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Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

The ways in which we, as an audience, assign meaning to film is fascinating. In some ways we have unwittingly learned alongside Hollywood?s developing experimentation. Of course, another way to spin it is that Hollywood has studied?natural behavior long enough to categorize and name the filming processes that invoke certain audience perceptions and reactions. I believe that this has clearly been a joint venture.

From the Birds

In raising birds, I?ve learned a great deal about their visual language. When one wishes to exert power over another, he or she stands taller and looks down upon the flock. Those who offer submission bow their heads and agree to be led. Like dogs, birds are comfortable in either role as long as they know which behavior to assume. In my experience with macaws, amazons?and cockatoos, the human must become the alpha bird or flock leader to establish order. Otherwise, and trust me on this, these highly intelligent beings know how to manipulate humans (through screaming, biting, destructive chewing, etc.) and they will take control in a hurry. To establish the alpha position, human eye level must be elevated above that of the bird at all times. If the tables do turn, they can be reversed again through this simple act of elevation (and a great deal of patience).

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Like Cindy Sherman, Nikki S. Lee offers a valuable critique?of our social need?to identify and be identified in a particular way. She?broadens her scope?beyond Sherman’s examination of clich?d feminity, inserting herself, as a Korean minority,?into the setting and style of many?cultural identities.

To contextualize Nikki Lee?s work (ooh, the irony), I visited The Museum of Contemporary Photography and read?”Karma Chameleon Revisited” by D. Robert Okada and Z. Samual Podolski, The Harvard Crimson, September 28, 2001:

Lee is not stereotyping and marginalizing her subjects, but rather indicting those stereotypes, exhibiting the fluency with which we can shed and assume any of them we like. She doesn’t objectify the person, she objectifies the ideas we all have about minority identities. She shows her audience the extent to which they stereotype-and marginalize-themselves? In this way, Lee achieves two biting critiques in one fell swoop-cutting at both the stereotyped and the stereotyper. We identify others and ourselves in purely visual terms. If Nikki Lee’s “Projects” seems at first ridiculous, then, that’s the whole point. They are ridiculous, and so are we.

This passage brought me right back to Hutcheon:

The postmodern, as I have been defining it, is not a degeneration into ?hyperreality? but a questioning of what reality can mean and how we can come to know it. It is not that representation now dominates or effaces the referent, but rather that it now self-consciously acknowledges its existence as representation-that is, as interpreting (indeed as creating) its referent, not as offering direct and immediate access to it. (32)

First off, the reference to?postmodern degeneration into?hyperreality is interesting. In one sense, Nikki Lee’ s work is the ultimate hyperreality, demonstrating the ways in which we put ourselves forth into society using?visual signs, signifying?the group to which we belong. The group collectively (those who both embrace or impose) determines what that visual language is and?derives meaning?from certain body posturing, clothing?and hair style. At the end of the day, one must ask, who are we when we aren’t pretzeling ourselves to fit some mold? Can one access a “true self” any longer? Has our true self been erased by representation over?time or has?individual identity always been?based on?social construct?

Considering the work of?Hutcheon and Lee, hyperreality in and of itself is a reality, if not as a representation of the real, then as a very real representation. Visual?identity is just one more form under Lee’s scrutiny?through postmodern photogrpahy, examining what tools?we use to represent?ourselves and interpret others.?Lee is shooting holes all through the meanings we think we can derive just by looking, and yet we simultaneously see that those meanings are not meaningless because we assign power to them.

Society would have us?believe that identity is?fixed within a particular race or ethnicity, but as Nikki Lee goes culture surfing, she demonstrates how maliable and yet influential visual cues?can be.?Perhaps she best passes?in yuppie, tourist, punk, and elderly?groups since race and ethnicity are not their sole defining factors, yet, when she inserts?herself into Hispanic and other ethnic settings, the lines of distiction are most de-doxified. We can see she is slightly different, and yet?there is?an uncanny?comfort level in the scene for both Lee and those who surround her. She has become, and has been accepted as, one of “them.”?As we observe her, we must ask ourselves what makes her different and?what makes her the same. Does she, or do we, decide??Is there so much destinction between “us” and “them” when the “us” becomes “them?”

Post Script

In an October?1, 2006 New York Times article, “Now in Moving Pictures: The Multitudes of Nikki S. Lee,” Carol Kino says of Lee, “Even after a long face-to-face conversation, it?s hard to say for certain what Nikki S. Lee is really like.”?This could be read two ways, either Lee’s art is so relavent?that she unmistakably proves?we never really know a person, even when we?think we do,?or she’s crazy. The following passage describes Lee’s film:

Titled ?A K A Nikki S. Lee,? the film purports to be a documentary about the real Nikki, a rather plain, serious young woman who is in turn making her own documentary about her alter ego, Nikki Two, the effervescent exhibitionist who appears in the photographs. Yet as the true Ms. Lee explained in an interview in her East Village apartment, ?Nikki One is supposed to be real Nikki, and Nikki Two is supposed to be fake Nikki. But they are both fake Nikki.?

Fight Club schizophrenia anyone? I’m just saying. Still, I’m with Lee. I think we’re all crazy?and simply?masquerading as sane.

The article goes on to say “Ms. Lee also played fast and loose with the dates, just as she did with the camera date-stamps on her ?Projects? photos.” I had wondered, when I saw the Lesbian Project, if it really?spanned over the course of 6 months. This adds a whole new dimention to?Lee’s art, playing with?our assumptions?about time and?about long relationships vs. short ones. Right on.

In class, some postmodern themes, concepts and questions we?ve applied to fiction involve:

• the power structure of the subject/object relationship
• the question of veracity in representation and history
• the failure of language and it?s limitation on thought
• capitalism as an inextricable driving force in postmodern art

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Postmodern?photographer?Cindy Sherman demonstrates?the ways in which?these issues also infuse her medium, effectively challenging?the traditional assumption that photography is a true representation of the real. MoMa.org summarizes Sherman’s first collection,?Untitled Film Stills:

The sixty-nine solitary heroines map a particular constellation of fictional femininity that took hold in postwar America?the period of Sherman’s youth, and the ground-zero of our contemporary mythology.

Sherman poses herself as if she were a film star and then snaps the shutter. As the photographer, she is the subject capturing what appears to be a realistic depiction of?her object, creating a?glimpse into the life of a starlet. At the same time, she is standing in as that object, an actress acting the part of an actress. The result is a representational copy of a starlet who has never existed, the perfect simulacra,?calling?attention to?the problematic subject and object, and?the assumption?of real or historic?photographic representation accentuated by her use of black and white photography.

In reference to?Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #3 (1977. Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York) MoMa.org says “the protagonist is shown preening in the kitchen.” The question then becomes, who is the protagonist? It could be?the actress being portrayed, the artist herself, or the idea of a woman preening in order to present herself a certain way. In essence, all three?possibilities require?acting and the lines blur as to where one ends and the others begin. Also,?in?Sherman’s choice of a?kitchen setting, this woman seems out of place. even in her apron. She is too glamorous?to be surrounded by typical?household items and, against the barren walls, she becomes the only?aesthetic thing of?beauty?in the room. While the surrounding items do little to help define?who she is, they do tell who she is not. Or perhaps, to read it another way,?the items do define her everyday life?while?being a celebrity is not her true self. The one?truth that holds fast for all possibilities is that it is impossible?to know who this person really is.

With?this one, Untitled Film Still #16. 1978. Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the same questions are called into play. As a posed object, the camera control is in Sherman’s right hand,?revealing?more directly that she is also the subject.?Point of view shifts to the floor here, offering a more?voyeuristic?peek into the domestic life of this celebrity. She looks away, denying that she is posing for the camera when she is obviously controlling?all that?is seen. We sit at her feet looking up in awe at her?formally centered placement, perfect posture?with one leg slightly in front of the other. The casual grip of?her cigarette suggests that?her stiff feminine posturing is a forced picture of casual relaxation and she holds this pose under the watchful eye of the formally posed?man on the wall. Each are confined within the social definitions of gender during this particular era and the message is?reminiscent of Cixous’ argument that language is structured around dichotomies that allow for no areas of overlap. As the creation of this collection drew to a close, Sherman said she had run out of clich?s to represent, reminding us also of Winterson’s reference to clich?d language and it’s limitation of our thoughts.

Sherman continually explores these themes in her later photography making?a more blatant attack on the assumed “realism” in representation. In Untitled #225 (1990. Color photograph. Collection Philip and Beatrice Gersh, Beverly Hills.) this disturbing?model appears to be a well dress?aristocrat from another century wearing a great deal of make-up and a wig.?It becomes difficult to identify where the artificial parts of this woman end and the real begin. The unreal appearance of the head and the more obvious artificial breast makes one question, is this even Sherman posing??The figure?is also a mother, offering her?artificial breast to an unseen child as if to say motherhood is only one aspect of a whole woman, not her full identity. Wealth, jewels, a fine wig and clothing are not reliable identifiers either. As they are nothing more than commodities, does the woman in wearing them then become a commodity herself?

Moving away from?reference to?realism altogether, Sherman’s woman becomes fully artificial, as does she, each replaced by?the same?doll. The pornographic and exposed positioning of Untitled #255 (1992) equates the “reality” of sex mags to that of posed plastic. The lack of reality is as exposed as the model itself and yet the demand for such “recreations” of sexual events inspires vigorous?capitalist reproduction. This replacement also calls into question the authenticity of the artist’s role?in representation, drawing attention to the lack of realism that occurs when objects are selectively chosen for representation. The model looks away from the camera to?demonstrate, once again, a denial of the artificial situation.

Interestingly,?using a doll as an unrealistic representation of a human being, although it seems to be a drastic difference of subject/object?from the first pictured above, is no different in concept.?Sherman brilliantly exposes photographic?”realism”?as equally flawed in all.

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