Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
A Lesson from the Master
There are contemporary photographers whose works interest me and I take note of what they’re doing and compare the involvement of my work with theirs, such as JoAnn Verburg’s landscape and conceptual diptychs/triptychs, or Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photographs. Often I encounter these contemporary photographers’ work through my daily research on internet from galleries or museum collections.
As interesting as many contemporary artists’ works appear to me, I find it common to today’s art practice that many photographic works are too slick or too polished that there’s a general family resemblance among different artists’ work. Most works don’t address their strength through a persistent movement over time with integrated visual structure that represents the uniqueness of the photographic medium both on physical and the mental levels developed by the photographer. On the contrary, the merit goes to the technique and often the technique lures the viewers’ eyes so much that the allure of the lovely image itself stops its accomplishment there and couldn’t go further, deeper.
Although some artist’s work engaged with specific issue or theme consistently, there seem more similar works repeating what the artist is already good at than a further dialectic relationship between then and now of the artist’s work over time. It’s easy to shy away from further self-imposed challenge if your works are well-edited in commercialized and professional manner suited for market success. What interest me in contemporary artists’ work remains interesting but as I go forth to study them more, there’s little to gain from them. They’re interesting and that is all.
I’m looking for something that is ambitious to become a master than a successfully recognized artist in the market. I’m looking for a strong work that excites and challenges me to want to make something as good as it. I’m looking for artist who consistently works on similar theme or issue and is willing to further his/her direction implied in his/her already established so called style or accomplishment.
I am pleased to find out the newest works of Ray Metzker-Singular Sensation at Laurence Miller gallery (November 1, 2007 – January 12, 2008). Working on photography for over fifty years, he retains the same strength. Stephen Shore or Ralph Gibson whose works were once relentless in their vision of making fine photography, but now in their recent commercial works, the contamination of market driven style become obvious. It’s encouraging and exciting for me to see a master photographer who is now old and who is still working, not only that, he follows through what was implied in his earlier photographic involvement-dealing with “the abstract quality through representation” via specific urban-scape and landscape, which is extended to become today’s new series of photo-montage and collage. The new series that diminishes the object identity by way of the camera-less process, however, is not abstraction for its own sake but involves the implication of a representational world (landscape or exterior space especially) sometimes created through the nature of the medium without organic life, such as “Photogram # 53″.
