans brings out when reusing images in different formats and in shuffled
situations. Is Tillmans asking us to step back, to find a new perspective on
situations, or perhaps to find a freedom when tapping into the known and the
unknown? I think Tillmans believes in the potentiality of the photographic
image being intimately related between a level of understanding and awareness
to the reality of being alive.
Many have argued that the defining
preoccupation of modern art is mediating between the specific and the general.
Tillmans has often been said to embody Charles Baudlaire’s ideal ‘painter of
modern life’. ‘Modernity is the transient, the
fleeting, the contingent,’ is how Baudelaire wrote out the ‘equation,’ ‘it is
one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.’ Baudelaire C,
(1964). The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. 1st
ed. London: Phaidon Press. Tillmans has been recognised for his social
documenting on gritty reality and providing essential facts, yet, will readily
change his perspective on the perimeters for representational scenes by zooming
in or out, locking subjects either too close or too far. Specifics begin
dissolving into abstract formal arrangements.
The art
of Tillmans is multi-allusive, so, it is of no coincidence that Tillman’s
earliest works were made on a photocopier. Tillmans’ growing desire to engage
with the photographic on every level is no different form the desire expressed
by Andy Warhol only a few years earlier, when he said he wanted to a machine?
Similarly to Tillmans, Warhol was a generalist who moved between the realms of
art, commerce and subculture. Instead of photocopying, Warhol worked with screen-printing
a developed a new use for photography. In many ways Warhol could be thought to
represent Tillmans’ doppelganger, a dark counter-figure to the Baudelairian
flaneur. Yet, according to Walter Benjamin’s famous description, isn’t capable
of experiencing modernity on the same level as Tillmans’, he can only achieve
modernitys standardised banalities – they don’t contain an unpredictable flux.
Looking back at the work of Aaron Siskind
it is difficult to find a photographer who shifted the conceptual foundations
of the medium of photography more than him.
Siskind, born in 1903, was an
American documentary photographer who became politically disengaged during
World War II, abandoning the idea that a photograph is a reflection of the
world. Instead, he used the medium as modern artists used paint, as a malleable
process that could be used to create entirely new things.
With a
single glance at Siskind's photographs, it is easy to see his relationship with
Abstract Expressionism. In
his autobiography he describes when he received a camera as a wedding gift, and
in a similar light to Tillmans, he quickly realized the artistic potential this
offered. Siskind was close to several abstract painters and adopted a similar
approach to symbol and form by isolating and thus ‘abstracting’ elements of
visual reality. Energetic, gestural marks move across
many of his images [Image 3], just like
the canvases of Franz Kline. But the similarities run deeper. Unlike any
photographers before him, Siskind acknowledged the simple idea that the picture
plane, like a canvas, is a flat rectangle. Accordingly, he sought out flat
surfaces that he could photograph purely for the poetic implications of their
details, using the elements of each image as a painter would use shapes.
(Tranberg D (2009). Aaron Siskind: Abstract Expressionist
Photographer. [ONLINE] Available at:
http://voices.yahoo.com/aaron-siskind-abstract-expressionist-photographer-3893610.html.
[Last Accessed 20.05.13].)
In 1960, Siskind took part in an
exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York titled The Sense of Abstraction in Contemporary
Photography, which staged the coming out party for abstract photography.
The show contained work by a large number of artists, including the most
prominent Americans, from Alfred Steiglitz to Ralph Eugene Meatyard fashioning
images of subjects that could not be readily identified. Barbara Morgan
described it as a photography that sought ‘common denominators’. She herself
had moved towards an abstract photographic vocabulary, but meant that
photography was a means of visual analogy, which doesn’t have to act a reality
or instant, binding many phenomena together and establishing a relationship
between the inner world of emotion and the outer world of materiality. (Rexer
L, (2009). 'Stairways to Heaven'. In: e.g. Tolkien,
J.R.R. (ed), The Edge of Vision: the rise of abstraction in
photography. 1st ed. New York : Aperture.
pp.99.)
By the
time of The Sense of Abstraction two
generations of American photographers put in place an ‘absolute tenet of faith’
that the meaning of the photograph was to be located in the photographer’s
consciousness. Just before, during and after World War II, the United States
took in refugees who transformed the culture of the country – an investigative
spirit arrived amongst a number of photographers, whom sought to advocate
innovation on every level: formal, technical and material – the effect being a
host of the most experimental American artists including Aaron Siskind. His
career is emblematic of this deeply American approach to image making, as well
as its complex roots.
As a
student of the Moholy-Nagy at the Institute of Design, Siskind held a
membership in the Photo League, a group of left-leaning photo documentarists.
Soon, the work became irrelevant to the group. In the words of the artist, “We
came to see that the literal representation of a fact (or idea) can signify
less than the fact of idea itself…, that a picture or a series of pictures must
be informed which such things as order, rhythm, emphasis, etc, qualities which
result from the perception and feeling of the photographer, and are not
necessarily the property of subject.”
Siskind is often compared to Harry
Callahan, also at the Institute of Design. Their differences are apparent as
they spring from different sensibilities. Callahan, more a formalist led by the
process of photography compares to the art-world of sophistication present in
Siskind’s work. But, having worked so closely to one another, they both
understood that one way to subvert the camera’s literalism – to intensify the
image, was to press the formal composition for the image.
In some
of his photographs, there is almost a literal analogy to painting; marks that
appear to have been made with a paintbrush dominate, creating bold strokes
across a surface. In others, Siskind obscured the context of recognizable forms
(a weathered sheet of plywood, for instance) by focusing on the interaction of
shapes, textures, and tones, and essentially ignoring the environment that
surrounded them. In doing so, Siskind acted as a sort of found-object sculptor,
harvesting from the world objects and surfaces that he reconfigured according
to his own ideas. (Tranberg D (2009). Aaron Siskind: Abstract Expressionist
Photographer. [ONLINE] Available at:
http://voices.yahoo.com/aaron-siskind-abstract-expressionist-photographer-3893610.html.
[Last Accessed 20.05.13].)
In
summary, perhaps the sense of the purpose of abstraction and the removal of all
the unnecessary layers to reveal the skeleton behind the image is summed up by
Siskind who stated:
"When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object,
complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order-unlike the world of
events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder''.
In abstraction, there is a counterpoint to
today’s surplus of visual information.
It is a metaphorical paradigm for saying nothing but everything at the
same time; it is not simple or an indulgence but a response to the world
today. For example, when Tillmans
created his photographic images without the use of the actual camera, he was
removing another manmade barrier.
Siskind’s approach was to photograph purely for the poetic implications
of the details of the flat surfaces; he sought out using the elements of each
image as a painter would use shapes.
Both artists were not seeking a literal representation of the image they
saw but seeking the fundamental truth upon which others could imprint their own
emotions. As to whether this is elitist,
the resultant images cut out those who prefer to have their experiences and
emotions fed to them; but for those who have the freedom to explore their
emotions, there is a wealth of excitement and a voyage of discovery in every
abstract image created.
There is, however, a journey that we
embark on when looking at these pieces, a natural progression where Siskind
uses the camera to capture elements of an image as a painter would shapes –
just as the artists of the 1960s captured the immediacy of expression of an
image by ‘one-take’ painting using buckets instead of brushes and employing a
strict rule that no painting could be reworked.
Tillmans’ ink jet prints are an evolution from these 1960s paintings. He used photocopiers to enlarge elements –
size and quality – to create images with even photo sensitivity. As such, Tillmans’ images create an
impression of something caught in a camera flash – the immediate impression of
the image it captured.
It is particularly interesting that both
Tillmans and Siskind wanted their images to be free from political
doctrine. Under the Nazi regime in
Germany, virtually all modern art was described as Degenerate art and was
banned as was music that was not tonal.
The Nazis mounted an exhibition in Munich in 1937 called Degenerate Art which consisted of
modernist artworks. These were hung
chaotically and accompanied by text labels which derided the art. Perhaps this is reflected in the way in which
Tillmans chose to display his art? What
is certain is that Tillmans and Siskind are perfect exponents of the fact that
the essence of abstraction is freedom and all the rest is noise.
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