This document provides information about a visual art open studio course assignment on materiality and photomedia. It features descriptions of works by several artists including Hélène Boisrenaud, Garth Evans, Anne Brigman, Hannah Höch, Irving Penn, Rea, Abigail Reynolds, Brook Andrew, Martin Smith, Christopher Russell, and Elisa Sighicelli. The works utilize a variety of materials and presentation methods like inkjet print, color slide projection, gelatin silver print, collage, platinum palladium prints, digital direct positive color photographs, cut and folded book pages, and backlit C print on lightbox. Students are asked to review several images and consider how the artist exploits and
2. Hélène BOISRENAUD
Papier froissé et division topologique
(Crumpled paper and topological division)
2013
Inkjet print
Multiple materialities
A photograph can have several
different types of materiality:
• Subject matter
• Camera
• Suite
• Presentation media
When analysing photographic
works, it is useful to consider the
range of different types of
materiality that are active in a work.
8. Hélène BOISRENAUD
Papier froissé et division topologique
(Crumpled paper and topological division)
2013
Inkjet print
Week 6 Preparation
Review the 4 images in the Resources section
and make some notes at least 2 works.
How is materiality being exploited by the
artist?
What affects and/or concepts are conveyed by
the materiality of work?
Remember to consider the materiality of
• Subject matter
• Camera
• Suite
• Presentation media
In this module, we will continue our studies of materiality by considering photomedia, the collective term that covers both ‘traditional’ film-based photography, as well as its contemporary digital variants.
Here, I will study the material aspects of a series of works of photography that span the last 100 years.
The aim is to model some of the considerations you should bring to your Oral Presentations where we are asking you to reflect on the material qualities of a work of art and consider what the material properties of the the artwork bring to what it ’says’ or the feelings it conveys.
A photograph can have several different types of materiality:
Subject matter
the things that are photographed often have their own material qualities
Camera
The lens, film and recording process also contribute their own specific material properties
Suite
The editing process
Media
The means via which the image is disseminated also have material qualities (print, screen, projection, transparency)
If we look at this work by Helene Boisrenaud we can observe:
The way the work emphasises the textural and tonal contrast between the paper and the wooden surface that it rests on (SUBJECT MATTER as captured by CAMERA), and
The way that the digital editing process has allowed the image to be divided and rearranged (SUITE)
In this instance, the dimensions of the print were not specified so it is difficult for us to form any interpretation of the effect of PRESENTATION MEDIA.
The resulting image thus has a matter-of factness about it – almost a banality. It records an insignificant, commonplace combination of objects (paper and table) and edits these in a similarly rudimentary way (mathematical division). This is a good example of an artist applying ‘lab-based’ approach to composition to consider the effects. I find the simple fragmentation of this work surprisingly intriguing. Maily because of the way in which the corner wood grain (which would have been a marginal feature of the original image) now becomes the focus.
When analysing photographic works, it is useful to consider the range of different types of materiality that are active in a work
Now let’s look at a few different works to further undersatdn the relationship between materiality and photography
Garth Evans is a British a sculptor who in the 1970s used photography increasingly is his work, initially to documented of processes, but later to capture sculptural ‘works’ found in urban settings (SUBEJCT MATTER). Portals shows his interest in the textures and colours of the city street, but we should also note his use of the slide projector – a mechanical, noisy medium – and the way that it bridges the literal space of sculpture and the illusory space of the photograph (MEDIA). These works use photography as a neutral, objective medium – we might say that Evans, like many Conceptual artists, was interested in repressing the subjective aspects of art in favour of a more documentary or archival approach. This attitude is still part of it’s AFFECT – it exudes a detached, impassive feeling that contrasts with the vibrancy and texture of his subject matter.
“'Portals 1977' is a colour slide-work made in 1977 that is exhibited here for the first time. It projects a succession of images of things found in and on the ground in six cities - Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco and London. Evans regards these images, which encompass grates, grids, manhole covers and doormats, as 'raw material' made by others and found by the artist. Each image is projected for four seconds, before being replaced by another. Representing speculative enquiries by the artist into sculptural possibility, these works provide a window on to his creative process.” Foundation, Henry Moore. ‘Garth Evans: Sculpture Photographs’. Henry Moore Foundation. Accessed 29 March 2020. https://www.henry-moore.org/whats-on/2015/04/02/garth-evans-sculpture-photographs.
In this photograph, American artist Anne Brigman, uses the process of photographic self-portraiture to convey a vision of a body and landscape that are intrinsically connected. An adherent of the movement of pictorialism (the ‘painterly’ use of photography that emerges in the 19th century), Brigman uses soft focus, careful gradations of tones and a dynamic tipping of the camera frame to create a pensive image in which the artist’s body and its natural setting are fused (AFFECT). The gelatin sliver print is the classic high grade form of printing that emerged in the 19th century and really turbocharged the popularity of photography. The silver gelatin printing process allowed for a subtle gradation of tones and we can see the artist exploiting that in this work. The artist used variety in her printing processes too – so while her photographs are editioned, she often printed the images differently to create different textural effects.
“By manipulating their exposures and printing, these photographers were able to simulate the atmospheric effects and tonal relationships that defined the style. This emphasis on process would influence generations of photographers, even after this style faded from popularity.” The Art Story. ‘Tonalism Movement Overview’. Accessed 29 March 2020. https://www.theartstory.org/movement/tonalism/.
From Wikiquote:
Pictorialism is the name given to an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer has somehow manipulated what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph as a means of "creating" an image rather than simply recording it. Typically, a pictorial photograph appears to lack a sharp focus (some more so than others), is printed in one or more colors other than black-and-white (ranging from warm brown to deep blue) and may have visible brush strokes or other manipulation of the surface. For the pictorialist, a photograph, like a painting, drawing or engraving, was a way of projecting an emotional intent into the viewer's realm of imagination.[1] ‘Pictorialism - Wikiquote’. Accessed 29 March 2020. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pictorialism.
Brigman often featured herself as the subject of her images, such as "Soul of the Blasted Pine", for which she received the Birmingham Photographic Society's first silver medal.[13]] After shooting the photographs, she would extensively touch up the negatives with paints, pencil, or superimposition. ‘Anne Brigman’. In Wikipedia, 6 December 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anne_Brigman&oldid=929607707.
Here, Hoch uses the process of collage to create a composition (MEDIA). She has assembled this composition out of printed images from newspapers to create an impression of churning movements of figures, machine parts and text (AFFECT). In the context of Weimar Germany (Germany between the two world wars) we can think of this as a metaphoric reference to the political turmoil of the period (CONCEPT).
“Ranged in the top right corner are the forces of "anti-dada": stern representatives of the late empire, the army and the new Weimar government. Below, in the dada corner, are massed artists, communists and other radicals. Raoul Hausmann is being extruded, shat out really, by a machine to which is affixed the head of Karl Marx. There are less crudely anatomical machines scattered about the metre-wide collage, and female film stars such as Pola Negri battle with moustached emissaries of the old German order. In the bottom right corner, Höch has glued a small map showing the European countries in which women could then vote.” (Dillon, Brian. ‘Hannah Höch: Art’s Original Punk’. The Guardian, 9 January 2014, sec. Art and design. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jan/09/hannah-hoch-art-punk-whitechapel.)
Considered as a material composition, this photomontage removes the printed image from its original context and, through juxtaposition and fragmentation, makes it say something very different. As Dillon points out above, this recontextualization imposes an erratic, diagonal structure upon the image – very different to the gridlike qualities of newpapers and magazines of the time.
Key terms: photomontage, cacophony, chaos, collision, violence, fragmentation, juxtaposition, density, heterogeneity, humour.
Irving Penn was a celebrated portraitist; but from the 1930s onwards, he used everyday objects to create assemblages. Cigarettes is his most minimalist body of work – the works convey the same attention to texture, tone and character that inspired his portraits, but directed towards a very different calibre of subject matter.
By bringing these cigarette butts into his studio and carefully creating these minimalist compositions, he transformed one of the most widely consumed and discarded products of consumer society at the time into a powerful symbolic representation of death and loss (AFFECT). Given that a close friend and heavy smoker had died of lung cancer the year before, we might see these as funereal portraits – images of that imply the death of people, by devoting attention to individual features of each cigarette. Their full-frame scale also gives these tiny objects a monumental quality, that also emphasises their memorial-like impression (CONCEPT).
“It was against this background that Penn learned in 1971 that his mentor and father figure, Alexey Brodovitch—who was never without a cigarette—had died of cancer. Less than year later, Penn began a new project: collecting decaying cigarette butts from the city’s streets and carefully recording them in his studio where these shards of civilization from the gutter took on greater resonance. Laying them out to be photographed, Penn saw their uncanny relationships to individuals and, gathered together, to a nation undone by corporate and government irresponsibility.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ‘Irving Penn | Cigarette No. 82, New York | The Met’. Accessed 29 March 2020. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/714839.
By printing the Cigarettes in the platinum palladium process, Penn also elevated each image to the status of a rare object; many of his most important pictures were printed in platinum, which is the most difficult and demanding of all photographic techniques. The soft, broad tonal ranges and gentle contrasts accentuate the nature of the original objects, further emphasizing their material characteristics.
In this body of work, Rea uses high key colours and innovative digital processes to evoke magazine and billboard advertising. Working in alternating pairs (see inset), the artist presents different worn motifs, juxtaposing images of middle-class consumption (pearls, shoes, gloves) with the recurrent image of a rope noose. The work sets up an symbolic equivalence between the 2 objects – we might note that the rapid economic expansion of 19th century Australia was facilitated by the dispersal of indigenous landowners and blackbirding, the use of polynesian slave labour, in agriculture. The dramatic colour contrast dramatizes this similarity (CONCEPT)
Her use of text – apparently taken from a knot glossary – sets up another layer in the work. Knots are a literal expression of connection. So here the interdependency of the reverse histories (and fortunes) of white and black Australia are emphasised. All of this is thrust into the present by the use of bold, poppy colour and graphic elements (AFFECT)
In this work fragments of the black and ‘white’ body function as blank pages on which text is inscribed. This text, which incidentally reflects the artist’s interest in fishing and knots, foregrounds the differences in black and white experience symbolised by the juxtaposition of the string of pearls and hangman’s noose.
‘Rea’. Accessed 29 March 2020. https://nga.gov.au/retake/retake_art2/fi/00000024.htm.
Week 6 Preparation
Review the 4 images in the Resources section and make some notes at least 2 works.
How is materiality being exploited by the artist?
What affects and/or concepts are conveyed by the materiality of work?
Remember to consider the materiality of
Subject matter
Camera
Suite
Presentation media
Abigail Reynolds works with trajectories, networks and ordering systems. As a starting point she sets in motion a system and set of processes that result in a form being created. She works with materials to bring fugitive knowledge and connections into the immediacy of physical experience. The series of collages “The Universal Now” plays with the idea of puzzle-like quality of something being thought-through. Splicing and joining images issued from second hand tourist guides, atlases and other photographs of the last century, Reynolds then cuts the paper in order to be able to fold it; pushing upwards and outwards. These new three dimensional objects go on to play with the viewer’s perception due to the perspective created by the grid and the changing and moving of the construction.
