William Legoullon, Table from Intermission 
William Legoullon, Join Us at Night from Intermission
William Legoullon, The Oleander from Intermission
William Legoullon, Deanza’s Wall from Intermission
Read Intermission Statement HERE.
William Legoullon, Homeless Doorways, Phoenix Arizona from Dust
William Legoullon, The Domes, Casa Granda, Arizona from Dust
Michael Lundgren, Untitled from Transfigurations
Michael Lundgren, Untitled from Transfigurations
Michael Lundgren, Untitled from Transfigurations
Michael Lundgren, Untitled from Transfigurations
I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life. - Jack Kerouac
Too many clouds here in Texas, I am having serious withdraws from all those endless days of sunshine in Arizona. Here are some artists from the desert state and from my program at asu.
Tara Logsdon, Bear with us, In Flux Installation in 2010. the project ignited vacant spaces throughout the valley. read more .artistwebsite
Bob Carey, Blue Palms artistwebsite
[both images] Matthew Moore and Mike Lundgren, Public Service Announcement 2009 artistwebstie.
Bryon Darby, Seventy Flights in Ninety Minutes 2010 artistwebsite
A make-shift video recording of my final, final critique as an undergrad photo art student.
I apologize for how terribly inarticulate I sound during it. I had been dreading the last critique in Matthews Hall Room 224, since the moment I realized it would soon be over. I have had every single photography critique in that worn down room for the past five years. The abused and lovingly punctured corked walls became my safe escape, my sought sanctuary. Terribly nostalgic, I feared the last time my photographs would be pinned up on those walls, when my turn would at last, be over. The conversation would finally come to an end.
And so, when the moment did arrive, words got lost as they often do. The critique overall, is rather anti-climatic and average. The class was an unconventional photo class and the final projects were varied and individually based. Just thought I would share the moment.
A new picture of my lovable fat cat George, who made it into the brilliant unofficial Matthew’s Hall photo kids year book, AKA Hayley Brunetto’s departing masterpiece, Photo Kidz, Cat Pix
Can you find him?
Here is the final product of my stranger assignment. My portraiture teacher set only one perimeter, that we make a series of portraits of strangers. There were many different approaches to this request. Some classmates, the more shy ones, photographed strangers from a distance, capturing this “big-brotheresque” zoomed view, of people being photographed when they aren’t aware they are being photographed. One girl asked one friend for a phone number of someone she knew, she contacted that stranger, photographed her, then asked her for a phone number of a new friend. Her project presented a slew of people who are separated, yet so connected, an idea that I am very interested in as well. Other people walked around and approached random people, and attempted to make an honest portrait of someone they just barely knew.
There were many different approaches to getting to the final product, I decided to think about my own consumerism as well as the small connections I have with random strangers each and every day. So each time there was an exchange of commerce for a product as well as when there was a random interaction with an employee, I would take their photograph. I thought this was an interesting territory to enter due to my daily interactions and routines. My father has for a long time poked fun at my mother and me, for our ability to engage with strangers on a consistent basis. For example, the grocery store clerk, who comments on my abundance of fresh veggies, asks me what I am making for dinner, which sparks a quick conversation about a recipe I found from a book my mother sent me from Texas. From one visit this stranger knows just a tiny bit about me and I know just a little bit about them. Factor in, that I generally shop at the same places, it is easy to see how these strange, relationships form between the employee, and me, the consumer. I thought about documenting the dates and amount spent at each place and somehow tying that into each photograph, but as of now, I don’t think I want that information there. I also encountered problems with businesses and people that wouldn’t let me make the photograph, as well as what to do with the instances when I made a purchase from a machine. ( At the movie theater, I purchased my ticket from a kiosk.) I left out these types of images, to keep the conversation a little more focused. Adding this element I think would cast a shadow over the portraits, and make it just about this extinction and replacement.
I used this project to really think about where I am going, what I am purchasing, who I am purchasing that from and thinking about what that all really means. Please as always, let me know what you think!
Today I heard a quote by Nan Goldin. It went something like this..
“I started photographing after my sister died, because I never wanted to lose anyone again.”
This pulls me back to that area of truth. We all photograph to remember, to document. It is fact, it is one of the most generic uses of photography there is. This quote, it’s honest. A photograph gives us something, something not tangible, something that we don’t need to ever be tangible. It gives us something better then physical actuality. It gives us the power of memory and recollection. But which is real? Which is the authentic experience? Theres some sort of ambiguity with photography that people think they NEED it to gain validity. People take their cameras on vacations to prove of “these authentic experiences.” My boss was telling me of a time, she was at an art museum in Paris waiting to meet a friend. She sat back and began observing. What she noticed was peoples complete disconnect with actual reality. One man completely encountered ALL the art on the wall, filtered through his camera lens, glued in front of his face. Because a photograph is a document of experience?
But again, how real is that experience? How does the photograph truly function? Is it a defense mechanism, like Nan Goldin, a way to hold on and recall the things you never want to let go of? Or can it be a valid replacement for the actual?
“Everyone’s waiting for this authentic experience, preventing them from actually having it.”- Dr. Sara Cochran.
“Modernity and Its Discontents” is the photography exhibition I have been mainly assisting on during my internship at SMOCA. It features the work of three artist who use various form of film to comment on our modern society with a focus on religion, war, and technology.
Mike Williams is apart of the faculty of my photography program at ASU, though I have yet to have taken a class from him. He intuitively photographs his surroundings using a film camera, though he prints digitally. David Sherman is a video artist, who uses found discarded film reels, and digital recording technologies to create his piece “The Graceless” which is so beautiful and complex. Last is Christian Widmer, my color photography professor at ASU, who is easily one of my favorite teachers. Christian, like Mike Williams, photographs intuitively. His series is shot analog as well as printed analog.
Modernity and It’s Discontents. It’s quite a title, but I think it’s perfect for the name of this show. Like the title, this exhibition is extremely simple, in appearance especially. But in content, it’s pretty complex. All of these artist are commenting on the irony and the setbacks of this modern age we are living in. The things we thought would make us happy, somehow still have left us feeling unfulfilled. Christian’s work dates back ten years, capturing the first decade of the century. His series focuses on this disconnect and discontentment with our society. A photograph of his daughters birth looks less like a routine hospital birth and more like some kind religious laboratory birth, a collaboration between man and science. The persistence references in imagery to looking through reflections and windows reminds the viewer of photography itself. This is a point Mike Williams, makes in his work as well. This theme of the exhibition is subtle, but it’s there. I like this idea as recently I have been thinking a lot about the truth of a photograph. Mike Williams, has this photograph of a deer, that you will undoubtedly argue is taxidermy. It appears unbelievably plastic, lifeless, and fake but I assure you, it’s not. (I got to listen to these discussions between the curator and the artists, and on this photograph Williams suggests that it’s photography that in a way, Killed this deer. So in a way, the image is true.) All of these artist are presenting “truths” but then saying, “Hey, don’t forget, this isn’t THE truth. It’s MY truth.”
All three artists also in some form reference the World Trade Center, the petroleum age, consumerism, and media.David Sherman’s video combines jagged clips with audio arranged in a haunting formation that is easy to follow. I am going to refrain from saying much more, as you should go check out the exhibition for yourself! There will be an opening reception on the 8th from 6:30-9:30 p.m.!
It opens October 9, 2010 – January 2, 2011.
