Antonia’s page
What is the earliest influence on your interest in photography?
Film has been a central part of my visual development because of the exposure to the medium that I experience at a young age. Much of my appreciation for film came from the education provided by my father who exposed me to the history and evolution of film. His particular affinity to Kurosawa samurai films sparked my initial interest in the medium.
What genre of photography are you most interested in?
The genre of photography that I tend to veer my work towards and draw reference from is fine art photography that deals directly with still life and landscape as subject matter. Indirectly describing the artist’s perspective of the subject through the physical construction of the environment is the most attractive quality of this type of work. Questioning the camera’s ability to capture the accuracy of the environment through disorder or commonality has the ability to rupture the perspective of the viewer. Fine art still life and landscape photography confronts the basic elements of structure that display the ability of the artist to investigate their own concept of visual awareness.
What are the conceptual, aesthetic, and/or technical questions you’re exploring in your work?
Concerning my most recent work, I have become much more personal in my approach. For most of my time at Parsons I have tried to be as emotionally detached from my work as possible. I have never wanted my work to be understood as a true representation of myself because forcing this merit upon the work that is created for purely institutional standards is immediately transparent. The vulnerability of declaring my work as a direct reflection of me is too trivial to be genuine. When referencing to my current work as “personal” I am describing the change in the process of making pictures that I have experienced.
The series that displays the most cohesive work I have complete all year centers on the idea of gender performance and the cultural construction of the feminine aesthetic. Utilizing the domestic space, I look to present the way in which femininity is a product of male construction and is a mask of expectation which most woman hide behind. In an attempt to communicate the manufactured nature of feminine behavior, the work is a way of rationalizing my views on feminism, sex and the disparity between the genders.
Nostalgia is a concept that often manifests itself in the need to use photographs as a way of holding on to identity. The photographing of childhood is a tradition that gives lasting evidence to the family dynamic. Through a series of portraits of my family and friends that are based conceptually or constructed to compliment a reference photograph of the individual as a child, I am trying to highlight the ways in which childhood behavior informs adult life. Displaying the original and remake in pairs, I look to examine the change in self-awareness that comes with growing older.
What influences beyond photography are below the surface of your work?
Most of my formal background in art comes from my original interest in painting and drawing. In this context, I was initially drawn to the work of the Surrealist appreciation of the subconscious in the work of Joan Miro and Minimalist existential recognition of self of Barnett Newman. The installation work of Eva Hess in the 1970s has had a profound effect on my concept of the way in which art describes and incorporates space. The idea that form is a vehicle for content and the experience of the piece is central to my approach to photography.
How do these influences appear in the form, content, and concepts of your work? (Cite example)
The construction of performance is the basis to my approach to photography. Miro’s work explores how the unrefined instincts of painting produce composition which comments on the act of painting and less on the attempt to make a painting. The ability to allow instinct to dictate the decisions made when constructing an image is what I try to allow the in my process of shooting and conceptualizing. Both Newman and Hess impose on the physical space, making their work an act of submission on part of the viewer. Hess’s work has exposed the way in which the integrity of material can be used to blatantly question the basis of human interaction by dissecting the space around the object. The ability for the artists to apply value to the simplicity of subject matter is an element I look to apply in my work.
Discuss the cultural, social, and political forces influencing photo artists of your generation?
Apathy is the driving force behind much of the discontent that is present in today’s generation. The ease, to which individuals can create the sense of community through artificial means, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, prevents, centrally young adults, from actively pursuing a fulfillment that benefits the wider community as a whole. The narrowing of the worldview through the focus of the media has homogenized the mass opinion on social issues that impairs retroactive involvement. Individuality is being replaced by an adopted sense of purpose. The recycling of attitude and trends from the past seen in the current fashion style based around ironic appropriation represents the inability for the current generation to recognize an identity. With the current financial instability, U.S. involvement in the Middle East and shift in government, people are faced with multiple levels of transition. It is not surprising that the prevailing attitude of the current time is focused inward, through the avoidance and protection of personal identity. Question the means by which information is fed to the masses is imperative to the progression of the culture as a whole.
How do these forces appear in the form, content, and concepts of their work? (Cite an example)
Challenging the idea of viewing and authorship within photography invokes questions about the medium that are necessary to investigate by all contemporary photographers. Tim Davis’s series, Retail, utilizes the medium as a way of heightening the awareness of corporate consumerism in America. The unsettling reoccurrence of the immediately recognizable imagery placed within the domestic space describes the evolution of American culture as synonymous with corporate prosperity.
Sunoco A+, Tim Davis
How have computers affected your production in photography and relationship to analog tools?
The use of the computer has helped in the organization and refinement of my work. Transitioning film negatives to digital files and prints has allowed for the further exploration of concept. The processes of digital rendering require an alternate skill set that is very much still based in the knowledge of analog tools.
If you are NOT meeting your potential at Parsons, discuss why you are not meeting your potential.
My view of potential is developed from the concept of meritocracy that was discussed in class. It is the expected individual achievement based purely on the idea that you should be exceeding because of the institution that you represent. By university standards, I am achieving to the best of my abilities but, personally I still very much feel like I have fallen short. The formulaic way in which I, and most people I have encountered at Parsons, approach school is through the appeasement of teachers over personal desire. Adhering to a certain aesthetic based on the audience has motivated most of the work I have done. I have advanced my abilities in manipulation further than I have achieved any significance with my work.
What has been your experience as a student at Parsons, and is it what you expected?
The experience has been surprisingly enjoyable partly because I never envisioned college in my future for most of my adolescent years.
What are some of the challenges being a student at Parsons in 2010?
Finding value from critiques and managing to tolerate cultural differences within the community of students I have interacted with are the main challenges I have faced. The demoralizing disregard of engagement that I have experienced in certain classes has a profound effect on my work and questions my motives for continuing to go to Parsons, although this may be a reflection of my own ambivalence as well.
What goals, fears and/or anxieties do you have for your professional life beyond Parsons?
After Parsons I do not necessarily intend to become a photographer but to use the knowledge of the medium to inform the career that I will pursue. I hope to acquire an understanding of how to find joy with in the general discomfort of life and accept responsibility for the course that my life takes.
What is/are the most important lesson(s) you have learned from this class?
The most influential message of the class so far has been the description of the structure of the art market and the central role that MoMA has played in the construction of the evolution of photography. The emphasis on the community that surrounds an artist as being directly connected to the success of the individual has also changed my perceptions of the work I create.
What makes photography art?
Photography isolates time from reality through its selectivity. The exclusion of information is what constitutes the meaning in the work. Accepting the photograph as art on a mass scale is the product of the revival of the history and dialogue of the medium through MoMA. In the 1940s the modernist reading of photographs was introduced by the partnership of David Hunter McAlpin and Ansel Adams. The emphasis on the form and technique of early Western photographers and Adam’s work, shifted the dialogue of photography away from pure documentation to that of compositional integrity. Szarkowski in the 1960s then reinvented the notion of photography through abstraction and emphasis on the message of what the work represents. Creating a unique dialogue to photography allowed for the inception of the medium to the fine art world as a reflection of the artist’s visual knowledge.
Transcending the confines of time, photography disrupts the required linear progression of film or performance. In the post modernist interpretation on the medium, the message dictates the physical representation. Solidifying the presence of other mediums, performance art, the photograph illustrates the action and informs the lasting impression of the original piece. The multiplicity of the photograph in this definition is the means through which the action is deemed factual.
Questioning the mode of representation that is currently applied to photography as an art form is where I see my work contributing to the medium. I do not think I have achieved this yet but I hope that my future work will have the ability to challenge the way people interact with art. Transcending the sterile atmosphere of the gallery has the ability to expand the interest of fine art photography outside of the small affluent demographic that it is centered towards. Neutralizing the presence of gender disparity is where the future of photography lies. Opening the notions of what constitutes female and male representation has the ability to bring attention to the lack of equality in the medium. If my work were to ever acquire an impact within the art world, I would want it to bring attention to the value of female participation in the medium.
Follow up questions:
What determines a photograph as a work of art and not just a documentation?
Should photographs be manufactured within the context of their eventual distribution outside of there intended setting be it a gallery, publication or advertisement?
Bibliography
Foote, Nancy. “The Anti Photographers.” Artforum 15, no. (1976): 46-54.
Phillips, Christopher. “The Judgment Seat of Photography.” The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 22, no. (1982): 27-63.
What Makes Photography Art 