It is certainly refreshing to be reminded that “video art” is not limited to the shocking-for-shock’s-sake, art-school, smoking-in-the-halls self-indulgence that is so often invoked by the term. That is to say, I feel like it is hard to come by thoughtful work outside of a museum or gallery. I was pleased to be introduced to the video of William Lamson.
I particularly like the sense of the sterile (science) experiment in these experimental (art) films, and the execution — whatever the variables, be they bananas, needles, or balloons — comes to reveal a unique mix of whimsy and tragedy. There are real, if anonymous, people, earnestly participating in these tests, and an undercurrent of quiet, societal violence and self-induced torture runs alongside the goofiness of these stages. Other pieces play with this what-will-happen attitude, with less alarming — even charming — results. Either way, it is difficult not to grin while being pulled into continuous viewings of Lamson’s curious research.
[Mobil Sign] and [White Sign] Images by Derek Stroup
Derek Stroup’s digital manipulations are simple but just so smart. I like his billboards, candy, and money images quite a bit, but his website has some wonderful drawings and paintings as well.
I suppose this is a departure from contemporary art musings, but I find the following video clips just as affecting…. Upon encountering these sequences on this internet of ours, I am filled to the brim with nostalgic wonder.
It is perhaps only in this light, clouded by memory, that a merchandise-driven, outsourced, overseas-animated program could inspire this. I remember thinking at the time that the show was mostly there to showcase all the cool things the masks could do, for when I played with the toys. That the program M.A.S.K. was in some ways little more than a commercial seems so readily apparent, now. The fog of marketing has cleared.
But of course, it hasn’t. Maybe only the toys have changed; of course I’m still the exuberant target of clever salesmanship.
Maybe most curious of all, though, is being so passionately fond of it all. The texture that was absent in the cartoons themselves is provided by the reflections upon them, layering themselves, youtubes on top of ebay purchases on top of reminiscent conversations with peers on top of the recollection of somehow arranging it so that I was allowed to set up a little t.v. in the bathroom, so I could watch M.A.S.K. from the bathtub.
Each month the PRC’s Northeast Exposure Online shares the work of an emerging New England photographer. Last November Leah Fasten was featured. Fasten’s project-in-process was made up of portraits of her young son — images “investigating the anticipation and awe of watching my son, Zach, on the cusp of independence.”
I always think it’s interesting to see what happens when artists go about something as natural and everyday-photographer as taking photos of their children.
The first time I saw Abelardo Morrell’s childhood images, I recognized the serene black and white, the cleverness of form and light. Despite the very different subject matter, all that made Morrell’s familiar camera obscura and book photographs a wonder — it was all still in there, in these family portraits. But, there is something different going on when one’s own family is the subject. You can see it here.
There is perhaps nothing more personal than a photographer lending his so-often-shared view of the world to images of his children.
[Julian and Brady Sitting by Abelardo Morrell]
Fasten’s images aren’t so far off from your backyard snapshots. But there is something that much more deliberate about them; they’re square and distant and framed. There is certainly this sense of just what she says in her statement… the watching of this person as he negotiates the bit of world he has to explore in front of him (but within the watchful eyes of his caretaker). The image of Zach alone on a swing could have come across as deeply melancholy, but no, I feel like we know mom isn’t far away.
Granted, Fasten’s Zach pictures aren’t all taken quite from this perspective of protective distance. The breathtaking image Hair [below, top] is wondrous and bold, and not so different from the porcelain youths of Loretta Lux‘s photo-paintings [as in The Blue Dress, below, bottom].
But Fasten’s child is not some photographic statue. That’s an unfiltered blast of light, revealing real skin and hair, and a clutter of out-of-focus beach-goers trotting about the background.
This balance between intimacy and distance, though, I think is particularly noteworthy. It is probably a space only a parent could inhabit.
And maybe it’s the haircut or the sweaters, but there’s this wonderful timeless everychild in Morrell and Fasten’s kids and how they are portrayed. I am certain I had that haircut once, or lack thereof, my hair bushy and unkempt. I feel like I know how that sweater feels, and you probably do to.
Maybe most remarkable, the images really convey the persistent shortness of being so young. It’s marvelous.
And again, maybe its the haircut. But I can’t help think of young Danny in The Shining, looking at these young people. Innocent but not innocuously so. Inhabiting shortness. Navigating the perimeter of the boundaries our parents have set, and brushing up against the dangers of going a step too far.
Taking another look at Snyder’s series Idling, it’s clear that he is portraying a quite different component of the experience commuting by car. Stop lights. Intersections. Traffic jams. This work turns out to be much more in the tradition of Evans’s subway portraits… though of course those were portraits of people going somewhere. These people are stuck — even if the subway ride was routine and passive and a period to be lost in thought. Idling shows how travelers are forced into this passive, powerless state, even in the autonomous automobile.
It’s interesting to see that Snyder shows a number of people doing something else as they wait, grasping at something to do with their hands or occupy their minds — reading, eating, talking on the phone. Otherwise, there’s a quiet desperation or an emerging tension in their faces; stir-craziness settles in. Or at least, like Evans’ portraits, the face is so blank, one can project all sorts of things onto it.
Snyder writes of this work, “There’s a collective sense of living-as-waiting, a continual holding of the breath, in anxious anticipation of the next disaster. This is the big waiting — the stuck feeling, the giving over of control — that mirrors and sometimes leaks out into the small waiting for the light to change.”
