5th paper

Miah Nate Johnson Johnson  4

AIB/MFA

Oliver Wasow

Overview of MFA

This  final paper explores my works and research during the six months of my MFA residency at AIB.

I set out to look at my roots of who I am and commenced with the portfolios of Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand, two photographers to whom publishers, critics, curators and editors express my work reminds them of.   I wanted to digest, these two very different styles of seeing the world and ask myself why did I follow the path of this genre of street or social commentary photography.  To start I choose two of Robert Frank’s books, Lines of my Hand , Lustrum Press New York 1972,  and Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans by Sarah Greenough,Robert Frank Steidel Press. 2009.  In the body of work Lines in My Hand ,Frank broke from his first book of the stylized works of The Americans,Grove Press 1955, an icon of who he was as an artist. As Frank stated in his Guggenheim proposal for The Americans project "observation and record of what one naturalized American finds to see in the United States." ² Guggenheim Grant proposal 1954 Looking into the Americans, Steidel.   By looking at  Lines of my Hand I realized that Frank reinvented himself, mid stride in his career with black and white images that are very abstract, and with a complexity of a narrative that is given by words written on the images or in mirrors. The work is that of a self -expression very different from The Americans portfolio which was more of a documentation or observation of life. I then looked at two books of Garry Winogrand’s work starting with ANIMALS 1969 Museum of Modern Art New York which was a small paper back book of photographs taken in the zoos of New York City.  The images are simple framing, mixed with people but the subject matter has a strangeness  which anthropomorphizes the animals.  The book Man in the Crowd Fraenkel Gallery and D.A.P., 1999 is a look into his street works concentrating twenty years of compelling street photos that form the core of Winogrand’s vision.

I then directed my third paper on a different approach of staged street photography. THe artist I focused on where Jeff Wall and Philip DiCorcia who both work in conceptual narratives with a social messages in their photographs.  Looking at the works of these  two artist through books of these artist work unfolded surreal fabricated situations which arouse subjective states of mind, suggesting fictitious events in a documentary sense.  

By looking at these various artist this allowed me to focus and dismantle my work with ideas and concepts of how my work is created and perceived.  This insightful reflection of others works allowed me to rethink and absorb the comments of my presented portfolio from the Professors during the ten day residency at AIB.   Oliver Wasow’s comment “ break the boundaries of the black frame” along with Jan Avgikos’s comment “a sympathetic traditional stylized format showing the past of a New York”  followed by John Krammer’s comment “you say your work is not political yet it is” these comments struck home but how, and where to go with it? 

In one of my meetings in New York with Chris Boot, Executive Director of APERTURE Foundation, stated while reviewing my work “although I was a strong street photographer, and very gifted printer, The world of contemporary photography has changed the traditional street photographer, in which working with film, darkrooms, and  the Leica camera are really pass’e.   The ideas are based on concept more then technique”. Chris Boot, APERTURE , quote from a meeting in February 2013.

  This took some time to absorb Chris’s comment and those of the AIB professors, who’s used words of boundaries, traditional, stylized and the idea of concept more then technique while looking at my work.   While in New York I went to the exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art which where both on digital Photoshop altered imagery which opened more doors of thought and questioning.  At the MoMA exhibition The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook. One of the artist’s that struck me was photographs of Martha Rosler who Oliver Wasow mentioned during one of our talks at AIB.   Her montage photographs are compositions with simple dynamics, which are powerful political commentaries of that time period in history.  Seeing prints at MOMA also of Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand’s work, I got it, the images popped.   This was very different from looking at a book, versus on the wall ,each was an expression of the artist and in a sense was avant garde of that time period in history.  Though I was able to make images that reminded people of these bodies of work, I was not creating something new but following a path that had already been walked. 

One of the largest hurdles I now faced, was questioning myself of my meaning of what my work entails and how do I start the process of taking the street images that I have worked on for so many years and disassemble the idea of traditional black frame, black and white prints, and waiting for the the decisive moment, yet still keep my voice of a political, humanistic, environmental, and at times bizarre vision of what I see. 

Back in the darkroom processing film and making prints, I concentrated on breaking some of the rules of never cropping and losing the full frame black border. In doing so the photograph became more directed, by focusing the viewers attention towards the subject by use of the cropped frame, and enlarged images. But there was still a void something had to be shaken or changed.  The MET and  MoMA  exhibitions still lingered with the new visions, of different styles and techniques the artist used in the medium of photography. How else can I look into my work and make images that tell a story or narrative for the viewer but different from my street works.  

There was one artist I saw at the Brooklyn Museum of Art which completely out of context who I was moved by, named Kara Walker. Her work deals with cut out images on black paper or steel which tell a narrative of old folk tales and true stories of African American history. The work is projected , pasted or silhouetted and each one held it own story line.  I then began to look at other artist John Heartfield and Man Ray montage works, which I began to concentrate on the story line and techniques used. 

Since Adobe Photoshop was out of my financial means I looked into a way I could produce work with out using Adobe photoshop. I took my silver gelatin prints and digital photographs and started to cut out certain individuals with scissors,  I soon had a box full of cut out characters that where to become my new subjects for the photographs that I would create. My thought process was this.  I would find a master print for the background image, I then would search my subject matter and decide which best used, told a story or opened discussion for my work.  At first it was pure mistakes, but then images began to appear that exposed what I truly wanted to say.  Once the image was cutout I would take my spotting brush and match the tonality of the cutout so as to blend the images edge.  I would take a master print place it on the copy stand and then lay the cutout images on top of the master print, by arranging the scene I was able to stage a scene, that evoked a message to the viewer whether environmental, social or sexual.  I discovered that I liked the rawness of the unperfected edge of the image or floating subjects that left the work open for interpretation. 

The results from the works started conversations with people here on the Cape in Wellfleet and in Provincetown, the images carry my message of political, environmental and social conditions, yet still hold in the traditions of black and white street works.

Books looked at and purchased this semester:

Fred Ritchin , After Photography

Fineman Faking It, MET

Philip Di Corcia, MoMA

Philip Di Corcia, Eleven

Alex Soth, Sleeping by the Mississipi

William Klein, ABC

Paul Outerbridge, Taschen

Jeff Wall, MoMA

Philip Di Corcia, ICA, Steidel

Roberts Frank,Looking into the Americans

Robert Frank, Lines of my Hand

Ray Metzker, YALE

Anne Celine Jaeger, Image Makers Image Takers

KEn Light, Witness to our TIme

Nathan Lyons, Photographers on Photography

Diane Arbus, Aperture

Garry Winogrand,Man in the Crowd, Fraenkel

Garry Winogrand, Animals, MoMA

Josef Koudelka, APERTURE

Lee Friedlander, Like a one eyed Cat, Abrahams

Follow up side note:

The image “LUNCHEONETTE” is that of an elderly man eating lunch, the background is a derelict building, across form him is a the nude backside of a young woman, the idea that I am convey is that of a mans thought of being once young and the beauty or lust for a woman.

The image “REPLACEMENT PART” taken in an abandoned air force base, first strike room, shows a woman nude wearing a nuclear face shield, a man clothed is walking into the scene carrying a mannequin bottom half of a woman’s form.  The idea is the male ego, or subliminal thought of replacing a woman with that of a better form.