ELF S D N LE A C A T C SPE , S T C RU T S N O C Exhibition catalogue includes an essay and interviews with photographers
Kelly Brown Kerry Clark Catlin Harrison
Photographs by:
Design by:
Kelly Brown k.bspirituality@googlemail.com
Mandana Ahmadvazir designer@viewfinder.org.uk
Kerry Clark clarkkerry@hotmail.co.uk
Also available as a colour, e-publication: www.viewfinder.org.uk/shop
Catlin Harrison catlinharrison@london.com Curated by: Kathleen Brey kathleen@viewfinder.org.uk
Published by: Viewfinder Photography Gallery 52 Brixton Village London SW9 8PS www.viewfinder.org.uk
Interviews by: Laura Berman lauraberman@live.co.uk Catalogue essay by: Dr. Anna Middleton, Arts University College, Bournemouth Edited by: Kathleen Sadler kmgsadler@live.com
First published January 2011 Š The artists and authors. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily the views of the publisher or the editors.
Essay by Kelly Brown
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Becoming Ourselves: Self Photography and Female Identity
How do we become ourselves? The challenges of over-exposure to inauthentic retouched and constructed images for the world of advertising cannot be understated. Our self-identity illness abound, our depressions mount. How do we become ourselves? No elegant, beautiful, Victorian portraits for us but over-exposed, badly lit, red-eyed photographs taken by family members of an intimacy we’d rather not show, of situations and emotions we’d rather not share. We have had our Being trampled by photographic images. The self struggles to be: To become re-united to what it is - the authentic self. To have images that display and recognize this authenticity. Often my four-year old son explores the images of advertising whilst we wait for tube trains. Recently he admired a sequence of images meant to represent muddy fun at a music festival. These images to me were really fake - the smiles, their clothes, the lack of real genuine detail or care: the absence of genuine friendship and love. They were muddy, they smiled, they pretended to be friends, and love each other. My son says they look happy because they were smiling. He does not know that some smiles are paid for constructs. Photographic in-authenticity surrounds us and thwarts our search for true friendship, love, for truth. How can we know the difference between the inauthentic smile and the authentic one? No wonder there is so much depression. Our real lives are no match for these orchestrated idealized ones. Self-portraiture or self-photography is a process. The images are representations of that process. They are the objects, which come to represent that process - a journey. As women artist photographers; we become both muse and artist, both the gazed upon and the gaze. It is a very beautiful and powerful relationship with self. There is both intuition and intention at play; both intimacy and creation; both the languages of seeing and showing. I feel that I have become my authentic self through this process. I make dresses. I photograph myself wearing them. I interact with my ancestors. I don’t think I would walk down the street wearing these dresses, they are too messy and uneven. But in the world that I am creating they exist unquestioningly, timelessly. In Julia Margaret Cameron’s portraits of Victorian women, the women wear the most beautiful costumes that have aspects of the medieval about them. The images are very simple, containing little more than an expression, some wild hair, and details of clothing/fabric. This quality is very much in the consciousness of my work, although my need to explore my identity through spiritual connection with my ancestors is very much my own journey. I have also very much been inspired by Francesca Woodman’s selfphotography from the 1970s. They are very beautiful black and white images
in which Woodman is showing us the investigation of her identity, her moods, her aesthetic, her psychology, her relationship to space and time. What I see happening most though is that Woodman is allowing space to fall in love with her own Being. It is her gaze that is most important, and she is showing just how beautiful, just how awesome, creative and stunningly intelligent she can be. It is an inspiring enterprise. The images are exquisitely authentic. The first self-portrait I remember looking at was Hannah Wilkes’s from the 1970s. It was very different because aesthetics was less important than message. She was naked, looking very sensual but her body was covered in chewing gum vulvas. Saying “Hey now I’m not the sexual object you think I am”. Perhaps the most creative and expressive self-portraits are Claude Cahun’s form the 1920s and 30s; they are theatrical and bizarre. For her the question seems less who am I but what can I be? There are many, many images of selfportraits/ self-photography by women artist photographers. For me it is a medium that works so well because it has help me construct myself, a self that had been lost, due to the over-exposure of images that tell us who and what we should be. I feel that I too have created images that have allowed me to fall in love with myself.
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Interview with: Kelly Brown (KB) Kerry Clark (KC) Catlin Harrison (CH) by Laura Berman • Do you see your photographic project as an exploration of self or as an exploration of gender? KB: My work is self-photography in which I attempt to identify and make connection with female ancestors who may or may not be real. I identify someone, perhaps just from an old photo or experience. I then use my intuition to make a dress, creating connection with this person and then take some photographic self-portraits. In exploring my identity I am looking at selfhood and womanhood- at the journey of my female ancestors, and my relationship to them. I am a gendered being and feminist. But I am much more a spiritual being looking to investigate how we are constructed, and how we can re-construct ourselves. How we can bring beautiful understanding and love into our amazing journey that is life. My project ‘Interaction with my Grandmothers’ is an on-going body of work, which has smaller sub projects like, ‘conversations with Zit Kala-Sa’. I can’t imagine wanting to connect with male ancestors in the same way. There is something about wanting to make contact with the women in my personal history, because it is about sharing experience, making deep connections and understanding myself. CH: Both, in that this project was an experiment in objectification, so using my body as a subject means self and gender are an inescapable part of the content. KC: “Self Portraits as the Feminine” is predominantly an exploration of the feminine, or more precisely what is regarded or stereotyped as the feminine. The works draw on images that pigeon hole the contemporary woman, the constructed female; the hysteric, the frantic performer. By exploring this constructed identity or this construction of gender I am able to explore my own. By taking on these different personas I am able to understand these women and in doing so understand myself. • In constructing identity do you find yourself looking back at the past? KB: I don’t really think of time that has passed as the past: Mostly because I don’t experience time as linear, but as something almost non-spatial. i.e. if time were a map every place would be mapped on top of each other rather than spread out - everything altogether at the same moment. Ancestors are part of our history more than the past, but they continue to live on inside of us and if we are lucky can make contact with us. So in this sense rather than looking at the past I am being in the present. My creative process is very much about being in the moment and is very meditative and releasing. I am however consciously trying to make timeless photos, and what may be being reflected are points in time that I am attracted to, say the 1930s and 1970s. But this is creative and unconscious as intuition is my main methodology.
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CH: Only in the sense that with capturing a likeness comes the awareness of dissolution over time. Looking at old pictures brings this same feeling, I go with Sontag's view on this one - that all photographs are memento mori.
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KC: Absolutely, I believe that there is a common belief that particular ideals, manipulations or constructs are left in the past; that they belong to a different world entirely, for example the role of a female, or the constructed hysterical women in Salpetriere who performed their hysteria in the French asylum for insane and incurable women. They performed for the camera, for Jean Martin Charcot and the images were published in a series of publications entitled Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere [Paris, 1877-1880]. These images were completely constructed; they involved headrests, kneebraces, curtains and scenery. They also required studios and make-up, similar to the requirements of Television Talk shows. By presenting the viewer with this comparison of the past and the modern world they are hopefully left reconsidering the commonalities between the constructed women at Salpetriere and the constructed women in popular culture. • Does your feminine construct involve referencing historical figures, or possibly contemporary women? Why do you choose to make those references in your process? How much do you rely on the viewer to understand or relate to those women that you are referencing? KB: I am not interested in icons, or well known historical figures that we all know through the media or popular culture. I am looking at women who may have been my great-great-great-great Grandmother, and if they are not, adopting them or allowing them to be anyway. I have this beautiful black and white book of photographs of ordinary Basque women washing clothes, cooking and going about daily everyday their lives before the 2nd world war. Anyone of them could become one of my grandmothers. I’ve always been looking for ancestors, for some sort of lineage or personal history. Zit Kala-Sa was a Native American mixed heritage woman who traveled with the Buffalo Bill show. This show kind of exhibited people (the Victorians liked people exhibitions!). All types of Native American Indians dressed up, and performed some sort of staged version of the life and traditions of these people. Gertrude Kasabier was taking photos of the group as they traveled about. One of the photos that really stood out was one of Zit Kala-Sa or Little Red Bird. She was dressed in full traditional costume and looked amazing - stunning, fierce, masculine and beautiful. Later I saw another where she showed her mixed heritage and dressed in traditional European Victorian clothing. It is this photo that I’m making reference to. But more than that I am attempting to make spiritual, word-less communication with this woman. As we may have done in the past: looking towards our ancestors for love, connection and guidance. CH: Portraiture, especially court paintings from the 16th century in Europe, with their astonishing detail of fabric and jewellery are influential to my work, but there are no overt references to particular figures. I make those references partly because the process I use has a similar quality of light to those paintings. Also, we make judgements based upon what we can see on the surface - clothes, physiognomy, to the extent that adornment can become autonomous, it can outlive the wearer and be the only (inadequate), clue to the interior life of the individual. I'm just talking about two-dimensional imagery
here - moving image is another matter entirely. I can rely on the viewer to be fluent in visual language, we have all become so because its the primary means of advertising. KC: Both, the images I make compare the two. This series of images directly reference the photographs of hysterical women taken by Jean Martin Charcot in the 19th Century. My images reflect the tone, size and subject of these images. They also reference the women I see on Television Talk Shows; I mimic the expression and stature of these women. By drawing on both of these typecasts I compare the two, become the spectacle and explore the self. It is important for me, as an artist to compare these women; the performance, the staging, the creation of identity, gender and creation of the self all fascinate me. I feel that by making these references I am able to understand what constructs my identity. It is important for the audience to understand this comparison, which is why I appropriate the titles of the shows. An audience plays a major role in my work. The relationship between viewer, subject and artist fascinate me and by exploring this relationship I hope to engage the viewer and ask them to re-evaluate how they identify and understand themselves, the work, and me as the artist. • Do you reference the history of photography in your process? KB: The history of photography is fairly brief. What interests me most is that we seem stuck. I find myself looking at the same sort of images daily. They are uncreative, unimaginative, about selling objects or experiences advertising images. I find these images annoying and depressing and am looking at ways of creating images that are anti-this type of image. I am much more interested at photography pre-second World war. CH: Indirectly, through the use of camera-less techniques. which probably have more in common with early experiments in photography than the ubiquitous technology that came later. KC: Photography began as a way to categorise the human form. To take the body and objectify it, to rationalise and classify it. This was evident in Jean Martin Charcot and Hugh Welch Diamond’s images of insane women, Duchenne de Boulogne’s electrotherapy photographs and Francis Galton’s composites of criminals; all of which used photography as evidence for their studies. There was no identity, the images were about clarification and classification and that is what interests me in referencing the history of photography; the ability to empathise with such detached, clinical imagery. I am fascinated by the dislocation of reality within a photograph and exploit this in regards to identity and empathy. This is where the viewer is turned into a spectator and the ability to identify with a representation of identity/ reality is questioned. • Do you employ any photographic techniques that borrow from past processes, and if so why? KB: I use only old-fashioned manual cameras which use film and cable releases, although I have a newer Seagull camera which has a lever for taking self-portraits, which is also totally manual. I used to work in the
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darkroom. But don’t really see the point in surrounding myself with chemicals when I can work more subtly on the images at home on the Mac. CH: I make photograms, the directness of having nothing between the light source and the object except glass appeals to me because I get more freedom composing a picture than if I used a camera. 10
KC: Very much so. I use large format cameras and traditional tray based processes, particularly lith processing which mimics the tone and style of old photographs. I believe photography was created to depict reality, to describe the truth and the truth alone. I like to deconstruct that notion, the idea of a photograph as a truth telling form. I like to play with the reality of an image. I mimic the photographic processes of the 19th Century but allow the mistakes to embellish the image, to establish that photography isn’t always the truth it is merely a representation of it. • Is the exploration of self important to you whilst in the process of taking a self portrait? Do you wish to convey that personal exploration to the viewer? KB: Heidegger said that as beings we are closest to ourselves but also furthest from ourselves ie we are ourselves but this doesn’t mean we understand ourselves better. I feel however part of a shift towards self-exploration and understanding: The goal being not to just be selfish egocentric people but to bring love and understanding to our relationship with our self and others. Allowing us to be more intimate, and more compassionate. CH: No, it was expedient to use myself as a subject, what I wanted to achieve was something more generalised and archetypal. KC: An important aspect for my work is to focus on empathising with these women. I don’t want to become them, I want to identity with them and in doing so identity myself. In taking the photographs I am not myself, I am walking in another's shoes. It is an exploration of what it means to me to be a woman. It is the gaze of the camera and consequently the viewer that is important, it defines me or what is supposedly me. It represents my identity; it is a representation of me. The lens also allows me to take on these different personas, to perform and act out, something I wouldn’t usually do. It also allows me to empathise with the hysterical women and the contemporary women I see on TV Talk Shows, exploring how these women and their history have shaped my identity, something I couldn’t do without it. I have an urge to remove myself from these self portraits somehow, to have the images not be entirely about myself, this is where the construction of femininity and the idea of spectacle come into my work. I think it is important for the audience to understand that they are explorations of the self but I am not completely reliant on that, I suppose this is why I want to identify with other women and explore the wider issues of the constructed identity and the spectacle of the self. • How do you feel about the notion that in times past women have been perceived and artistically represented in a different manner to the way they
are today. Have you taken this notion into consideration while creating your images? KB: It is amazing to be in this wonderful time now, and I rejoice in the freedom, artistic and otherwise that I enjoy. CH: I feel ambivalent about this because it is only recently that female artists have gained enough status to represent themselves as they choose, whereas the perception of women doesn't seemed to have changed much. I think it is very difficult to make artwork that tackles this notion head-on, perhaps creating self-portraits is a good start into this territory. KC: My practice is focused on exploring this notion, the notion of the idealised feminine, the performer, the spectacle and their relation to the contemporary world and the contemporary woman. I am interested in depicting the stereotyped female, particularly the emotional and dependant one. Understanding and critiquing the supposed female role; everything I try and try not to be. • Should your photographs be viewed as a body of work? Do you feel your photographs have any more or less strength as singular images? KB: Although the images that I create are a body of work, I am trying to bring out subtle ideas in them individually. I usually keep these ideas to myself because I prefer them to work as images. CH: Each picture I make is always one of a series and each series has its own particular focus. I'm interested in classification so for me a set gives more context than a single image. KC: I think they work well as a collection of images, reflecting the collective images of Charcot and Diamond, mimicking different identities. Having them a series of images also reflects the bombardment of imagery we are faced with on a daily basis and our voyeuristic observation of those images. CH: Only in the sense that with capturing a likeness comes the awareness of dissolution over time. Looking at old pictures brings this same feeling, I go with Sontag's view on this one - that all photographs are memento mori.
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Kelly Brown k.bspirituality@googlemail.com
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In 2004 I created a project called "Interaction with my Grandmother. It was about me making contact with my deceased Grandmother. I first saw her when I was eleven. In the Caribbean it is tradition to spend time with the dead. I was amazed at how beautiful she looked, and by how much she looked like a native Amerindian. The history of the Caribbean talks much about slavery. I had no idea that most islands had indigenous native Indians like the Arawak Indians. I am discovering and developing my identity through self-photography, following this methodology of interacting with real or imagined female ancestors, creating costumes and dresses, wearing them and creating images of self-photography/self-portraits. There are many reasons why I don’t know my ancestors. My father is from Jamaica, and slavery makes the line towards my ancestors from his side difficult to trace. My mother’s mother left her family in Ireland and never returned. Part of me felt that I didn’t really know who I was. I felt the pull towards my female ancestors - who were they? I wasn’t interested in facts or tracing my family tree, which would be difficult and complicated, but in what I could glean from intuition. I feel the women in my ancestry are powerful, beautiful women, who are from many different places- Native Amerindian, Jewish, Welsh, Romany Gypsy, and many more. I want to show these intuitive feelings in photographs that will allow others to see this too. More recently I have been inspired by some images of a woman called Zit Kala-Sa, a mixed heritage Sioux woman who was photographed by Gertrude Kasebier in the 19th century. I am adopting her as an ancestor. I’m sure she won't mind!
Kerry Clark clarkkerry@hotmail.co.uk
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For me, photography is a tool to reconstruct reality, to re-invent myself, my surroundings and to re-evaluate and understand my thinking. I want to make art that explores the self; my identity and in doing so ask others to understand theirs. I am drawn to the objectified body, the categorised and codified body. The body that is removed from its self, that exists apart from its identity and is only presented for the gaze of others. Through the investigation of this body I hope to explore the relationship between viewer, subject and artist. Concepts of detachment, empathy, voyeurism and spectacle are played out through the appropriation and mimicking of 19th Century medical photographs and photographs of performers. Masquerade and re-enactment, the feminine and the modern freak show, the voyeur and the exhibitionist, the spectator and the spectacle. Ultimately exploring these subjects allow me to investigate the ability to empathise with the visual image.
Catlin Harrison catlinharrison@london.com
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I'm fascinated with the human form and it's potential to express inner states of being, or abstract ideas. Meta-figures, like ghosts or dolls or archetypes, are especially compelling and I find it impossible to identify and capture these forms in one image so they always end up as a series. Each series is an independent specimen, a set of examples of a particular type. Presence, oddity, beauty and humour are important elements in all my work, as is colour and aesthetics. Weird things in jars, classification, crypts, fashion, horticulture and medieval European painting are just some of the things that inspire me. One strand of imagery that was percolating in my brain before making the 'Self-Image' series was portrait painting and the use of light, clothes and texture to signify status. The immense detail in the folds of cloth, jewellery and luxury objects is probably the main wow factor about old master paintings, and it is this meticulous artifice, that precursors today's high definition seduction, that provoked my attempt at getting that same quality of surface/ depth, mannequin/portrait that I find in so many of these pictures.
Viewfinder Photography Gallery 52 Brixton Village London SW9 8PS www.viewfinder.org.uk