Out of town: August 2005 Archives
It is strange how long it took color photography to come into its own. Now that the photography world is awash in color prints of one kind or another, it's difficult to conceive a time when color was strictly equated with tourist photos and crass commercialism. Actually, that hasn't changed. But art photography now is a strictly color business, and the Philidelphia Museum of Art has ransacked its collection to show some prime examples of the medium's pioneers.
Apples, Great Spruce Head Island, Maine, 1942 by Eliot Porter
In some ways it almost seems that William Eggleston single handedly brought respectability to color. This show rectifies that misconception with its inclusion of even earlier pioneers Eliot Porter and William Christenberry. Porter started his work with nature photography in the 40s and stands out from this crew as more of a technician, objectively cataloging birds and plants but pushing the limits of both his color film and flash technology. The others combined the vivid psuedo realism of color with a focus on the vernacular and the Bruegel-esque everyday - both unwelcome in an art world more concerned with art as a concept than a tangible thing.
Through Nov. 27 at Philadelphia Museum of Art
Last weekend, I visited Kiasma, Helsinki's contemporary arts museum. There are at least two large shows currently on display. Another Life is a collection of Finnish and other European outsider art and the other, Fractures of Life, is ostensibly about some ill-defined sense of political protest and/or bringing cultures together. Like a lot of contemprorary art, it's a mixed bag and detecting the curator's thematic intent is a bit like finding the face of the Madonna in a piece of toast - some see it and others don't. This second show contained a fair bit of photography, which was good since I did not get time to visit the Museum of Finnish Photography as I'd planned. The photographers participating in the Kiasma show exhibit global trends in photography, albeit with local subjects and interests.
Miklos Gaál uses variations in depth of field and depth of focus to create large scale prints that deceive the viewer into thinking the subject is actually a miniature diorama rather than a life photograph. A View from the Edge has written recently on this trend, including a bit on Gaál. Erik's distressed about the simultaneous appearance of this technique in a number of emerging photographers, but I think its exciting to run across this sort of a pattern. Just based on the sheer number of people engaged in art photography worldwide coincidences such as this are inevitable. It's probably always been so, with a handful mastering the process and others being forgotten. The question always boils down to how masters the technique and then drives a thoughtful message through it.
Two other photographers in the show - Ari Saarto and Juha-Pekka Inkenin (above) - mine a local vein similar to Alec Soth's work in the US. Saarto's work representated in the Kiasma show is "architectural" photographs of the ramshackle lean-tos constructed by the homeless. Inkinen catalogs deserted (at least temporarily) rooms piled with the detris of transitory residents. Like much of Soth's work these photographs are protraits in absence, hinting at the personalities of forgotten and ignored segments of society - this time from a Finnish perspective.
Coincidentally, I ran across a Chinese photography show on display at the Tennis Palace Art Museum (?!) when I arrived back in the US. I walked by the building at least twice.
