ASX artists: Daido Moriyama and Kara Walker

The first artist I came across on the american suburb x website that interested me was Daido Moriyama.  I found a review of one of his works called "Labyrinth" (2012) which is a book made up of contact sheets.  Each contact sheet is almost supposed to be seen as one picture, one image.  He rearranged and remixed negatives from his past years of work and put them together to create new images.  There are 300 pages with thousands of "snapshots of black and white contact sheets...".  In a couple examples of contact sheets shown, the individual pictures on each sheet are of the same subject just seen from different angles.

Especially the contact sheets of the woman in the hat and the legs in the fishnet stockings capture my attention.  They seem dark and mysterious like there's something about them that is not right, it is uncomfortable.  What I also find interesting about these two is that there is a clear femininity being shown but the softness that femininity is (supposed to be) is contrasted with a twisted dark sad feeling.  The review of this book talks about certain themes that reappear: "Women appear, often naked, with an asexual eroticism."  This seems very true to me, as I look at these contact sheets the woman seems alone with herself, she is interacting with the photographer and the camera but perhaps it's because when you put all of the images together, it just seems like the subjects are figuring out their bodies, they are set on themselves, they're mostly interested in that.
The reviewer also talks about Moriyama's use of clothing.  He has, for example, this woman contort her legs and body while wearing fishnets and she is seen from many different sides.  And you think you know what he is trying to say with the work but then contact sheets like those are followed by street photographs of New York City in the 70's.  This is confusing which is why Moriyama chose to call this project "Labyrinth".  I am a huge fan of the word labyrinth and I think it definitely describes the confusion and running in circles that this book is.






The second artist I came across was Kara Walker.
In an interview called "Rise Up Ye Mighty Race!" (2013)
She was first introduced to an image of a black girl with a caption "Some Class, Eh?" and Kara realized a stereotype that she might be perceived as.  She made a series of drawings for many years called "Negress Notes" many are of white girls/white people harming black girls/people.
She had started to do cutouts, silhouette pieces that acted as wanting to enter the patriarchy, be equal in society but not being able to be powerful because of society.  The first exhibit that showed the silhouette pieces was called "Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b'tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart".  In this exhibit she referenced known books like "Gone with the Wind" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin".  She took some scenes from each book and remade them into the silhouettes.  She wanted to show the themes of racism that these books show.  She used black paper to infuse the overall blackness that she wanted her images to convey and show herself, her own body in her art.
Kara Walker's art is extremely interesting for me because everything I have seen from her is very big and simple-seeming, with just using blocky black and white.  But the issues that she is talking about are so big with the longest history that is told in her silhouettes.  There is a brutality, a hardness in her silhouette scenes.  Mostly brutality against black women.  She shows the oppression of black women that existed and still exists.  The silhouettes almost are reminiscent of fairy tales but turn into dark fairy tales when you realize what the scenes are depicting.

This work is very inspiring to me because it is feminist, but a different kind that I do not have a lot of experience with because I am white and do not face the same oppressions as a black woman.  But i am very interested in how women are seen in media, in society, and the way Kara Walker explains and depicts women in her silhouette works are very intriguing to me.  Because they include the history that is connected with black women but it also includes the present and how it affects black women.
I want to be able to show a past struggle with women and include the present feelings towards women in my photography, it's something I am still struggling with.

Ted Papageorge on Henri Cartier-Bresson

     Ted Papageorge delightfully recounts Henri Cartier-Bresson's life in this article.  He grew up in a wealthy household in 1908.  In his artist career, he actually started out as a painter, and went to school to study it.  And then in 1931 he spent time on the Ivory coast and started concentrating in photography.  A little later in the 30s he started to work on films and documentaries to help out other artists.  He was also taken prisoner by Germans and finally escaped on his third attempt three years later in 1943.  He then became one of the founders of Magnum Photo with Robert Capa, David Seymour, Williams Vandivert, and George Rodger in 1947.
     Ted calls Bresson arguably "the greatest photographer who's ever lived" and was someone who looked up to the writer Rimbaud.  Rimbaud was known as capturing the young genius mind and Bresson was attracted to that.  Ted writes about his friendship with American couple Peter and Gretchen Powel, who introduced him to the work of Atget and Kertesz.  Later Bresson had an affair with Gretchen.  He also writes about Bresson's bad temper and how he wasn't really friends with that many other photographers.  He probably thought highly of himself, was a bit conceited.
     Cartier-Bresson completed a book called The Decisive Moment made in 1952.  Ted talks about the sexual content in the book and how it impacted the society when it was seen.  There were even some photos edited out of the book: "the brothel-keeper and the 'gay'".
     Ted Papageorge talks very highly of Henri Cartier-Bresson, but also mentions the awkward unfriendliness towards people in general but mostly other photographers.  His work is a great success and will always be known, and it will always have power.  

3 Influential photographers

     Andre Kertesz's work comes from mostly the early and mid-nineties.  He was born in Budapest and moved to Paris in 1925, then in 1936 he moved to New York and took a bulk of his photos there.  He wasn't a surrealist or a strict photojournalist but existed somewhere in between the two.  I find his photographs really interesting to look at because they are weird.  He uses juxtaposition in many of his images which I really like and am inspired by.  After looking through his work I was inspired to not choose the composition that would look "nice" or "even".  I tried to look at things a different way.  I  also am inspired by his work because it made me want to look for things that are strange and abnormal.  And find feelings in photographs where you didn't think there could be.  Instead of finding comfort in photographs which is something I normally like doing, I am starting to try to find weirdness and uncomfortableness.  
     Something else Kertesz does is he crops photographs weirdly.  And not all of his croppings are the same.  Some photographers have a specific way of cropping that they stick to.  Although I have always admired that I know as a photographer I am not like that.  I always like to try different ways of cropping things.  Recently I have been cropping things differently to add a stranger tone to the photo.

     Laurie simmons is an artist that I heard of just in the past few months.  She uses women as her subject a lot of the time but its mostly not just a human woman.  She manipulates the woman/female human figure and turns it into doll form.  She plays a lot with the ideas of typically what a woman is or was expected to do (I'd like to think our society is a bit progressive).  She uses simple ideas like that women have to maintain perfect figures (the use of dolls), that women have to "take care of the house" a lot of her set-ups have to do with houses or kitchens, where a woman is most likely expected to be.  I feel like she has a somewhat feminist approach to her work, because she seems to be trying to tear apart the expectations and norms that are attached to femininity and womanhood.  I am really interested in doing that as well.  

     A series she has called Walking & Lying Objects features photographs of different dolls legs with an object where the dolls torso should be.  Each doll is photographed in a different light, some in black and white, but most in color.  Most dolls are photographed with various objects on top that seem to be "feminine" like a house (for a mother) and a handbag (for all fashionable women).  And later on in the images, there is a doll with a gun for a torso and it looks to be lying down.  A couple later is a more disturbing looking image of dolls legs with a gun top.  

     I think some sort of idea that she wanted to convey was no one is allowed to talk about or venture into the "dark side" of women-identifying people.  Women are allowed to be one thing.  I took a photograph that was related to this series (it was pointed out to me afterwards).  It is a photograph of my mom.  She is wearing only a tight tank top almost as a dress, and is holding up napkins to conceal her face.  It's a strange photograph and actually kind of pushed me in a direction I now realize I'm interested in.  Taking ideas of femininity and making them uncomfortable and awkward to look at, almost wrong.  

     Jacques Henri Lartigue is another photographer who's art I have come across just recently.  I am very attracted to black and white photography of people that have humor behind them.  Like Kertesz, Lartigue did work throughout the 1900s, but Lartigue shot mostly people.  He  found moments that seemed almost to mock the subjects in them.  He liked to find humor in most of his photographs, which I really admire.  His photographs make me want to find humor in everything.  Even though most of his photographs don't inspire my idea for my final project, the intention behind many of his photographs is something I want to include in my intentions.  I can keep with my main idea and have in mind humor for some of the photos.  For him it seemed that he found the perfect moment where everything seems strange, funny, or off.  I want to try to get better at paying close attention to finding the moment when someones face contorts, or something abrupt happens.

     My idea for my final project has to do with people looking at themselves.  But I am making that broad.  I am interested in people critiquing themselves because it's something almost everyone does.  I like the idea of cinematically capturing parts of peoples lives that somehow show them reflecting on themselves.  Some photos will be set-up, some will have symbols and some photos will look a little more like everyday scenes.  Even though this seems somewhat narrow I am going to try to keep the idea broad - it will be a lingering idea that I want to capture people looking at themselves or thinking about themselves, or it being hard to face themselves, or loving themselves.