I was very excited by Brian Ulrich's lecture this afternoon. His images of big box retail stores, abandoned shopping centers and malls, and portraits of consumers are pristine and insightful. Ulrich's subtle commentary on our American consumer culture is savvy and visually interesting. By using film and shooting with a medium format, 4x5, and 8x10 view camera, Ulrich is able to create large and immensely detailed prints that are absolutely gorgeous. As he explained in the lecture, the richness of the film lends a sense of importance to photographs of even the most mundane objects. My personal favorites were from the Dark Stores project, in which Ulrich explored and documented once thriving businesses that are now desolate. As I was viewing these images, the term liminal (from my research post below) kept coming to my mind. It struck me that I felt an affinity for the places depicted in his imagery because they are stuck in a liminal space just like I am. Once bustling and now forgotten, places such as Circuit City, Value City, and many others can now be found on the threshold between past and future. Other people viewing the work may not have gotten the same feeling at all, but for me, Ulrich's images spoke about the liminal state of being between want and reality. Below are a few of my favorite images from both Retail and Dark Stores.
Now that I am thinking about piecing my images together through collage rather than Photoshop, I spent a lot of time looking for artists that work with collages. I found a lot, but their work was generally crazy and did not apply to mine at all. Finally, I found Julien Pacaud, but unfortunately I only found a lot of images, and not a lot of information. However, I decided to blog about him anyway. His work is generally surreal, vintage feeling photo montage. While they all seem to hint at something darker, the first impression of all of his work is somewhat whimsical. Occasionally, his images portray children and families, so our work is related at least through content. I enjoy how his collages are not overwhelmingly cluttered with images like a lot of the others that I found were. They are bold, but simple at the same time. Check out the images below, and see more of his work here.
Unfortunately, I did not find myself particularly inspired by the work of Anders Ruhwald. His lecture was dry and a bit hard to follow, and his work just did not appeal to me personally. In looking at his website, it seems that Ruhwald typically creates sculpture that represents everyday household items - like the chair and mirrors below - in less than typical materials, colors, and situations. While he does this with great skill and devotion, and I can admire him for that, I am not excited by his creations. However, I did find the starkness and contrast of his all black installations in all white rooms interesting (even beautiful for their graphic qualities as photographs.) I am including a few images from "If all man's objects were well designed, joy and harmony would emerge eternally triumphant" below, which are perfect examples of this work. I wish he had gone into more depth on this work, as I think I might have thought differently at the lecture if he had. Please see the images below.
I recently started reading a new book, Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood Without Marriage and Creating the New American Family by Rosanna Hertz. The book explores the stories of several single mothers, what brought them to that situation, and how they are finding their place within it, as well as the societal and psychological implications of their choices and lifestyles. According to the earliest chapters, many women choose to become single mothers in spite of our society's expectations of love-then-marriage-then-children due to their inability (or lack of desire) to sacrifice their independence to a mate. Hertz states that "The combination of priceless children and the tenacity of compulsory motherhood's hold on women is the driving force behind many women's intense desire for children,a desire that collides with the reality of their independent lives. In order to defuse this conflict, women must form a new kind of family, of which mother and child form the core, as they try to make sense of the gradual dissolution of the nuclear family" (pg 5).
That was just one little bit, and it is a very interesting read, but the real point of this post is that through Hertz's book I was (re)introduced to the idea of liminality, and it occurred to me that I myself am in a sort of liminal state.
Liminality (from the Latin limen, meaning "threshold") is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective, conscious state of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes (see Wiki article here). According to Hertz, a liminal state for a single mother is "a period of uncertainty that can last for months, even years, during which a woman's identity is suspended between the person she was and the person she wants to be" (pg 24). For me, this can be directly related to the fact that I had a partner, I was not only a mother, but a person in love. Now that aspect of my life has been removed, and I am left alone in the world of parenting. This is not where I would ideally be, but I love my son and must embrace the situation for his sake (and my sanity.) I am clearly at this place of being in between, and it is time to sink or swim.
I am excited about being able to apply a word to these feelings that I have been having and trying to express, and I think I have come to the realization that I have not been expressing myself effectively through the Photoshopped images I have been posting so far. I am now considering taking a different approach - collage - that I feel will not only open a whole new realm of possibilities for my images, but also help to convey this liminal space that I am currently existing in. In the collaged images I am going to start making, I will most likely appear to be disproportioned and oddly fit into the spaces I will occupy with Henry - but that is how my life is right now. There are a few things in life that I am absolutely certain about - such as the fact that I love Henry more than anything - but for the most part I haven't quite found my place. However, I am quickly walking towards it. I will post new images as soon as I can! I am starting to get excited. It's about time. . .
I thoroughly enjoyed Penelope Umbrico's lecture yesterday. Not only was I inspired by her work itself (the Flickr Suns, empty mirrors, and backwards books were gorgeous!), but by her obvious passion and enthusiasm for everything that she creates. I was particularly entertained by the irony of the way her work - which often speaks about absurdity in our culture - brings absurd actions like obsessive collecting/archiving into her life. I was very impressed by the fresh and relative appearance of even her oldest works, and her ability to bring beauty to all of her conceptual pieces - which is something that I personally struggle with. It completely blows my mind to think of working in such a meticulous and thoughtful manner - collecting hundreds of magazine/catalog clippings, craigslist ads, and ebay listings, as well as performing endless research - but it clearly works for her and the effort shows through in her work. Not only did I find Umbrico to be an extremely inspiring artist, but a very entertaining and thoughtful speaker as well. I was not ready for her lecture to end! Please see a few of my favorites from her work below.
At my last meeting, Jeff and I discussed the possibility of recording the words that Henry says and piecing them together to make full sentences. It is an interesting idea, but I am not sure how to incorporate it. Jeff suggested that I take a look at Charles Spearin's The Happiness Project. Spearin asked friends, relatives, and neighbors to talk about happiness, then paired the natural melody of their speech with musical interpretation. Check out the video below.
Just for reference, I'm posting the image I most recently added to the class blog below.The Photoshop work is not very good, but that's another story. With this image, I tried to show the more humorous side of single motherhood.
