Concepts and Aesthetics
Is there always a need for both in a successful body of work? Photographs by Richard Misrach made in Hawaii from the balcony of a hotel room with an 8×10 camera give a God’s eye view swimmers and sunbathers on the beach. The perspective and environment in combination with the zen-like moments create an interesting and almost disturbing sense of vulnerability of the subject. But, aside from the fact that these images were made shortly after 9-11, what, if anything do they have to do with it? Can’t they simply exist as open-ended images completely detached from the context of an event that occurred thousands of miles away?
“I was drawn to the fragility and grace of the human figure in the landscape,” Misrach wrote of the series. “My thinking about this work was influenced by the events of 9/11, particularly by the images of individuals and couples falling from the World Trade Towers, as well as by the 1950s Cold War novel and film, On the Beach. Paradise has become an uneasy dwelling place; the sublime sea frames our vulnerability, the precarious nature of life itself.”
-Richard Misrach
Similarly, but less poetic, are Jill Greenburg’s End Times images. Children crying, some after having candy literally taken away from them, are meant to represent the artist’s feelings about the Bush administration. I don’t see the connection. I think they just look kind of cool.
I saw this little girl who’d come to a party with her mom, and she was beautiful, so I thought it might be interesting to photograph her. When they came to my studio, the mother brought along her toddler son, and I decided to shoot him too. We took off his shirt because it was dirty. He started crying on his own, and I shot that, and when I got the contact sheets back I thought, this could go with a caption, ‘Four More Years,’” like he was appalled at George Bush’s reelection. The images have a real power—they immediately get under your skin. The emotion you see is just so compelling, yet they’re beautiful at the same time. That was one of the things that interested me about the project—the strength and beauty of the images as images. I also thought they made a kind of political statement about the current state of anxiety a lot of people are in about the future of the country. Sometimes I just feel like crying about the way things are going.
Maybe the statements for these projects are given to enhance the relevance or timeliness of the work in an historical context. Why can’t a photograph or an idea be given merit solely based on its formal qualities without having to be about a huge issue? There’s no questions that these are two very good artists doing unique and influential work, but I think that sometimes leaving the meaning of the pictures up to the viewer ok, and profound statements about politics and current events are best left out of it.
