Ty's Photo Blog: Contemporary Art Paper

Tyler Yokoyama

Nika Kaiser

Digital Photography

ARTO 354

Charlotte Cotton

The Photograph as Contemporary Art

Chapter 4: Something and Nothing

I chose the chapter of Something and Nothing because the one concept that I love so much is capturing of evidence of what once occupied the space photographed. There are so many creative ways that photographical artists have captured this. From this chapter, I will talk a little about Jeff Wall, Gabriel Orozco, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and WimWenders. I will also mention Rut Blees Luxemburg, Anya Gallaccio, NeleAzevedo, Paul Kos, Simone Decker, and Richard Long.

Something and Nothing can be a self-explanatory chapter title, yet creative artists love to create art that twists the boundaries. The most simple way to create a photograph that falls into this chapter would be to photograph something seamlessly ordinary and abundant, but give focus to a point where you may not have given it attention. For example, Jeff Wall photographed an old, dirty floor with a mop and bucket occupying the middle ground. This situation is something that we could walk right passed and not give a second look. Wall is now forcing us to take a second look which adds to the visual intrigue of the photo. We may see things that otherwise would have been dismissed.

One of the most famous images in conceptual photography is Breath on Piano, 1993, by Gabriel Orozco. This photograph represents the human presence that was once there. The greatest thing is that a photograph captures an instant in time that will never occur again. Every subject and setting of a photograph is lost immediately after the photograph has been shot. That subject will never exist again, at that same point in time. You can take another photograph that looks similar, but it will never be the same. In the instance of this photograph, Orozco never occupied the space of the photograph. He simply exhaled on the piano before the shot. He also shot a piece called Chairs. A simple set of chairs in a public area that you would walk passed and not think a thing until Orozco brings it to your attention that the signs of ware on the chairs and the cement wall that backs the chairs is a trace of human presence.

The specific piece that I will describe by Felix Gonzalez -Torres is one of my all-time favorite art works.As many great works of art, this piece was developed from immense pain released or expressed through creative means that provoke powerful emotion. Gonzalez-Torres lost his lover from AIDS caused by the HIV virus. He then installed twenty-four billboards all over New York City with a monochrome photograph of an empty bed that made up his work Untitled, 1991. These beds were meant to represent the lack of presence of who was once there. Even if you did not know what the billboards stood for, you can make the connection, and even if you did not know the installation went beyond a single billboard, all the feelings of life can be inspired from the image. We are born in a bed. We sleep in a bed. We get sick in a bed. We make love in a bed. Finally we are laid to rest in a bed. The bed is a source of comfort for most people, but there are the bad times we have spent in our beds as well. So this piece reaches out to everyone and brings many different meanings to each viewer.

Lastly, as for the artists from this particular book, I wanted to refer to a specific work of WimWenders: Wall in Paris, Texas, 2001. Very simply, there is a clean wall of a building with a small portion that has chipped away. The lack of paint or cement reveals a secondary, possibly the original wall. It seems to be a brick wall with graffiti over it. This brings to attention the idea of past physical presence. For this situation to occur, a person or multiple people had to build the wall, then another person or people spray painted their design on the wall, and much later, a company must have hired another crew to paint over, or lay new cement over the bricks. The time and human effort involved in this piece is much more than a man pressing the shutter button.

As for Photographers not listed in this chapter of the Cotton book but very well could be, I am starting with Rut Blees Luxemburg and his piece In Deeper. The placed this image in the Once upon a Time chapter because it is telling a story. With the past presence of a human, it is easy for the viewer’s mind to create a story in attempt to connect the dots and finish the story. Spots in the water aren’t really “something” but the trace of a person can’t be classified as nothing. This photograph is intriguing as there is nothing really there, but an entire story can be generated from it. Let your imagination run wild.

Another photographer that I truly enjoyed her work was Anya Gallaccio and her installation and used photography to capture the experience. She placed thirty-four tons of ice and a half-ton boulder of rock salt at the Wapping Pumping Station in London. It was titled “Time Out” and is a classic example of how a photograph can capture a moment of objects existing in a state that will never occur exactly the same again.

A little more intricate, NeleAzevedo created his installation of Melting Men ranging a foot in height that littered the stairways of a concert hall in Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt Square. Though you may not think this would fall into the Something and Nothing chapter, it could. The content is really intriguing and exciting, they stand for something much more. Since these 1,000 miniature ice sculptures were places in direct sunlight on a 73-degree day, they did not last more than half an hour before they started to melt. This was meant to bring awareness to global warming and that the melting ice caps will raise the earth’s sea levels by 3.3 feet in 2100. I believe the fact that the ice was sculpted into small people shows us that not only are we to blame for the raising sea levels, but it will soon lead to our own destruction if nothing is done.

A much different piece using blocks of ice as an installation, or more of an experience would be the work of Paul Kos. His famous photographs of Sound of Ice Melting have been used by many. The best part is that the photograph was there to merely document the act of putting a block of ice in the middle of a dozen microphones to record the ever crackle and drip of water emitted from that block of ice. Even if you were to listen to the audio track and not hear a sound, the concept is pure art and can be appreciated through any medium.

Simone Decker’s work may not fall into the Something and Nothing chapter, but his work has to do with the exaggeration of the human trace. He obtained life size amounts of chewing gum and placed it around Venice, Italy in 2009. Some pieces were blown up as a bubble, others stretched out across ally ways to force interaction with foot traffic.

Last, but not least, I wanted to describe a certain photograph shot by Richard Long titled A Line Made By Walking, England, 1967. This is a perfect example of the human trace. A artist walks in a straight line over and over until the grass is trampled and wares down and dies. A simple act that he captured through photography in 1967. He was one of the first conceptual artists to use photography in such a way. There is nothing there but a line made by walking. The art is the interaction between the piece and the viewer. The viewers mind will naturally imagine the artist walking back and forth for hours or even days to create such a simple photograph.

The way that each of these has been presented has altered the meaning of these extra ordinary objects. They now have new meaning within the art piece and within the audience. I know I will never look at a block of ice, a worn down chair, or mop and bucket the same again. In this world, as Cotton describes it, “There is no such thing as an unphotographed or unphotographable subject.” At first glance, these objects may be over looked until they are photographed, framed and placed in an art gallery. These artists exercised their minds to the point where they can see what we decide not to.

Attached are the images for each of the works listed above in order:

Jeff Wall – Diagonal Composition no. 3