art opening
You've been over-tagged: Facebook and The Anxiety of Photography exhibit
Sep 29, 2011 | 11:31 am
- Elad LassryWolf (Blue), 2008C-print, painted framePhoto by Elad Lassry
- David Benjamin SherryBirth in Futureverse, 2010Traditional color photograph, custom painted frame40 x 30 inchesPhoto by David Benjamin
Roe EthridgeThanksgiving 1984, 2009C-print45 x 34 inchesPhoto by Roe Ethridge
Annette KelmVenice, Zurich, Brussels, 2009C-print23 1/4 x 26 3/4 inchesPhoto by Annette Kelm
Brendan FowlerFall 2010 (Joel's Phone on Lauro Table 1, Debbie's Chair at Rick'sHouse 4, Lucile Ave Apt Steps 1, Flowers in Patty's Gazebo 2), 2010Archival inkjet prints, frames, and PlexiglasPhoto by Brendan Fowler
Streamers, 2010C-print60 1/4 x 45 1/2 inchesPhoto by Sara VanDerBeek
Erin ShirreffUN 2010, 2010Color HD video, silent17-minute loopPhoto by Erin Shirreff
It was recently pointed out that Facebook now has archived over 140 billion digital photographs, more than 10,000 times as many as the Library of Congress. Only about 20 percent of all digital photos taken end up on Facebook—it's estimated around 380 billion will be taken in 2011 all together, and it's entirely due to the 2.5 billion digital cameras now in use.
As analog cameras fall out of fashion, the sheer number of images we take of ourselves and the world around us seems to make photography essentially less meaningful by default- everything we do and see is online in an instant, without time in between to grow nostalgic, or even the form of a physical memento.
This paradox is at the heart of The Anxiety of Photography, an art and photography exhibit, running through December 30th at the Arthouse at the Jones Center downtown. It explores the unease that photography has always engendered, from the static, haunting images of the earliest photos to the loneliness of art photography in the current digital age. Thirty-seven artworks, some commissioned for the exhibit, revel in the concerns that come with every click of the shutter.
Mark Wyse recontextualizes images from magazines and other sources, framing them as art photos, forcing you to look for hidden meanings that weren't present before. Roe Ethridge is an actual stock photo photographer that uses outtakes to create glossy, artificially perfect images. David Benjamin Sherry takes this glossiness and extends it to the presentation of the work, with custom-painted frames to match each piece. Dirk Stewen and Liz Deschenes experiment with the basis of photography itself, with ink poured on photo paper to create a swirling backdrop, or a simple black photogram that seems to contain multiple shades at once while remaining uniform.
Sara Greenberger Rafferty manipulates found images until they reveal the core of the expressions on people's faces. Matt Saunders takes a similar approach to photos of silent movie stars, revealing ghost-like figures under the layers of the photo surface. Miriam Böhm and Colby Bird embrace the rapidly growing infinity of modern photography, symbolically splintering single images into multiple frames across the illusion of three dimensions.
It explores the unease that photography has always engendered, from the static, haunting images of the earliest photos to the loneliness of art photography in the current digital age.
Leslie Hewitt and Sara VanDerBeek find meaning in the placement of everyday objects within the frame—with more photos than ever, inanimate objects get their own chance to pose.
Finally, many artists went beyond the two dimensional to consider the physical presence of photography that's rapidly disappearing: Matt Keagan sets a photo within one of the walls like a window into a forest just beyond, while Anthony Pearson sculpts flat bronze creations that resemble topography maps, and then the landscape-like photo that results. Erin Shireff paints card stock and uses lighting to make a cityscape nearly indistinguishable from a real one. Brendan Fowler smashes large scales photos into one another, creating a tangle of frames resembling an odd Möbius strip of sorts.
Accompanying all of these works is Mario Garcia Torres's Slide Alignment Dance, a choreographed series of slide projectors that blink test patterns on perpendicular walls, the out-dated machines clacking away in lonely cacophony. As we abandon old forms of picture archival, Torres imagines the mechanics left behind callinng out in despair.
All of these works get at the heart of photography itself, as an act dependent not only on the human eye for composition, symmetry and beauty, but also on the artificial extension of our arms, clutching the man-made devices we need to preserve the images that our memories can't hold forever. You leave knowing that contemporary photography as art is far from dying, and that there's potential for even more experimentation in the times to come. There's potential for beauty in every photograph, even the billions and billions of digital photos that we take every day.
So the next time you're tagged in a Facebook photo, you'll just have to decide for yourself what it means.
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The Anxiety of Photography exhibit is free and runs through December 30th, 2011.
