Auto Focus by Susan Bright - Excerpt

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AUTO FOCUS THE SELF-PORTRAIT IN CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY SUSAN BRIGHT

The Monacelli Press

CONTENTS

This book is dedicated to Mike and Ruby Reynolds. With special thanks to all the artists and galleries who so kindly assisted me and gave their time and energy to the project. Thanks must also go to the following: Pat Binder, Camilla Brown, Alejandro Castellote, Alasdair Foster, Gerhard Haupt, Jackie Higgins, Graham Howe, Allison Kave, Carrie Levy, Weibke Lister, Paul Moakley, Alison Norstrom, Jeesun Park, Aaron Shulman, Anne Sorensen, Joe Strubble, Toshie Takeuchi, Hedy Van Erp, James Welling and Richard West. And my grateful thanks to all those at Thames & Hudson, especially Jacky Klein, Ginny Liggitt, Katie Morgan, Anna Perotti and Diana Bullitt Perry.

Copyright © 2010 Susan Bright All rights reserved. Published in the United States by The Monacelli Press, a division of Random House, Inc. First published simultaneously in 2010 in the United Kingdom by Thames & Hudson, Ltd., London and by The Monacelli Press, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

INTRODUCTION UNCANNY LIKENESS: PHOTOGRAPHERS PHOTOGRAPHING THEMSELVES 6

01 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 22 02 BODY 60 03 MASQUERADE 98 04 STUDIO AND ALBUM 140 05 PERFORMANCE 180

The Monacelli Press and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bright, Susan, 1969– Auto focus : the self-portrait in contemporary photography / Susan Bright. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58093-300-1 (hardcover) 1. Portrait photography. 2. Self-portraits. 3. Photographers—Portraits. I. Title. TR681.P56B75 2010 770—dc22 2010004383 Printed and bound in [tbc] 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First edition www.monacellipress.com

Notes 218 Further Reading 218 List of Illustrations 221 Index 224

CONTENTS

This book is dedicated to Mike and Ruby Reynolds. With special thanks to all the artists and galleries who so kindly assisted me and gave their time and energy to the project. Thanks must also go to the following: Pat Binder, Camilla Brown, Alejandro Castellote, Alasdair Foster, Gerhard Haupt, Jackie Higgins, Graham Howe, Allison Kave, Carrie Levy, Weibke Lister, Paul Moakley, Alison Norstrom, Jeesun Park, Aaron Shulman, Anne Sorensen, Joe Strubble, Toshie Takeuchi, Hedy Van Erp, James Welling and Richard West. And my grateful thanks to all those at Thames & Hudson, especially Jacky Klein, Ginny Liggitt, Katie Morgan, Anna Perotti and Diana Bullitt Perry.

Copyright © 2010 Susan Bright All rights reserved. Published in the United States by The Monacelli Press, a division of Random House, Inc. First published simultaneously in 2010 in the United Kingdom by Thames & Hudson, Ltd., London and by The Monacelli Press, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

INTRODUCTION UNCANNY LIKENESS: PHOTOGRAPHERS PHOTOGRAPHING THEMSELVES 6

01 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 22 02 BODY 60 03 MASQUERADE 98 04 STUDIO AND ALBUM 140 05 PERFORMANCE 180

The Monacelli Press and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bright, Susan, 1969– Auto focus : the self-portrait in contemporary photography / Susan Bright. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58093-300-1 (hardcover) 1. Portrait photography. 2. Self-portraits. 3. Photographers—Portraits. I. Title. TR681.P56B75 2010 770—dc22 2010004383 Printed and bound in [tbc] 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First edition www.monacellipress.com

Notes 218 Further Reading 218 List of Illustrations 221 Index 224

‘In retrospect, I have actually noticed that I reached for the camera more readily when I was unhappy. I worked the pain into a beautiful object that could be looked at detached from myself, and this consoled me a little. In a way it’s banal, but it is as if art legitimates grief. I think in this way a lot of artists make indecent use of their own unhappy lives as material for their art.’

56 AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BROTHERUS 57

‘In retrospect, I have actually noticed that I reached for the camera more readily when I was unhappy. I worked the pain into a beautiful object that could be looked at detached from myself, and this consoled me a little. In a way it’s banal, but it is as if art legitimates grief. I think in this way a lot of artists make indecent use of their own unhappy lives as material for their art.’

56 AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BROTHERUS 57

ZHANGHUAN ‘The body is the only direct way through which I can know society and society comes to know me. The body is the proof of identity. The body is language.’ Homeland (2001) is a series of photographs of a performance of the same title. Carefully composed for the camera, these images function as stills, documenting actions in which the artist pushes his body to extremes. Zhang has always used his body as a metaphor for the Chinese people and to comment on the rapid social and economic changes taking place in China. His performances and the resulting photographs are radical, politically provocative and, at times, masochistic. In his ongoing and explicit use of his body as a vehicle for self-expression, Zhang tests society’s boundaries of acceptability in artwork. For this series of photographs Zhang – who has worked extensively outside of China – returned to his native land, to the city of Qufu in the Shandong Province. This province has one of the largest populations in the country and some of the poorest living conditions. The quickly developing cities attract farmers and young labourers looking for work, who often abandon their land and villages, leaving behind the elderly, children and increasingly depleted farmland. Zhang has said that on returning to China, he looked at the sky and the earth and found them to be ‘indignant and soulful’, so he created the performance in an attempt to alter that state. He turned his body into something animal, disguising it entirely – apart from his face – with large slabs of raw meat that grotesquely exaggerate his shape. In the images of him burrowing into the ground like an animal, Zhang’s meat ‘suit’ creates a protective sheath around him, but when he stands up, the blood red casing makes it seem as if Zhang’s skin has been flayed.

Left above, left and opposite: Zhang Huan, Homeland, 2001.

64 BODY

ZHANGHUAN ‘The body is the only direct way through which I can know society and society comes to know me. The body is the proof of identity. The body is language.’ Homeland (2001) is a series of photographs of a performance of the same title. Carefully composed for the camera, these images function as stills, documenting actions in which the artist pushes his body to extremes. Zhang has always used his body as a metaphor for the Chinese people and to comment on the rapid social and economic changes taking place in China. His performances and the resulting photographs are radical, politically provocative and, at times, masochistic. In his ongoing and explicit use of his body as a vehicle for self-expression, Zhang tests society’s boundaries of acceptability in artwork. For this series of photographs Zhang – who has worked extensively outside of China – returned to his native land, to the city of Qufu in the Shandong Province. This province has one of the largest populations in the country and some of the poorest living conditions. The quickly developing cities attract farmers and young labourers looking for work, who often abandon their land and villages, leaving behind the elderly, children and increasingly depleted farmland. Zhang has said that on returning to China, he looked at the sky and the earth and found them to be ‘indignant and soulful’, so he created the performance in an attempt to alter that state. He turned his body into something animal, disguising it entirely – apart from his face – with large slabs of raw meat that grotesquely exaggerate his shape. In the images of him burrowing into the ground like an animal, Zhang’s meat ‘suit’ creates a protective sheath around him, but when he stands up, the blood red casing makes it seem as if Zhang’s skin has been flayed.

Left above, left and opposite: Zhang Huan, Homeland, 2001.

64 BODY

GAÜECA In the series Me, Myself and I (2002–04), Spanish artist Gaüeca mocks the hierarchies and clichés of art history and the commercial art market. He assumes the roles of people involved in the often elitist and snobbish art world, including artists, curators, dealers and collectors. The photographs serve as a comment on the subtle manners and behaviour that can seem extraordinarily bewildering to those on the outside of that environment. The project reveals the insecurities that thrive in the unstable world of taste and fashion, and which often dominate the business side of art, commodifying the work and turning it into a cultural product. When Gaüeca places text within some of the images, it reads like the thought bubbles of narcissistic and complacent characters who wish to reinvent themselves in order to fit in; ‘Nobody Knows I Am Working Class’ one image reveals, while another divulges ‘Nobody Knows My Dad Died Yesterday’. In a complex layering of identity Gaüeca is pretending to be a person who is in turn pretending to be somebody else, and through this multitude of identities he asks who places value upon artistic creation and why. In terms of style and composition, the portraits are elegant and meticulously crafted, and Gaüeca mimics the visual language of advertising as well as famous works of art, from seventeenth-century paintings by Dutch artist Jan Vermeer to contemporary works by Bruce Nauman. He uses deadpan humour to shatter the aura that surrounds the making and selling of fine art, and manages to sidestep childish mockery due to his intimate knowledge of the conventions and codes of art history and the art world.

Opposite: Gaüeca, Nobody Knows Vermeer Told Me This, 2004. Right: Gaüeca, Untitled, 2002. Pages 132: Gaüeca, Nobody Knows My Dad Died Yesterday, 2002. Page 133: Gaüeca, Untitled, 2003.

130 MASQUERADE

GAÜECA 131

GAÜECA In the series Me, Myself and I (2002–04), Spanish artist Gaüeca mocks the hierarchies and clichés of art history and the commercial art market. He assumes the roles of people involved in the often elitist and snobbish art world, including artists, curators, dealers and collectors. The photographs serve as a comment on the subtle manners and behaviour that can seem extraordinarily bewildering to those on the outside of that environment. The project reveals the insecurities that thrive in the unstable world of taste and fashion, and which often dominate the business side of art, commodifying the work and turning it into a cultural product. When Gaüeca places text within some of the images, it reads like the thought bubbles of narcissistic and complacent characters who wish to reinvent themselves in order to fit in; ‘Nobody Knows I Am Working Class’ one image reveals, while another divulges ‘Nobody Knows My Dad Died Yesterday’. In a complex layering of identity Gaüeca is pretending to be a person who is in turn pretending to be somebody else, and through this multitude of identities he asks who places value upon artistic creation and why. In terms of style and composition, the portraits are elegant and meticulously crafted, and Gaüeca mimics the visual language of advertising as well as famous works of art, from seventeenth-century paintings by Dutch artist Jan Vermeer to contemporary works by Bruce Nauman. He uses deadpan humour to shatter the aura that surrounds the making and selling of fine art, and manages to sidestep childish mockery due to his intimate knowledge of the conventions and codes of art history and the art world.

Opposite: Gaüeca, Nobody Knows Vermeer Told Me This, 2004. Right: Gaüeca, Untitled, 2002. Pages 132: Gaüeca, Nobody Knows My Dad Died Yesterday, 2002. Page 133: Gaüeca, Untitled, 2003.

130 MASQUERADE

GAÜECA 131

ANASAL-SHAIKH Memory of Memories (2001) began as a site-specific installation in a garage and balcony in the Gudaibiya district of Bahrain’s capital city, Manama. This location was important, as Al-Shaikh wanted the site to be relevant to his investigation of memory, and this building reminded him of the house in Saudi Arabia where he grew up. Some of the photomontages from the project are composed of family pictures juxtaposed with historical images or ephemera. One group of photographs combines pictures of Al-Shaikh as a child posing on a balcony with an image of the identity card his father used when he was working on the Saudi Arabian railway in the 1950s. During that period many Bahrainis left to work in Saudi Arabia, which was creating a modern urban infrastructure and was in need of manual labourers. In another work, a photograph of Iraqi military equipment destroyed in the Gulf War in Kuwait in the 1990s is placed on top of a picture of Al-Shaikh as a boy with a group of smiling children. A picture of the artist as a child with grapes, an apple and a banana floating in the air in the foreground, refers to a recurring dream he had in his childhood, in which he looked up at a tree and saw that it bore all three fruits. Each of these fruits appears individually in other photographs, suggesting the fluid boundaries between real memories and those that are made up or re-remembered through exposure to family albums. The diagram of geometric shapes that appears in all of the images reflects components of Al-Shaikh’s heritage, combining elements of Arabic and Islamic cultures and beliefs. The large installation, from which these pictures are taken, shifts from investigations of personal identity to wider explorations of national identity in the Middle East.

Opposite: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 1, 2001. Above right: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 3, 2001. Right: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 6, 2001.

148 STUDIO AND ALBUM

AL-SHAIKH 149

ANASAL-SHAIKH Memory of Memories (2001) began as a site-specific installation in a garage and balcony in the Gudaibiya district of Bahrain’s capital city, Manama. This location was important, as Al-Shaikh wanted the site to be relevant to his investigation of memory, and this building reminded him of the house in Saudi Arabia where he grew up. Some of the photomontages from the project are composed of family pictures juxtaposed with historical images or ephemera. One group of photographs combines pictures of Al-Shaikh as a child posing on a balcony with an image of the identity card his father used when he was working on the Saudi Arabian railway in the 1950s. During that period many Bahrainis left to work in Saudi Arabia, which was creating a modern urban infrastructure and was in need of manual labourers. In another work, a photograph of Iraqi military equipment destroyed in the Gulf War in Kuwait in the 1990s is placed on top of a picture of Al-Shaikh as a boy with a group of smiling children. A picture of the artist as a child with grapes, an apple and a banana floating in the air in the foreground, refers to a recurring dream he had in his childhood, in which he looked up at a tree and saw that it bore all three fruits. Each of these fruits appears individually in other photographs, suggesting the fluid boundaries between real memories and those that are made up or re-remembered through exposure to family albums. The diagram of geometric shapes that appears in all of the images reflects components of Al-Shaikh’s heritage, combining elements of Arabic and Islamic cultures and beliefs. The large installation, from which these pictures are taken, shifts from investigations of personal identity to wider explorations of national identity in the Middle East.

Opposite: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 1, 2001. Above right: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 3, 2001. Right: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 6, 2001.

148 STUDIO AND ALBUM

AL-SHAIKH 149

NANNASAARHELO ‘Choreographies emerge during the night, with the movements of the two sleepers sometimes seeming almost synchronized. Yet they are present in the world of dream, beyond the realm of photography.’ To create the images in the series Sleep with Me (2007), Saarhelo invited various people to sleep in her bed with her for one night, and then photographed the experiences. She produced a suite of seven or eight photographs of herself with each ‘guest’, and titled each work with the name of the second person. Saarhelo placed the camera above the bed and programmed it to take a picture every half hour throughout the night. As a result of having the photographs taken automatically by a timing device, Saarhelo ceded some control over the images, and was therefore often unsure of whether the results would be aesthetically interesting. Portraiture is commonly understood as a balance of power between the sitter and the artist; by placing herself in the frame, Saarhelo further relinquished her control. She placed herself and her co-sleeper in a vulnerable position, in which neither had any influence over how he or she looked when sleeping. In describing this aspect of the work Saarhelo has said, ‘Sleeping together is a situation of trust and unconscious dialogue between friends or strangers. Although the photos include individual people, it is difficult to make any valid assumptions about their identities. The quality of photographed human relations thus becomes subjected to the viewer’s own associations and experiences.’ The limitations that Saarhelo imposed upon the project echo the limitations of what photography can and cannot capture. These portraits are carefully pared down so that the eye is drawn to the flesh and the recurring appearance of the artist, who has managed to create a composite self-portrait of herself in the presence of changing bedfellows. Opposite top: Nanna Saarhelo, Sleep with Me, Tuomo K (detail), 2007. Opposite bottom: Nanna Saarhelo, Sleep with Me, Pihla (detail), 2007.

196 PERFORMANCE

SAARHELO 197

NANNASAARHELO ‘Choreographies emerge during the night, with the movements of the two sleepers sometimes seeming almost synchronized. Yet they are present in the world of dream, beyond the realm of photography.’ To create the images in the series Sleep with Me (2007), Saarhelo invited various people to sleep in her bed with her for one night, and then photographed the experiences. She produced a suite of seven or eight photographs of herself with each ‘guest’, and titled each work with the name of the second person. Saarhelo placed the camera above the bed and programmed it to take a picture every half hour throughout the night. As a result of having the photographs taken automatically by a timing device, Saarhelo ceded some control over the images, and was therefore often unsure of whether the results would be aesthetically interesting. Portraiture is commonly understood as a balance of power between the sitter and the artist; by placing herself in the frame, Saarhelo further relinquished her control. She placed herself and her co-sleeper in a vulnerable position, in which neither had any influence over how he or she looked when sleeping. In describing this aspect of the work Saarhelo has said, ‘Sleeping together is a situation of trust and unconscious dialogue between friends or strangers. Although the photos include individual people, it is difficult to make any valid assumptions about their identities. The quality of photographed human relations thus becomes subjected to the viewer’s own associations and experiences.’ The limitations that Saarhelo imposed upon the project echo the limitations of what photography can and cannot capture. These portraits are carefully pared down so that the eye is drawn to the flesh and the recurring appearance of the artist, who has managed to create a composite self-portrait of herself in the presence of changing bedfellows. Opposite top: Nanna Saarhelo, Sleep with Me, Tuomo K (detail), 2007. Opposite bottom: Nanna Saarhelo, Sleep with Me, Pihla (detail), 2007.

196 PERFORMANCE

SAARHELO 197

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