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.