Working,

Work is going well, went to the Gary Winogrand Show, Women are Beautiful, black and white photos form 1967-1969 about forty images.  The images today would be considered a sexiest look upon women.  The time frame that that where taken capture the moment of history, in fashion, politics,and social behavior.

Mentor:  My Mentor is Karen Haas curator of the Lane Collection at MFA in Boston
The Lane Collection, begun in the 1960s, was long renowned as one of the world's most remarkable private collections of fine photography. Given to the MFA in the spring of 2012, it shines not only for its wealth of top-quality prints by the great modernist triumvirate of Edward Weston, Charles Sheeler, and Ansel Adams, but also for its breadth, from the historically significant to the cutting edge.MFA site.

We have met 4 times so far and each time is amazing. Her insight about my work is the most compelling yet out of the MFA program, simply put she gets my work!

Ms. Haas pushes me, to delve deeper into my work and stand back and look to see where I am going. We discuss work, artists, gallery shows, processes, contacts, books and ideas. 

Shows looked at:

Reality Check, Mass Art Gallery

The shows exhibits seven artists works who's photographs seem to fall into the realm of the  computer manipulated image.  However each in photograph in the show is a vision that is captured by the artist with no digital alteration.  The works are true to the nature of 
photography of the essence of the real world. Matthew Brandt, Daniel Gordon, Stephen Mallon, Chris McCaw, Christina Seely, Angela Strassheim, Gastón Ugalde

Conversations: 

Edward Weston, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Goron Parks, Bruce Davidson, Elsa 
Dorfman,Arron Siskind, Christopher James, Ron Cowie

Paul Strand and Charles Wheeler, film Manhatta 1921

Paris Photo Show: Connections for galleries

BOOKS and Films Purchased:

Contemporary Photographers 1982 Michael Engler
Mike Brodey, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity
Josef Koudelka, WALL
Iriving Penn, Studio works
Diane Arbus, Picture Magazine


I also worked with Costa Manos, MAGNUM Photographer,
We looked at work talked of direction of my work and of the possibilities of publishing a book and how to get work out to galleries and museums. 

Alex Webb of MAGNUM photos sent email to meet but we missed each other maybe next month

Forced into New Relationships

Johnson 1

Miah Nate Johnson

November 1, 2013

AIB/MFA 

Sunanda Sunyal

Forced into New Relationships

“The meaning of these objects, or in their isolation which comes to the same thing, for what we feel most about an isolated object is that it has been deprived of relationship.”

(Lyons 97)

This paper will look into two visions of abstract expressionist artists, those of Aaron Siskind and Franz Kline.  The works of these two artists vary in concept and texture, but both artists created abstract works that feature simple designs of form, shape and isolated movement.   

Aaron Siskind worked in a style he called the “formal ground” (Jain 113) which describes the uniformity of how he saw his subjects.  Siskind’s photographs, usually in black and white, are rich in tonality and define a singular subject that is uncertain. In photographing objects on the street, mixing the relationships of hard surfaces against a soft, and contrasting lights and darks, Siskind was able to ensure that the solitary objects do not become isolated. Due to his use of complicated design of layers of peeled paint or torn paper the viewer has the proclivity to look through the subject not at the subject.  This disassociation of the subject is established by means of its being taken out of context.  In each of Siskind’s two dimensional works, the subject becomes three dimensional or a sculptural because of the contrasts from light to dark.  This opens a suggestion of narrative of form and design and forces new relationships as the use of the camera frames confinement. “Forms play their little part against a backdrop of strict rectangular space - a flat unyielding space.  They cannot escape the back into the depth of perspective”(Lyons 97). By using the rectangle as a structure to hold the subject, Siskind is able to make the viewer seize the drama of the intensity of the subject at hand by forcing the subject into the unknown. This gestural movement of freedom of the subject grows frozen by the static nature of the flat plane of photographic print, playing on the emotions of viewer.  In some sense the works seem like reproductions of paintings or art works.  Many of the photographs play with the rigidity and formality of peeling paint on a wall, broken frames of glass or abstract tar lines.  This awareness of the recurrence of “decomposition, melting's, congealing’s and pushing.” (Holmes) present in his work is a mix of textures within a subjective content.   Whether Aaron Siskind worked from the unconscious mind of expression, or a preplanned structure of the scene at hand, his photographs are powerful inspriartions of form and design.

Franz Kline was one of the masters of American abstract painting and was at the forefront of American art in the 1950s. Kline developed a freedom on the canvas that was void of defined subjects, but nevertheless gave the viewer a sense of a seamless narrative.  Kline’s vision or interpretation of his surroundings evokes a sense of a graphic raw wildness.  With massive swipes of the brush that swallow the canvas, Kline creates an ambiguity of layering from light to dark and, brings a depth to the composition that gives the paintings a modular sense, resembling a city scape, chair backs, “calligraphy” (Bakargiev 66), or some lost unknown script.  Though Kline denied the suggestion of calligraphy he played with the idea of a fluid motion of intensity, which defined a depth that inspired a transition or collision of textures that engages the audience by means of movement. With a confused simpleness of heaviness or subjective balance through the use of layering and finite movements of stunning sporadic brush strokes, the work fabricates a depiction of a musical score.  The movement in Kline’s work resonates on the canvas and could be interpreted as loud or silent in the sense that Kline unequivocally allows the canvas to speak on its own.  This process of interaction painting frees the viewer from looking at the pastiche that might result from working with a preconceived idea or a subjective manner to one of the abstract.  By playing with the relationships of visual elements, Kline brings an intrinsic meaning of visual “tactilism”(Nagy 134) to the canvas set forth by the interpretation of space and form.

Both Siskind and Kline explore the vision of seeing the world with a different perspectives through their chosen mediums. Their representational designs and textural compositions of movement and form are heightened by their use of gestural design and personal freedom. Their spacial articulation forms a illusionistic story with the use of unifying visual elements that still offers the freedom of isolation.This contemporary approach of emphasizing the sensuous tactile effects opens a narrative to the viewer.  

I have moved to a new way of looking at the street; I have always stopped and photographed abstract elements, but never felt drawn to show my work because I thought it had no intrinsic or momentary value. While walking the streets and photographing people, I saw a truck laying tar on the road and it remind me of the crowds I see on the street bustling off to their desired destination.  I soon began to build a series of form and design of unseen relationships of color, lights, darks that all reside inside of the rectangle.  I discovered a freedom for myself that expressed both an inner thought of composition and the social reality of the street.

Works Cited: Bibliography

Lyons, Nathan Photographers on Photography, New Jersey: Foundation of Modern Photography Series, Siskind Aaron, 1966 Prentice-Hall. Inc Print

Kelly, Jain Darkroom II, Aaron Siskind, New York: Lustrum Press Inc 1978, Print

Lyons, Nathan, Photographers on Photography, New Jersey: Foundation of Modern Photography Series, 1966 Prentice-Hall. Inc Print

Smith, Henry Holmes New York: Robert Mann Gallery Guide 1965 Print

Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn Milano, Fran Kline 1910-1962, Italy: Skira Editore 2004 Print

Moholy Nagy, Laszlo New Vision of Design, Chicago: Insitute of Design 1947 Print

( 134)

©Aaron Siskind  above

                                                                                ©Franz Kline above

                                                                                  

©MIAH 2013 6 above

Protest archive paper

Miah Nate Johnson 

October 1, 2013

AIB/MFA 

Sunanda Sunyal

The Protest Archive

In Critical Theory II on The Big Archive and The Archive, one of the sentences that struck me was, “Transferring the world to image, photography as a representational structure produces a certain archival effect” (Merewether 160).  A photographer’s life is complied of archives, from the moment an image is develop and put into negative sleeves or a hard drive.  The documentation record defines a narrative by exposing a record of a people, place and time.   I will look into the collections of Chauncy Hare 1970s Protest Photographs and Ben Shahn’s political paintings and photos of the 1930-1940s which are an archive of economical and political injustice. 

Chauncey Hare worked as an engineer at the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond California in the 1970s.  To find a way to break the monotony of work and his anger against the ominous cloud of the corporate machine he turned to photography.  Influenced by the photographs of the Farm Security Administration he followed the tradition of documentary photographers Walker Evans and Russell Lee.  Hare focused his work on protest and forewarning of the growing authority corporations and their owners over the employee.  

Hare started to document the interior lives and situations of workers in the United States.  The resulting body of work called Interior America was published by APERTURE press in 1978 and This Was Corporate America 1984.   Hare’s straightforward approach offers a poignant view of American society, in which the irrepressible corporate system suffocates the common person.  The objective of the photographs is to expose the trapped feelings and demoralization of the workers due to the crushing routine of work.  With this in mind Chauncey produces an archive that clarifies what Charles Merewether states in his book The Archive, “Photography is critical to the practice and authority of the archive, in so far as it folds together history as a representation and representation as history”. (160) Chauncey received three Guggenheim Fellowships to do this work but was angered by  an art world, that did not respect him as a photographer.  Chancey Hare had two very strong beliefs, one to never make a profit from those he photographed and the other to expose the socioeconomic consequences caused by corporations.  Threatening to destroy the entire archive of images, recordings and notes Chauncey instead donated it to the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.  

Chauncey Hare’s voice for the voiceless is an extensive archive which defines the struggle of the human condition. In 2009 Steidl books published a full volume of work called Protest Photographs, which is a collection of both books.  As Sven Spieker states “Only where reality returns to us as an archive of more or less incoherent signifiers from which we are excluded by definition can we begin to evaluate and creatively change our situation” . (145)

Protest imagery can further be seen in the works of Lithuania American Artist Ben Shahn who worked in a style designed to highlight social political injustice. Shahn focused his art on the anti- immigration, pro- union, unemployment and social reform sentiment at the time. Known mainly as a graphic artist and painter, Shahn was also  photographer who worked  for the FSA from 1935-1938 

  Merewether sums it up best for any archive of social reform in his quote “Their artistic expression represents an intervention in the archives of a nation” (162) Shahn’s photo documentation of the social plight of share croppers, workers conditions of the time influenced many of his paintings and graphic works throughout his life.  As Shahn stated of his FSA photographs in a TV interview for NBC 1956 “We just took pictures that cried out to be taken”. Shahn never used his photographs in a literal way but utilized several subjects as a sort of collage of images for his paintings. Shahn states “I am only interested in photography as a means of documentation and to make notes for my future paintings” Charles Merewether remarked “Both the archive and photography reproduce the world as witness to itself”(160).  Shahn produced numerous paintings that struck a chord with the social news events of the time.  Shahn’s political paintings focused on the human emotion regarding social injustice in the world much like the current works of artist Walid Raad who use cut- out photos of cars that have been involved in explosions in Beruit’s civil war. The collections of images by Shahn and Hare document of a time and period in history that subtly explores inhumanity in culture.  

Shahn’s belief in the Roosevelt administration led him to paint murals for the Federal Art Project that defined a country pulling itself out of a depression under the New Deal which was rebuilding a modern America. The art work comprised of the common man building, the infrastructure of America, bridges, skyscrapers, ships and agriculture equipment. After the FAP he was employed at the Office of War Information   

(OWI) which used graphic art work for propaganda posters. During this time Shahn produced powerful statements again about political and social events.  Most of his works were never published because the government felt they gave a depressing powerful message and that people needed more upbeat imagery. While at the OWI Shanhn drew upon archive photos of World War II to depict and capture in his later paintings the senses of loss, hope and liberation of Europe after World War II. 

  Shahn returned to the Office of War information, where produced a large amount of lithographic work for the government about working people, poverty, pro- union and pro -Roosevelt propaganda.  His work depicts the world at struggle but with the hope and a compassionate look into the lives of the farmer, worker, mother and politics. His use of signifiers defined the state of affairs of the times, such as immigration and fascism.  The graphic works and paintings are a strong statement of the political human condition. He stated, “We only had one purpose - a moral one I suppose” (Shahn 9) Shahn was successful in the art world but was never was truly recognized for the mastery of craft, although he was the youngest American at the time to have a major show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (September 30, 1947-January 4, 1948). His work was overlooked do to a bad review from Clement Greenberg and the rise of Jackson Pollock. Shahn never stopped to voice his political beliefs but was eventual blacklisted during the McCarthy cold war era. Shahn’s protest works give an artistic voice to the innocent, in which he exposes the deception that hide behind the lies of political rhetoric. He never stopped to fight for the underdog or political injustice. He died in 1969.

The idea of the archive or collection of documents and records is imperative to the life of a photographer.  I have compiled years of images all dated and sleeved I have formed a massive archive of my vision.  This collection of my work and art books is a compelling way to value the word “archive” something I never thought of.  My work tends to lean to the left, and vouches for the overlooked in society.  In a sense I have a collection of images that are protest images of the situations that I see before me with a camera. The current body of work “Perceptions” which has been showing in Boston area at the Griffin Museum and at Garner Gallery for the last six months offers a political and social look into American society. By playing with the relationships of visual elements, my aim is to bring an intrinsic meaning of visual context of the social reality of the street so as to form a narrative for the viewer to respond. Whether in the subtle documentary sense or in the abstract lines of color form and design the images pull on one another.  My newest portfolios of work, Disconnected, Fashion and the Abstract Street works all touch on the idea of protest. 

For me the fight to express never stop; my only hope is that after I have died of old age someone finds my archive and publishes it.   

Work Citied

Kasher, Stephen. Protest Photographs. Gottingen GR: Steidl 2009 Print

Merewether, Charles, The Archive. London BR, Cambridge, MA: White Chapel and MIT press 2006 Print

Pratt, Davis, The Photographic Eye of Ben Shahn.  Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1975 Print

Pohl, Frances. Ben Shahn. San Francisco, CA: Pomegrante Artbooks, 1993 Print

Spieker, Sven, The Big Archive. Cambridge, MA : MIT press, 2008 Print

Chauncey Hare  © 3 above

Ben Shahn ©  4 above

MIAH ©  4 above

What I am reading and researching and seeing

So back from NYC and Paris fashion week.   The work was tough, long hours behind a camera watching for images to unfold.   I produced additions to 4 ongoing portfolios that have been in the making for one year.   While in NYC went to the Callhan show at PACE, In Paris went to Pompidou, and Musee dOrsay.  The S Salgado opening of his current work Genesis was at the European House of Photography.   I was invited to look at the  Taschen Publication,  Large book 3x2 feet at the Paris Cultural center for the Arts the book sells for $10,000, I passed. Went to Magnum office to say hi.  

Books bought in NYC and Paris:

Szarkowski John, Photography Until Now
Mike Brodie, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity
Cindy Sherman, Centerfolds
Alec Soth, Looking for Love
Josef Koudelka, Decrea Zione
Ray Metzker, The Photographs of  Ray Metzker
Charles Harbutt, Arrivals and Departures
and  many old catalogs form shows in the 1970's

MIAH©2103 Paris

Researching and reading. I found the readings and researching to be a real eye opener, for how photography and critical theory or criticism is looked into.  

Freidlander, Lee. Snapshot New York: APERTURE press, 1974, print (page 113)

Model, Lisette. Snapshot. New York: APERTURE press, 1974, print (page 6)

Szarkowski, John. The Photographer’s Eye. New York: The Museum of Modern Art., 1966, print

Gowin, Emmett. Snapshot. New York: APERTURE press 1974, print (pg 8)

Grundberg, Andy. Crisis of the Real. New York: APERTURE press 2010, print (pg 7)

Bresson, Henri Cartier. Decisive Moment. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1952, print

Sontag, Susan. On photography. England: Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishers, 1977, print (page 110)

Strand, Paul. Snapshot.  New York: APERTURE press, 1974, print (page 49)

Winogrand, Garry.  The Animals. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1968 LIFE Documentary Photographers 1972, print (page 164)

Lyons, Nathan Photographers on Photography, New Jersey: Foundation of Modern Photography Series, Siskind Aaron, 1966 Prentice-Hall. Inc Print

Kelly, Jain Darkroom II, Aaron Siskind, New York: Lustrum Press Inc 1978, Print

Lyons, Nathan, Photographers on Photography, New Jersey: Foundation of Modern Photography Series, 1966 Prentice-Hall. Inc Print

Smith, Henry Holmes New York: Robert Mann Gallery Guide 1965 Print

Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn Milano, Fran Kline 1910-1962, Italy: Skira Editore 2004 Print

Moholy Nagy, Laszlo New Vision of Design, Chicago: Insitute of Design 1947 Print

( 134)

New York, fashion week and abstract

New York went well, worked on some street works and fashion works.  Getting ready for Paris

Disconnected photo essay

“The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons”. Sneakers 1992

The body of work “DISCONNECTED” is a look into society’s fascination, addiction and compulsive behavior towards portable cellar modular devices.  With a mutual attraction towards these small machines we have become absorb as a society with our cell phones. 

Depicted photographic events unfold to the viewer how society removes oneself from the now and one another, by being absorbed into something else. Are we forming a state of reclusiveness through the use of technology thinking we are free to be expressive through our cellphones?

Each time you tap into a phone one is being tracked,marketed, targeted, rated and charted for advertisement, usage, and information.

“There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information”. Sneakers 1992

That weighty line may have been questionably true in 1992, but it is now a reality of our  society.  In 2011, civilazation created and stored approximately 1.8 zettaybtes (1.8 trillion gigabytes) of information!

Emerson Networks puts their number of data centers worldwide at 509,147. For some perspective, that means they take up 285,831,541 square feet of space, or about 5,955 football fields.

All photos MIAH©

Two Looks

Johnson 1

Miah Nate Johnson 

September 1, 2013

AIB/MFA 

Sunanda Sunyal

Photography Two Looks

“As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly

affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who

do not believe in men.” (Whitman )

This paper will look into two worlds of photography, the snapshot and the street photograph.  The fact that millions of snapshot photographs are taken each day, which form a cultural and social existence in the world, suggest that the power of the snapshot embraces the meaning of the world being recorded.  What separates the snapshot from the street photograph? Are both not capturing a moment that could be of importance? Is one a reminder of memories and one a voyeuristic look into society? Is one a social archival art form and one not?

Lee Freidlander states “In a snap, or a small portion of time, all that the camera can consume in breadth and a bite and light is rendered in astonishing detail” (113). Therefore, a snapshot may suggest a fleeting, temporary view or a precious remembrance. The snap shot could be a nonchalant observation or the purposeful record of an event.  As a social society we take snapshots of everyday occasions to chronicle births, deaths, love, trips, meals and vacations. 

While a snapshot can capture a sentiment of a time, a moment of something we might treasure, or respond to, the basic everyday existence of the snapshot within societies brings together a singular commonality to the expression of life.    As Lisette Model comments on the snapshot, “the image taken is that of innocence with a vitality and expression to life” (6). That being said, the snapshot holds no preconceived thought and promises no gain; it is truly simply there to be.  

The snapshot images in the book, Artist Unknown, by Oliver Wasow are a collection of found snapshots that are organized into categories that define them as art.  Understanding the impact of the photographs in Artist Unknown, opens an insightful relation to the world that prompts emotional attachment and nourishes artistic awareness.  But as John Szarkowski states about the components of what makes photographs in the book Photographer’s Eye, “ The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge- the line that separates in from out- and on the shapes that are created by it.” (9).

Photographer Martin Parr’s Street photos are taken very much like snapshots. They are a look into British life but are complicated notions of ordinary scenes. In Parr’s pictures there is an artistic strangeness that unveils the mask beyond a snapshot. This brings the viewer into personal moments that he captures. Parr comments on his work “ I take pictures of ordinary life, perhaps sometimes surreal. Because life is surreal” (67). But the underlining fact is that there is a relative weakness we feel as viewers to the ideology of truth caused by a photograph.  Andy Grundberg states, “It wears that discourse as a mask, but it wears this mask not to poke fun at it, nor to flatter it by imitation, nor to point us in the direction of something more genuine that lies behind it” (8).

So the question could be, is street photography a social archival art form that captures the social state of a society during a particular period or is it just a snapshot?  

Does this visionary approach of exposing life through street photography as an art lead to a new understanding of unknown societies?  The essence of understanding a specific society is exposed in the street photographs of Josef Koudleka, Garry Winogrand and Robert Frank. These photographers’ visions expose an impulsive unforced style which instills a powerful message of the understanding of life.  The characteristics these photographers share, pull the viewer into a moment confined by the reality and truth in which the photograph captures, therefore the viewer is inspired to simply look at the photos and form an opinion.  For this reason, the use of street photography depicts events that expose the meaning of seeing and sharing the world in a way that provokes a thoughtful response.  Susan Sontag remarks about Paul Strand’s photos in her book On Photography, “whether Bowery derelict, Mexican peon, New England farmer, Italian peasant, French artisan, Breton or Hebrides fisherman, Egyptian fellahin, the village idiot or the great Picasso are all touched by the same heroic quality-humanity” (110).

Concerning the idea of humanity, the street photo offers an imposing reality while the snapshot only demonstrates an unappeasable relationship to a singular personal moment. Consequently, street photography has somehow become seductive, with the notions of images are real or surreal being complementary in the sense that they are pushing our emotions to be progressively more complicated along with the perversity of the real.  It assumes that what is real persists, unchanged and intact, while only society has changed through the essence of time. Henri Cartier Bresson states in his book, Decisive Moment,“We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory”(Bresson).

Yet somehow street photography creates the illusion of capturing everyday life in a form of expression or a visual dialogue with a conceptual approach to give the viewer a perception of immediacy and the forming of memories.  The characteristics that street photography evokes are a more inclusive truth than can be rendered in the isolated moment of a snapshot unfolds the importance of the street photo as an art form is that it shows the unusualness of the decisive moment captured. This somehow forms a correlation between viewer and subject, which might evoke an insight and an understanding of the human condition that causes us to respond. In all respects a street photograph is a document of an unemotional event in which the viewer falls into a voyeuristic realm. The viewer is therefore removed from the irrationality of the real.   Paul Strand states, “ It can be used by many people for many different reasons by amateurs and by professional, and also by artists. There is no one answer to the question of how to photograph” (49).

So how does all of this tie into my work ? The answer is, I am not sure.  I like to think that since I call myself an artist, craftsman and photographer, and have studied my art form for over 30 years, I am above the snapshot realm, but sometimes I do wonder. I feel my work takes me into a documentary sense of expression that captures what lies before me as a street photographer.  My aim in my work is to form a narrative for others to react to, and by doing so I open a conversation.  Garry Winogrand once stated in a lecture at Yale about street photography “ I don't have a message in my pictures... The true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality ( whatever that is) on film” (164). 

Works Cited

Bresson, Henri Cartier. Decisive Moment. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1952 Print.

Freidlander, Lee. Snapshot New York: APERTURE press, 1974 Print. (page 113)

Grundberg, Andy. Crisis of the Real. New York: APERTURE press, 2010 Print. (pg 8)

Jaeger, Anne-Celine, Image Makers. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007 Print.

Model, Lisette. Snapshot. New York: APERTURE press, 1974 Print. (page 6)

Sontag, Susan. On photography. England: Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishers, 1977 Print. (page 110)

Strand, Paul. Snapshot.  New York: APERTURE press, 1974 Print. (page 49)

Szarkowski, John. The Photographer’s Eye. New York: The Museum of Modern Art., 1966 Print.

Whitman, Walt. Thoughts, Leaves of Grass 1867 print

Winogrand, Garry.  The Animals. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1968 LIFE Documentary Photographers 1972, print (page 164)

  

Freidlander©

 Model©

 Bresson©

 Parr©

 Koudelka©

 Winogrand©

 MIAH©

 MIAH©

 MIAH©

 MIAH©

 Frank©