Research point—Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson (Brooklyn, 1962– )

B.A. from SUNY, 1985; M.F.A. from Yale, 1988.
Professor Adjunct in Graduate Photography at Yale School of Art.
Represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York and White Cube in London.
Elaborately staged scenes in small town American. Cinematic, extensive support crew for staging and lighting.
“In all my pictures what I am ultimately interested in is that moment of transcendence or transportation, where one is transported into another place, into a perfect, still world. Despite my compulsion to create this still world, it always meets up against the impossibility of doing so. So, I like the collision between this need for order and perfection and how it collides with a sense of the impossible. I like where possibility and impossibly meet.” (Gregory Crewdson (2016))
Influences include movies Vertigo, The Night of the Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blue Velvet, and Safe, also Edward Hopper, Diane Arbus.
Retrospective of work from 1985–2005 shown in Europe from 2005–08. Skowhegan Medal for Photography, the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship and the Aaron Siskind Fellowship.

Responses

There is certainly more to Crewdson’s work than aesthetic beauty, although it undeniably has that. The coldness of the images and the unsettling scenes they portray have an uncanniness to them—they seem more real than real. The attention to detail, flawless lighting and calculated impact on the viewer reveal suggest that the artist is not simply drawing on aesthetic categories, but using the everyday to produce a particular effect or experience.
The work certainly seems ‘psychological’ to me, in that it is designed to produce an unease and questioning in the mind of the viewer. There is a distinct sense of foreboding, the same kind one feels when watching a thriller—what ‘it’ is has not yet happened, but it is about to and the psychological tension is palpable. It verges on the physical, as if the viewer was about to experience the events directly. If anything, many of these images are like Nordic Noirs in a single frame.
My main goal when making pictures has not at all been to create an elaborate world of my imagination, but to respond to things that I find visually appealing (in a broad sense: light, line, colour, form, mood…). My studies with the OCA have been leading me to question this approach, however, as I see the opportunity to make images in an entirely new way—more deliberate and purposeful, rather than just responsive. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with making beauty one’s main goal—we could certainly use more beauty in the world—but I think that aesthetics for the sake of aesthetics can become divorced from other important commitments like truth or justice. Beauty itself can be fickle and concentration on it can lead us down some very strange paths, like self-indulgence, an unhealthy preoccupation with certain kinds of beauty or deliberately ignoring the non-beautiful.
I don’t think it is necessary to set “elaborate direction”against “subtlety and nuance” in photography, any more than it is necessary to set pure fantasy against documentary or biography in any other art form, such as cinema. There is a place to appreciate all of them and the different responses they call forth, while keeping in mind that they are all, to some extent, fabrications.

References

Gregory Crewdson (2016) At: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/gregory-crewdson (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Gregory Crewdson (2018) At: https://gagosian.com/artists/gregory-crewdson/ (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Gregory Crewdson (s.d.) At: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/gregory-crewdson (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Gregory Crewdson | artnet (s.d.) At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/gregory-crewdson/ (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Gregory Crewdson – 84 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy (s.d.) At: https://www.artsy.net/artist/gregory-crewdson (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Gregory Crewdson – Bio | The Broad (s.d.) At: https://www.thebroad.org/art/gregory-crewdson (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Photographers in Focus: Gregory Crewdson (s.d.) At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpIRm5BsXeE (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Silverman, R. (2016) Alone, in a Crowd, With Gregory Crewdson. At: https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/25/alone-in-a-crowd-with-gregory-crewdson/ (Accessed 27/01/2020).

A1—Alexey Titarenko

Alexey Titarenko (1962- , Leningrad)

Graduated with honours from the Department of Cinematic and Photographic Art at Leningrad’s Institute of Culture
Influenced by Russian avant-garde works of Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko and Dada art
Published series of collages, photomontages and superimposed negatives, Nomenklatura of Signs in 1988 as commentary on the Communist regime
During and after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991–1992, produced several series using long exposure and intentional camera movement in street photography
City of Shadows urban landscapes reference Odessa Steps (also known as the Primorsky or Potemkin Stairs) scene from film The Battleship Potemkin.
Venice series between 2001 and 2008 references “Venice of the North,” Saint Petersburg.
Shoots film and does own darkroom work—bleaching and toning, solarisation, Sabattier effect.
2011 exhibition of 15 gelatin silver prints from Havana, Cuba series (2003-2006).
U.S. citizen since 2011 and lives in NYC.

I became aware of Alexey Titarenko’s work through an introduction to contemporary street photography (Howarth and McLaren, 2010) as well as through a series of videos I had seen online (Artist Series: Alexey Titarenko, 2016). I was captivated by the way he showed movement of people through the streets of Leningrad by means of the ghostly traces created by long exposure (Titarenko and Tchmyreva, 2001). It seemed to me that the indistinct layers of the figures suggested something about the transience of life, particularly when set against the unforgiving, hard lines of a city going through difficult times. The long exposure is a technique that Titarenko has continued to use effectively on other projects—most notably his series entitled “Time Standing Still” and “Venice” (Titarenko, s.d.)—along with other analogue, post-production methods (like solarisation and the Sabbatier effect) for heightening the surreal appearance of his photographs (Meyers, 2008).

The discussion in Rutherford (2014) of the photographic techniques used by Titarenko and others is helpful for demonstrating how their work demonstrates another, valid view of the ‘photographicness’ of works that show an altered reality or perspective. It is just as much—or perhaps more—a property of photography that it creates a reality more than it provides a true depiction of it. Because of this, Rutherford believes that it is always more correct to say that a picture is actively ‘made’ rather than passively ‘taken.’ In a brief reference to Titarenko’s images from City of Shadows, Rutherford (2014: 208) says that “the modus operandi of the medium has transformed the Things in Front of the Lens to produce results which are uniquely ‘photographic’.”

Most important for my thinking in preparation for Assignment 1, goes on to assert (2014: 210) that:

“… as a result of the ways in which the medium interprets, juxtaposes and renders the Things in Front of the Lens at that moment and from that perspective, photographs are capable of depicting scenes, events and moments that did not exist and could not have existed until brought into being by the act of photographing them.”

This is exactly where I wanted to go with the assignment—to look at how the very properties of the camera itself allow us to see two or more versions of the same scene (what Rutherford repeatedly calls the Things in Front of the Lens ), where every version has the same claim as any other to be a ‘faithful’ representation. And if they are all faithful and all different, perhaps none of them can be said to be truly faithful.

This combination of Titarenko’s photographic technique and Rutherford’s theoretical discussion will be useful for me as I develop and position my work for the assignment.

References

Alexey Titarenko (2019) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alexey_Titarenko&oldid=904212618 (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Alexey Titarenko (s.d.) At: http://www.alexeytitarenko.com (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Alexey Titarenko – 27 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy (s.d.) At: https://www.artsy.net/artist/alexey-titarenko (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Artist Series: Alexey Titarenko. (2016) Directed by The Art of Photography At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whoZ8SRgi2s (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Galerie municipale du château d’eau and Dieuzaide, M. (2000) Alexei Titarenko: Toulouse, 21 juin-4 septembre 2000.

Howarth, S. and McLaren, S. (2010) Street photography now. London ; New York: Thames & Hudson.

Meyers, W. “Alexey Titarenko’s Venetian Style” (2008) In: The New York Sun (New York, NY) 24 April 2008 p.17. [online] At: https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A178223382/STND?u=ucca&sid=STND&xid=07ae77f9 (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Rutherford (2014) ‘Photography as an act of collaboration’ In: Journal of Media Practice 15 (3) pp.206–227. [online] At: https://doi.org/10.1080/14682753.2014.1000043 (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Titarenko, A. and Tchmyreva, I. (2001) City of shadows. St. Petersburg, Russia: APT Tema.

Other works by Alexey Titarenko

Nomenklatura of Signs (1985-1991) (s.d.) At: http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/nomenclatureofsigns (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Titarenko, A. et al. (2003) Alexey Titarenko, photographs. New York? N. Alexander.

Titarenko, A. (2015) The city is a novel. Bologna: Damiani.

Research point—Documentary and art

Paul Seawright’s Sectarian Murder series challenges the boundaries between documentary and art by deliberately blurring them. The locations of crime scenes he depicts are abstracted in several ways: time has passed since the events in question; there is no discernible evidence of a crime in the frame; we are told that the accompanying text has been redacted to remove any reference to the religion of the people involved; and the images have been framed and lit in a way that makes them visually interesting and appealing (rather than being strictly ‘descriptive’ as one might expect from a photojournalistic approach). Ultimately, there is no way of knowing if Seawright has shot a location associated with the crimes described in the accompanying texts or if he has fabricated a scene.

The core of Seawright’s argument is that the construction of meaning is not done by the artist but by the viewer and that the distinction between art and journalism is how quickly a piece “gives up its meaning.” I think this is true to a degree—in that there is no way to predict how a reader or viewer might understand the text or object in front of them—but it suggests a greater distance between the artist and the work than is actually the case. Given that Seawright has chosen a particular light, angle of view, framing and explanatory text, it seems a bit disingenuous for him to absolve himself of guiding the viewer toward meaning. The viewer is still free to come up with his or her own appreciation of the work, but the artist has already pointed the viewer in a particular direction. The range of possible understandings is not wide open but has been somewhat restricted.

If we accept the starting point of this course—narrative is what happens within the frame and context is everything outside it—then we must also see that there is an interaction between the two. Defining a piece of documentary photography as art immediately alters the context of the photograph and will influence how its narrative is read by the viewer.

References

(2018) Catalyst: Paul Seawright. At: https://vimeo.com/76940827

Sectarian Murder. At: http://www.paulseawright.com/sectarian

Research point—Street photography

It is strange that the CAN manual takes time to distinguish documentary photography from reportage, but refers to ‘street photography’ without offering any definition. The most common features of street photography seem to be images made outside the studio, often as a result of random encounters with people in an urban setting. Nevertheless, some examples do not include people at all and others have been created in non-urban environments. Perhaps the most useful working definition of street photography is a broad one: “the impulse to take candid pictures in the stream of everyday life.” (Howarth and McLaren, 2011, p.9)

Helen Levitt (1913-2009, NYC) — worked for commercial photographer, inspired by Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Images of children and immigrant communities in NYC. Works included in the inaugural exhibition of MoMA’s photography department in 1939. Guggenheim Fellowships in 1959 and 1960.

Joel Meyerowitz (1938- , NYC) — an early advocate of colour photography. Worked with different formats for street photography, from 35mm to large format. Only photographer allocated unrestricted access to Ground Zero in Manhattan. Guggenheim Fellow twice and awarded a Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society in 2012.

Paul Graham (1956- , Stafford, UK) — sequential colour prints of people engaged in daily life. Twelve-volume photobook A Shimmer of Possibility (2007) calling attention to overlooked activities or places. First show 1986; color photographs with Martin Parr and Richard Billingham.

Joel Sternfeld (1944- , NYC) — large-format color photographs of American towns and cities. Disused places, derelict sites, dispossessed people. Influenced by roadside photography of Walker Evans. Began producing colour photographs during the early 1970s after reading both Johannes Itten’s and Josef Albers’s theories on colour. Has taught photography at Sarah Lawrence College since 1985.

Martin Parr (1952- , Epsom, UK) — themes of consumerism, globalization, and social class. Switched from black-and-white to colour photography in 1984, became a member of Magnum Photos in 1988. Photobooks, filmmaking and fashion editorial work.

Fred Herzog (1930- , Stuttgart, Germany) — moved to Vancouver in 1953. Substantial body of images of life in Vancouver over 50 years. Much of the work was produced on slow Kodachrome stock. Anticipated “New Colour” of Stephen Shore and William Eggleston? Active in Vancouver’s art scene while working as a medical photographer from 1957 to 1990.

Brandon Stanton (1984- , Marietta, GA) — photographer, blogger and author of Humans of New York. Set out to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and plot portraits on a city map. This became the “Humans of New York” Facebook page, which he started in November 2010 and later a book of the same name. Street portraits with short quotes from subjects.

References

Campany, D. et al. (2017) Fred Herzog: modern color. Hatje Cantz.

Howarth, S.and McLaren, S. (2011) Street photography now. Thames & Hudson.

Parr, M.and Phillips, S.S. (2007) Martin Parr. Phaidon Press.

Stanton, B. (2013) Humans of New York. St. Martin’s Press.

Westerbeck, C. and Meyerowitz, J. (2005) Joel Meyerowitz. Phaidon.

Research Point — Photojournalism

On balance, I think it is fair to say that photography by itself has rarely, if ever, moved the public to action. The Time article demonstrates this by showing how successive genocides have been documented and how the cry, “never again!” is more accurately “again and again.” Regimes have set up mini-bureaucracies to catalogue their victims, little realizing (or caring?) how these records will be used to convict the perpetrators of crimes against humanity once the inevitable change of fortunes occurs.

People who have participated in successive waves of mass murder and other crimes have had available to them the images of previous horrific acts, but it has not changed their behaviour. In some cases, photographs might have helped to motivate them and/or provide them with terrible trophies.

As for the viewing public, rather than the actors themselves, I think that photography can indeed distance us from, and inure us to, the horrific. Acts that could be called “unspeakable” are somehow viewable, and we can get used to it. Images that we might only have imagined imperfectly (mass murder, cruelty and abuse, violence) are now available to us at the press of a button — we no longer have to imagine them. Yesterday’s “unthinkable” can become today’s new baseline. And, as Rosler suggests, showing the disturbing in photojournalism can be passed off as altruistic and in the service of a higher good, while clearly benefiting (only?) the photographer. The danger is not just that photojournalism can feed voyeurism, but that it can make a commodity out of someone else’s suffering. Your pain becomes my art, becomes my reputation, my livelihood, my profit motive.

I wonder, too, if photography (including photojournalism) is more often a way to confirm opinions already held by viewers. The public does not feel compelled to change by the images it sees, but finds in them evidence for the views it already holds. We see what we want to see. And when the image in front of us is too challenging, we can always reinterpret it or reject it outright (“fake news”). In this way, the value of photojournalism may lie not so much in its ability to change opinion, but to galvanize and justify it once it has begun to form. So, should we stop producing photojournalism? I think the answer is clearly no, for there is a definite benefit to documenting happenings, even (and sometimes especially) those that are horrific. But we may want to think about how and where images are displayed — the context as well as the narrative — and be more honest as producers and consumers of images about their real and potential impacts.

References

Rosler, Martha (1993) ‘In, Around, and Afterthoughts: On Documentary Photography’ In: Bolton, Richard (ed.) The contest of meaning: critical histories of photography. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Time. 2019. Available at: http://time.com/3426427/syrian-torture-archive-when-photographs-of-atrocities-dont-shock