… Dr. Marcus Bunyan reviews this exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago…

… i saw a review of the show a while back, made me wish i could afford to get to Chicago…

This is a harrowing exhibition. In reality, in the 21st century, it shouldn’t be, for the problems that it investigates – the psychological, physical, and emotional realities people encounter in the years leading up to, during, and after fertility; the lack of open acknowledgement of pleasure, the lack of access to abortion, trauma, and the loss of fertility – should not longer exist. Women’s bodies are not vehicles for reproduction as see through a patriarchal, capitalist lens.¹

_“I’m trying to visualise a history of misogyny so we don’t forget what’s in the past and don’t get too comfortable in the present; so we take a look at things that sometimes we don’t want to – in a visual way that doesn’t make you just turn the page but makes you engage somehow and think a little bit.”²

… although there is lots of noise on the bridge, the views are stunning…

… and it’s a good walk, nearly 15k steps from my front door to the other side and back…

… it’s good thinking time… i have begun to crystallize plans for reconfiguring my web presence, stay tuned…

… this post intrigues me immediately and locks me in with this image:

Susanne Bartsch and a friend © Rafael Fuchs

Photographer Rafael Fuchs reflects on his early work shooting fashion for the cult nightlife zine that captured the magic and madness of the club scene.¹

… fascinating article, the body of work by its very nature conceptual… it covers a period of time that i lived in NYC and was only vaguely aware of this scene as i am not the party animal in this sense though it is the kind of scene i would have liked to experience at least a small amount of…

… i looked at a number of photo projects this morning before landing on this one… i prefer conceptual projects which this one very much is… here is an intriguing pairing from the book:

Spread from the book “How to Look Natural In Photos” © Beata Bartecka and Łukasz Rusznica

All of the photographs in the book are assembled from the Institute of National Remembrance: Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (IPN), which examines Polish history between the early 20th century and the fall of the totalitarian system.¹

… buy it here…

… an article on David Hockney, as i look through images of his paintings, it occurs to me that his paintings and the work of photographers who stage their photography, Gregory Crewdson comes to mind here, have much in common… in fact, Hockney’s style strikes me as very much zoom driven photographic… here is a Crewdson image from Beneath the Roses:

… what do you think?

… i read about Pixy Liao’s staged photographic work calling into question the patriarchy and its notion of the place of women… it has been getting a lot of attention… there is currently an exhibit at Fotografiska in New York City… one of her images:

After Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, Experimental Relationship series, 2019, © Pixy Liao¹

… the incorporation of this work into the gallery and museum art system is the beginning of its absorption into the patriarchy and neutralization of its message as noted by Abigail Solomon Godeau in quoting Walter Benjamin in Photography at the Dock:

We are faced with the fact… that the bourgeois apparatus of production and publication can assimilate astonishing quantities of revolutionary themes, indeed, can propagate them without calling its own existence, and the existence of the class that owns it, seriously into question²

… this has a tendency to neuter the message… it is interesting as Asian art too, given the Atlanta shootings, it clearly is in opposition to the myth that woman, particularly Asian woman, is/should be passive/submissive…

… Godeau, in discussing the work of Connie Hatch, notes that her work is not easily commodified, existing primarily as performative slide shows, which makes the neutering of its message difficult… Godeau notes:

To refuse to supply the apparatus, as Benjamin and Brecht enjoined, may in fact be possible only by affirming one’s place in the peripheral spaces outside the emporium of high culture.³

Two new arrivals in my photography library. I have developed a keen interest in photography and women. Women in front of the camera. Women behind the camera. Women critiquing photography. As I have said, it’s an odd rabbit hole for an older white American male to go down, but we don’t choose our rabbit holes, they choose us.

Last weekend to see my Dark Matter show at WAAM (Woodstock Artist Association Museum, Woodstock NY) tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, noon to 3PM. Don’t miss this well received show!

Some photos from this morning…