Marie-Jose Durquet & Lori Nix: Making a photograph

http://www.lenscratch.com/2012/04/marie-jose-durquet.html

Species of animals are disappearing all over the planet, and many people are ignoring the problem. Marie-Jose Durquet, however, is bringing this issue into the light while capturing the light. What she has done is takes little strands of white yarn around, looks for places that will suit her creations, and makes the outlines of certain endangered animals on surfaces, mostly concrete or wood, and then photographs these pieces. She says that the simple outline and the white string is like the bones of the animals and that as they wear away with weather and deterioration, it is a metaphor for their disappearance. It's one thing to seem them in photographs, but I wonder what it evokes for the passerby? Do they know what the plant or animal is? And if so, will they know that it is endangered? That is one thing about subtly and indirectness that I always battle with. Is she wanting to raise the issue? And if so, will people understand her message? Or does it really matter that they understand, but rather that she is doing this to engrain it further in herself? When people would see this at the gallery and can read her artist statement, it is one thing, but being on the streets on L.A. without text or that gallery context is another. So which is more powerful then, the creation on the sidewalk, or the photograph of the creation? In any case, her work is very simple but beautiful and I am in full support of her focus.

http://www.lorinix.net/index.html

Suprisingly, Durquet is not the only one that has recently been written about in a blog who creates things for her photographs. Lori Nix's work is much less political or awareness based, but it's creativity is much more complicated. I wasn't really certain what I was looking at when I clicked on the website, and I didn't do any reading in the 'about' section before taking a look, but her work just had something wrong with it. Was it the colors? The content? I don't know, but I could tell that it probably wasn't photoshopped. What Lori Nix has done is created these little miniature worlds and settings where you feel like you are looking at some real place until it settles in or you see a taradactyl (I don't know how to spell =P) looming on a sunset. Most of them are quite surreal like the forest growing into the library or a dinosaur scene, but they all have this thing about them that makes you sure they are there, with how she's framed the shots and the lighting. To create so much detail in such a little space must require tremendous effort that I don't even understand, but they are all beautiful and warm places that I want to visit. Now that I look back on them, it's the texture that throws you off, but it doesn't bother you after you know that this is a miniature place. Some of her earlier works from 1998 definitely look like claymation scenes, like those from Wallace and Gromit, but she certainly has developed a newer more realistic style since then. In any case, her work is definitely worth looking into whenever you need some escape because the world is just too big and complicated.

This is your world

http://www.lenscratch.com/2012/04/this-is-your-world-at-carte-blanche.html

I find myself challenged looking at this exhibition on Lenscratch. The idea for the exhibit is based off of lyrics from an Emilie Simon song, which talks about the relationship between a young woman and the world around her. The images themselves seem very straight forward, nothing is very overt or grotesque or overly sexual about them, but there is still something that I feel like I am missing to connect when I look at them. And I think it's because I am lacking something that the photos themselves contain, womanhood. It seems strange that something like this could be challenging, but at the same time it almost creates a longing inside, for a man, to be able to connect with women in this realm, a place where we are seldom allowed to visit. And it is not that it is women in the photographs necessarily that does this, but how they are shot with a certain softness to them, the look on the women's and girl's faces. I'm sure most men who have dated some women can remember times when their girlfriend or even just female friend tells you that they are going to have a girl's night out or whatever it may be, and I'm sure that you were always curious as to what went on at these times, what it was that we weren't allowed to see or experience. There is a sort of lonely sensuality that comes to these photos, they touch places deep inside and move me, but I don't know if I can place exactly where it is that's being moved. Saya Chontang, Deborah Parkin, and Aela Labbe all give me the same sort of uncomfortable twinge, like I'm seeing something that I'm never allowed to see. The reason that I don't include Julie Cerise is that her photos seem more to talk about moments of experience that women encounter, not the female interior or community of emotion, but I point in time or experience. In particular Saya Chontang's photos, I know that these aren't women simply posing to try and look attractive or sexy for a man, but they still have that womanly sensuality to them that is so foreign to most men. Maybe we feel it at times, and maybe it is being able to see these moments and experience this feeling in these photographs that can help us understand you (addressing the collectivity of women), but it moves a part of me that doesn't get budged often, which is why I think I am so drawn to it.

Chapter 7: Photography and the Age of Electronic Imaging

So a couple of brief questions...

It is argued by some that the digital age is frightening because we are no longer able to distinguish between what is "real" and what is "created" because of the ease of manipulability. Others, however, counter this to say that photographic images have always been manipulated, and in fact even the simple choice of what to shoot and how one develops a photo is all manipulation. Because of this, should we draw a line in photography between the analog and the digital, because of some of the key differences such as binary coding replacing the film,  or can an imaginary line limit the progress of photography?

Also, very simply, has the prevailing use of the digital cameras in surveillance and by the military enhanced our sense of security as a society, or does it on the contrary put us on edge, knowing that anything we do may and can be recorded without another human physically present? 1984 much?

peace and love