Joseph Holmes has a lot of work on his photography blog, which seems to get regular views and comments. It appears to be a “photo-a-day” type of set up, which shows a pretty prolific shooter. He also has a link to a portfolio site showing a few projects. My overall criticism for the projects in the fine art portfolio is the lack of depth to them - none of the projects has more than 10 images. Whereas some photographers put up portfolios with a large quantity of ideas and images, the ideas in these portfolios feel like they need a LOT more shooting to get to the core of what Holmes is trying to say, so that the work goes beyond the one-note trick of the titles.
His series AMNH explores some interesting questions of perspective and perception. The foundation of photography is the act of capturing light and seeing. In this work, Holmes is capturing light and the act of seeing, but there is a twist to the work - by using the initials in his title to obscure the source of the photographs, he captures a sense of wonder in the images of silhouettes of visitors to the natural history museum. Looking at these images the first time took me a few seconds to gather what I was really looking at. But once I figured it out, it made me want to question the act of looking and seeing - because there’s stages of looking here: the perceptive construction of vision made through the dioramas (non-real looking) and then the observation of the ‘landscape’ behind glass by the visitors to the museum, and then the looking by the photographer and finally the viewer of the photograph. The looking/seeing is all toying with the varying levels of veracity in photographs, and as an idea, I think this is a great start. What I would really like to see is more shooting, and more variety in the photographs, once the idea gets fleshed out more solidly. At this point it works as a one note “ha” of interest. But I sense that there could be more to this work: talking about the act of looking, talking about the nature of pretend experience, or even about the people we see silhouetted.
Amy Burchenal’s site has a very simple and elegant front page that hints at extreme formalism in the work to be found within - and this doesn’t disappoint. But the project I was most interested in was her shift away from straight photography to the collage pieces of Displaced New Yorkers. I get it. Instantly I get it. The project has an emotional content and the actual collage effect keeps it in the realm of emotion, without being so blatant and exploitative about the inspiration of the work, namely the attacks on 9-11.
I was really interesting in seeing the documentation of Patricia Sullivan’s installation. It has a lot of interesting elements - only they’re not all present. It’s hard to move from a photographic artist to an installation artist, but I feel like a lot of the work could have been shown on the website: the Lincoln-like photographs on the back wall, or this image of the piano - as documentation it is beautiful, but it doesn’t tell me anything about the installation.
The parts that are on Sullivan’s site are a video and a photo slideshow, so I’d like to visit those specifically. There’s a bit of the ‘historian’ in the work, since it is so personal. Personal work like this is challenging for a viewer because there are questions the artist must ask: am I showing my experience? When showing my experience, what do I want the viewers to experience?
With Sullivan’s work, I feel as though there is a struggle between the intimate nature of sharing photographs and history with the higher purpose of conveying an experience. I think the audio pieces were a little too drawn out, and could have been easily accomplished using a single, powerful line of text displayed with the photograph, rather than an audio narrative. The video of the stories/interviews with the mother and the sister did nothing to draw me in, because it felt like source material rather than a final product.
I’ve seen several artists (and I include myself in here) trying to use family history and personal history to tell a story or convey an experience, but the struggle is to make it universal while still personal. I have an inkling that other parts of the installation could possibly have been more successful, but since they weren’t shown on the website, I can’t tell. I encourage all artists who work in installation work to show as much as possible in your documentation, and tell as much as possible as well, so that a viewer who can’t see the work in person can still experience the message/medium of your work.
Compared to the rest of her portfolios, which are technically good but don’t give me anything new or different to look at, this work is really a nice surprise. I think the continuation of the collage project and techniques could alter the way she works even with her other types of documentation work.