3rd paper Staged Narratives: Social Messages in Photography

Miah Nate Johnson
Oliver Wasow
MFA Residency Semester 1 3rd paper

Staged Narratives: Social Messages in Photography

The concept of staged photographs has been around as long as the invention of photography. Images in Editorial, Fashion, Advertising and family members posing for the camera are common. Photographs from twentieth century by John Heartfield, Duane Michals and Jerry Uelsmann, are but a few of the artists who have re-stylized earlier techniques of photo negative manipulation and social messages in their work. These bodies of work often brought the viewer to question illusory world of the unreal.

The freedom of the digital realm in the last twenty years, photographers are able to create scenes that film could never do. Films minimal thresholds do to reciprocity film failure do to light shift, grain structure, or film speeds, limited photographers to what film could handle. The digital image has a much more tolerance to light, shadow, mid tones and highlights. By way of using sensors in the camera or scanners that arranges the light into pixels to form an electronic image. Because of this technological tolerance digital images can be morphed into layered effects through computer programs, by cutting and pasting, or stitching images together. The advantage of this technology is the artist can create works that are the unreal or surreal.

Contemporary artist who lead in this tradition of staged photography and photo manipulation have redefined the art form with the introduction of unreal into the real which evoke the viewers emotions.

Johnson , 1.   Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Jeff Wall’s, stylized works have used photography to show surreal fictitious situations which arouse subjective states of mind, suggesting dreamlike events in a documentary sense.

Looking at the portfolios of Philip-Lorca di Corcia whose photo background was of the commercial editorial world of magazines di Corcia took this stylized commercial work and blended this into his art work with staged scenes of everyday mundane life which the evoke the viewers emotions. By playing with the psyche of the audience the work makes the viewer more of a spectator by bringing them into the work with a narrative of a social message. By the use of life sized prints, fill flash which illuminates the subject so as to isolate them from the background, limited depths of field or scenery, defines the singular moment, which forces the audience to look. di Corcia is able to make quasi documentary photographs of people with bland expressions in situations that give the idea of loneliness, depression, deep thought, or removal of society, or simply that is unfamiliar. His portfolios vary from portraits of friends, male prostitutes, strip club dancers and street photos of unwary pedistrians. Using the ideas of street photography's discipline of the snapshot of the present di Corcia images give a distinct presence that invokes the viewer is present.

Whereas Philip-Lorca di Corcia works are more of a documentary in approach and stylized lighting, Jeff Wall’s works are more in the world of the pastiche painterly and theatrical. Wall’s images, also staged, are more intensely, detailed in the set or frame. Jeff Wall was heavily influenced by master painters Titan, Manet, and Caravaggio, along with movie film stills while doing his Masters degree. In his warehouse studio in Vancouver which allows him build mock up sets to photograph on 4x5 film and later to be scanned into digital technology such as Adobe Photoshop. Walls photographs are intensely manipulated through stage production and scenarios of one that is made up of the true. The photographs are stitched together or morphed into a final print that is seamless.

The images question our intelligence of is it real? Wall’s work brings characters into a stage, that tells a story in which the viewer decides the events that are about to unfold. This idea of story telling in a subliminal sense delineates the viewer into the scene and the detail of the image. Taking paintings from “A Sudden Gust of Wind [after Hokusai) With actors he was able to produce 100 photographs in order ‘to achieve a seamless montage that gives the illusion of capturing a real moment in time.’" In his portraits of people in everyday scenes Wall’s captures facial expression like di Corcia which are blank or emotionless. This idea gives the photo a depth of questioning ones self of the narrative that is being told. By showing a void of expression the images capture times of weakness, anxiety, consumption or sickness.

Presenting the works to the public are a major part of how the work is viewed.  Philip-Lorca di Corcia makes startling large color prints, which tower over the viewer. Jeff Wall took the idea of pulling the audience further in. Wall used the idea of illuminating the image from behind by creating a massive light box 40 x 40 inches. Wall derived this idea from bus advertisements that evoke the need to look. The idea allowed him to move away from the traditional print of CibaChrome which was limited in size restrictions The enlarged or illuminated image engulf the audience into the frame, making the art work more powerful

In both of these artist work which is street staged photography. The artist preconceived ideas allows the viewer mind, which is capable of adjusting to these altered images to accept them as recognizable and to be believable. When viewing these images of the manipulated are we viewing a world that denotes thoughts of, this could be me? Do I do that? We are brought into to these images as an act of intrusion, somewhat a sense of voyeurism. Does the viewer become uncomfortable because we do not know the story line? At first I did not care for the work because I did not look at the work, so I dismissed it as a gimmick style, in fact over-lit by editorial standards.

Upon truly looking into the portfolios at Museum of Modern Art, APERTURE and the Metropolitian Museum of Art, is it the act of preconceived thought that separates this new age of street photography from the past genre of street photography that I was taught and worked in. This re stylized art work is cleverly altered, with a new vision and a twist on irony which the photographs capture. Is the true moment more important then the created image? Are both styles not a manipulated image that the artist created on the street of what they wanted the viewer to feel or see? The ideas of these artist has lead me to look further into my work to questions what I see behind the lens of the story being told and maybe how can I provoke the viewer.

1 Tate museum Jeff Wall photographs 1978-2004 website/.Jeff Wall | Tate
Bibliography:
Peter Galassi. Jeff Wall .MoMA 2007
Bennett Simpson. Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Steidel 2007
Peter Galassi. Philip-Lorca diCorcia. MoMA 1995
Sophie Howarth and Stephen Mc Laren. Street Photography Now, Thames and Hudson 2010
Jeff Rian, Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Philip-Lorca diCorcia ELEVEN. Damiani 2011 

Motherwell Floor

I spent the day photographing every foot of the Robert Motherwell studio.  Might print the entire floor in a Montage of the work.

PHOTO Montage, dada, tada and social issues and others...

So April is here...

 Busy in Darkroom and Montage Room printing works.  No photoshopped work, do to $$$. So making do with old style of Montage, some of the work blends well others need more contrast, in some subjects.  Also photographed the Motherwell studio before the building gets deconstruction for new owners, the floor will be covered over.

Reading and researching works by Jeff Wall and Philip Lorca di Corcia, Also looking at Montage works from show at MET (closed) called  Faking It.  New Books for my Library are Jeff Wall MoMA, Di Corcia ELEVEN, ICA. Garry Winogrand SFMoMA show and New York Color.

Met with Mentor and had good meeting talked of works styles and ideas.