26 Interviews: (E)nid Crow…

 The majority of New York based artist Enid Crow‘s  photographs contain little more than a tightly cropped  self portraits of the artist wearing different costumes and posing. Despite the seemingly simple and repetative nature of her work, Crow has managed to create a body of images that says quite a bit about American culture and politics.     

 

 

 

 

 

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Jon Miller: What initially drew you to self portrait photography?

Enid Crow: Around 1979, my parents sent me to the Wendy Ward School of Charm. I took classes from when I was eleven until I was about thirteen. In addition to learning things like how to answer the phone and good grooming, part of charm school is learning how to be a fashion model. This involved collecting photographs of good poses from magazines, going to the front of the class, and posing like the model in your photograph. Then we were supposed to get professional black and white photographs taken and start making fashion model portfolios. My mother seemed to think this was either a scam or totally pointless since I had a mouth full of braces and bad skin.

So, I made my own studio in the basement by taping white paper over the wood paneling and photographed myself with my mouth closed, copying poses of the fashion models in Better Homes and Gardens. That was the only magazine my mother subscribed to. When I was a drama student in college and grad school, I started acting as characters in the self-portraits and working with costumes more.

  JM:  Your early series, “Disasters” features characters on the brink of, well, disaster. Their faces all share a similar look of fear, shock, and disgust. In contrast, your newest series, “Happy Workers”, is nothing but smiles and happy faces. Clearly, these images comment on disaster as well, but on a more subdued and personal level. What are your thoughts on this shift in the way your ideas are presented?

EC: After photographing all the tragedy in Disasters and in the midst of the financial collapse last year, I needed to photograph something to cheer myself up. So I photographed myself as people who still have their jobs. Granted the characters in my photographs don’t have health insurance and their 401(k) plans tanked, but at least they aren’t working in a child factory in China. America really knows how to treat its workers!

Seriously, in my pictures, I try to address social issues like sexism, homophobia, and the exploitation of workers. Often I think a strong way to get a point across about a painful, controversial topic is to use humor. So in that sense, I haven’t shifted too far from Disasters even though my facial expression has changed and I’m now using text beneath the photographs to help tell the story.

JM:  I love your “Faggots” series in which you and your real life partner at the time play the roles of queer men, in both graphically sexual moments as well as quieter and even mundane situations. Though you had been doing drag self portraiture as men for some time, this series seems to have developed later and contains the only overt sexual imagery in your catalog. What inspired these images?

EC: When I first came to New York City in 2000, I worked for an attorney who has an extensive photography collection of men loving, taken from the latter part of the 19th century to today. The International Center of Photography featured some photographs from his collection in a show in 2001. My boss would show me new pictures as they were sent to his office and I’d see them scattered around his desk when I delivered papers for him to sign. The subjects ranged from stiff studio portraits of male couples, men sharing beds in rooming houses, to beefcake pictures from 1970s porn magazines. So in my series, I tried to reflect the scope of the images that I saw in his collection.

JM:  Queer sexuality in art is almost automatically processed as transgressive and political. What were you trying to say in creating this work? 
 

EC: Faggots is my favorite series. Justin Duerr, my ex-boyfriend who plays my lover in all the pictures, helped me shoot some of the pictures in the Disaster series around 2005 and 2006. Justin is bi and he would get aroused and want to kiss me when I was dressed as a male character for Disasters. We decided scenes of us kissing as men would make interesting photographs themselves so we started our own series together and ended it just before we broke up in 2008 when I decided to grow my hair long.

The photos comment on issues that I care about very deeply—the arbitrariness of gender and homophobia. I don’t think there’s any need for me to get into a long soap box sermon about why those issues matter because this is, after all, Gaycondo. But briefly, being in love with someone who loves men, and knowing he could engage in certain social rites with me because I am a woman (like marry me or display my photo at work) but not a man he might fall in love with after me, is in my mind, one of the greatest social tragedies there is.

JM:  Any future projects currently being fleshed out?

EC: I am going to my parents’ condo in Florida in a week for a vacation. I am going to finish the Happy Workers series and start shooting a very short self-portrait series called Beauty Queens in tiaras and heavy makeup on the beach. In December, I am going to start shooting a series of portraits of vegans in New York City. I would also like to do a serious series of pigeon photographs. I love pigeons and I take a lot of snapshots of the cute ones I see on the street and the sick ones who I take care of in my apartment.

JM:  Pigeon photographs? That seems like a pretty grand departure from your regular aesthetic! What type of images are you planning on creating? 

EC: I am as fanatical about pigeons as Nikola Tesla, and these pictures will be like poems in their honor. I will take photographs of ordinary street pigeons loafing and flying and manipulate the images so that they are monochromatic and simple. Then I will take the individual, simplified versions of pigeons and use them as individual design elements, like the way the artist Tae Won Yu manipulates letters of the alphabet to make fancy designs. I have been doing this a little with pictures of pigeons I’ve found on the Internet, but I think the pictures will be better if I start from scratch with my own pictures. 

 But I am not moving away from self-portraits. Sometimes I just need a break to come up with a new idea. As I age, my face is getting saggier and more comic, so I think that the photos will probably get funnier and sadder.

For More: www.enidcrow.com

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26 Interviews  by Jon Miller

365 days.

26 interesting people.

1 alphabet.

Paul: Miranda July’s Extras…

from Vice

Jon: July First Thursday Round-up PART ONE: Photographer Ferit Kuyas at Blue Sky Gallery….

The shows at Blue Sky, one of my favorite Portland galleries, have been a little *meh* the past few months. It’s unfortunate too, because as a non-profit they are one of the few major galleries in Portland with curators who are willing to take risks and not simply rely on easy-to-sell decorative art.

This month however, Blue Sky is back on top of their game. The two shows they currently have up for the month of July are both excellent. While I am not shocked to find how much I liked photographer Amy Stein’s highly choreographed images of taxidermied animals invading suburbia (more on her in a later post), it was the Chinese city scape photographs of Ferit Kuyas’  City of Ambition series that I found the most surprisingly alluring.

As a theme, I generally find architectural still life kind of un-dynamic. It usually falls into the trap of becoming either overly precious and decorative (sunsets over San Fran) or hard and documentative (spreads in Surface magazine). While both styles of architectural photography hold a certain level of importance, neither does much to actually inspire a viewer to experience the image at a deeper level.

However, Turkish photographer Ferit Kuyas refreshingly creates a style all his own. Kuyas’ images of the Chinese city of Chongqing feel immediately noir-like and full of secrets.  Paradoxically, where noir style art examines the hidden truths lying in the shadows, Kuyas manages to create a similar intrigue in the overcast vast expanses of nearly empty white space that occupies most of his photographs. It is not hard to imagine the hidden underbelly and tragic stories lurking in the mist of Kuyas’ vision of Chongqing.

 

I highly recommend heading down to Blue Sky this month to experience theCity of Ambition in person. The large scale of the images as well as the sense of immersion experienced by being physically surrounded by these photographs is well worth the trip. You can also check out most of the images from the show at Ferit Kuyas’ website.

Jon: The Portraits of Ryan McGinley…

I am currently loving the work of New York photographer Ryan McGinley. In an area of photography bloated with a lot of uninspired fluff, his nude portraits stand out. Much like the youthful exuberance documented by the images, McGinley’s adept use of lighting and motion feels fresh, dynamic, and full of life. His several photographs involving fireworks (bottom image) are especially memorable. I love the use of lo-fi methods to create art that feels anything but. Make sure to visit his website for many more images, including behind the scenes photos of his often impressive gallery set-ups.

 

 

 

Jon: The artificial lives of artists Duane Hanson and François Sagat …

Though Duane Hanson and François Sagat couldn’t be more different in almost every way as artists (time period, medium, subject, and place in the art community), their work seems to have a similar question  at it’s root: what is the meaning of artifice in it’s relation to value? Both artists work plays with finding a solution to this question that, though at first seems to offer only whimsy, upon deeper viewing says more.

Duane Hanson (1925-96) rose to fame as a part of the mid 60’s pop art movement. His life-size wax sculptures were always studies of the non-celebrity, though throughout his working life the  dramatic nature of his subjects drastically changed. In his early career, Hanson’s sculptures mostly portrayed everyday people caught in the middle of adrenaline charged and often historically notable circumstances. These included tableauxs of race riots as well as the Vietnam war. As his work developed though, he began to exclusively create sculptures of everyday people doing everyday things (reading the paper, going grocery shopping, cleaning, etc). Of course, in the act of capturing these moments and putting them on display in a gallery, Hanson  imbues these normally unremarkable moments with a  sense of extreme importance.

At the same time, these wax sculptures also  appear to also be commenting on and deriving value via the only other comparable use of wax as an artistic medium: the modern day wax museums. It is impossible to view these sculptures and not immediately read “celebrity” into their characters. It is exactly this relationship to celebrity and artifice that gives these sculptures (and the images of them) power.  

(*It is hard to begin a discussion of François Sagat’s photography without first divulging that his most notable claim to fame so far has been his performance in numerous porn films. Interestingly, this knowledge both offers a deeper understanding of his work (as it largely comments on the human body and desire) while also initially prompting many viewers to dismiss his art as porn in and of it’s self. This is of course extremely reductive. There is a thin yet powerfully divisive line set by society between art and pornography. Most contemporary art lovers would agree that any evaluative system that immediately dismisses art simply for being sexually evocative is only damaging to the art community as a whole. Anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly to stupid to be allowed to make judgements about art in the first place*)

As a subject in his work, French multimedia artist François Sagat most commonly uses his own body. Through costume, lighting, and digital manipulation Sagat subtly tweaks his own image. Sagat has not chosen the easiest path for himself as a photographer. Artists have been creating similar work for decades, so it is easy to compare and judge his wrok agaist that of his forbearers. In addition to being part of a well established and hard to break into photographic tradition, Sagat also has to combat viewers first reading of his body.Resoundingly, this is to see it as model-ish/overtly sexual/fake. This is compounded by the fact that most viewers of his work are already aware of is career in the gay porn industry. These factors make it even more astounding that Sagat does seem to exceed on many levels.

In one of his newest series of images (pictured above) Sagat finds an ingenious and provocative way to not only debunk this preconceived reading of his photography, but to also use it as a tool to give the work a deeper meaning. In each of the photographs, we find Sagat staring away from the camera and into a full length mirror. The reflections we find staring back at him is anything but natural though. They  have been digitally altered so that his face and penis are erased from the image. In doing so François Sagat has taken away the exact things that has made him both desired and judged.

Sagat creates an artificial self image to displace the other artificial image of him that has been created by the spectator. Paradoxically, through making himself more visually generic he has also made himself more important.

 

Hanson and Sagat  make  strong arguments  towards the belief that all human value assignments in regards to individual worth hold there strength in artifice. If societal value can so easily be added or subtracted via the use of simple visual trickery, what makes that value worthwhile in the first place? This is both empowering and disheartening in that the art seems to say that at once we are all equal, but that that sameness holds no intrinsic worth.

Jon: The Many Views of Photographer David Hilliard…

Check out more of David Hilliard‘s photographs at his site.

 Rock Bottom

 Hug

 Cy Waiting

Bleeder

Jon: New-ish images from LucyandBart…

Last Spring I did a post for Gaycondo about design duo LucyandBart (Lucy McRae and Bart Hess) whose art explores what they refer to as “future human shapes”. The pair takes photographs of themselves wearing home-made low tech prosthetics. These simply constructed garments drastically alters the human silhouette in ways that frequently fall into the gray area between whimsy and disgust.

Below are two new-ish portraits by the artists. They are not actually new (both are from last Fall), but they are both new to me. Unfortunately they are also the only new pieces LucyandBart have put up for view since early last year! Hopefully the pair intend to continue the collaboration. Incidentally, this set of images includes the first image featuring both artists together (as one body). Whether or not this is an omen of LucyandBart’s deepening connection and permanence as a duo is yet to be seen. 

In my opinion, these are two of the most promising artists I have been exposed to in recent memory. While the idea of costumed, postmodern, self-portrait photography is in no way revolutionary, Lucy McRae and Bart Hess take the medium into new and startlingly successful territory.

Neandathol

Dripping Color

Jon: The Digital Photo Collages of Jim Kazanjian…

For more of Portland artist Jim Kazanjian’s work, head over to his (unfortunately bare-bones) website.

Click for full size image.

Jon: Enid Crow’s “Happy Workers”…

 

 

NYC photographer Enid Crow’s newest body of images continue to be based around playing with the contortion of her own self image. However, she has pushed her own personal artistic boundries within this format into new territory by choosing to create self portrait characters that are (seemingly) happy. In her previous series, most notably the Disaster photographs, her characters were caught in what is perhaps the worst moments possible: the moment immediatly preceding tragedy.  In Happy Workers, Crow has instead chosen to comment on life, and the choices we make (or are forced to make) about how we spend 40 hours a week of that time. The characters are not having tragedy happen to them, instead it would seem that there happiness is the tragedy.

Each of the image in Happy Workers is a “snap-shot” of an employee melodramatically smiling in front of their place of employment. Included below each photograph is an overwhelming positive quote from the character about the job they do. Most of the jobs Crow has chosen to base an image around would be considered lower end jobs (retail, server, blue collar). Crow gives no commentary about whether these images are meant to be read as a positive, scathing, or a simply sarcastic response to the current conditions of most working class jobs. Based on the almost cartoonish nature of most of the images as well as the unrealistically perky wording of the quotes though, it would seem that Crow’s commentary falls more with the latter.

To see the entire collection of photographs, head over to Enid Crow’s website.

To read an article I wrote for Gaycondo about her previous series, click here.

     

Click thumbnails for full image.

Jon: Interview with Photographer Holly Andres…

I was lucky enough to get to spend some time recently speaking with Portland photographer Holly Andres about her recent collection of images, “Sparrow Lane”.  Andres’ mysterious and theatrical photographs have been enchanting the local art community for several years now, and it appears that the national scene is now starting to catch a whiff of the Portland darling’s talents. Andres’ was recently written up in both Art in America and Art Forum magazines (a very very big deal) as well as finishing up a recent piece for PBS. If this effervescent artist can continues winning hearts and making great art, she might just have what it takes to become the next important American photographer.

 

Jon Miller: Your photographs seem to contain a quixotic and unsolvable narrative. Do you go into the process of creating each photograph with a known solution to the question posed by the image?

Holly Andres: No, which was an intentional departure from my previous work – specifically Stories from a Short Street, in which each narrative is based on recreating a quite specific childhood experience. I felt like I learned something really valuable with the Short St Series, which is the importance of relinquishing control when you offer up your work to public consumption and interpretation. Despite the specific content that I was examining, it was fascinating to realize that ultimately people arrive at all art with their own life experiences, connotations and associations. Ultimately that’s part of the power of art.

I felt as though I wanted to exploit this understanding a bit as I embarked on Sparrow Lane. By juxtaposing rather suggestive and familiar iconography such as scissors, chrome flashlights, bird cages, skeleton keys, and open drawers, doors and windows, I’m interested in suspending any overt clues from the viewer so that they are encouraged to arrive at their own assumptions about what they think the scene is about.  The body of work presents an elliptical narrative, a mystery, to encourage viewers, much like the characters in the images, to engage in and strive to solve along the way.

JM:Your choice of models/locations implies on some level a commentary on race and class. How do you perceive these as elements in your art?

HA: For Sparrow Lane I specifically selected character’s that I thought would reflect our culture’s stereotypes of innocence and girlish femininity – hence the fair skin, blue eyes and light hair. Furthermore, Sparrow Lane is in some ways an abstraction of my own childhood experiences. I grew up in rural western Montana with very little ethnic diversity and most of my peers were similar in appearance to the Sparrow Lane girls. In addition, it often seems that when a photographer chooses to depict racial minorities that, unfortunately perhaps, race becomes a significant part of the content, and I did not want the work to explicitly be a commentary on race.

In regards to class – and race and class are undeniably intertwined – the girls appear to be relatively privileged, and I intentionally sought out to imply that the girls are sleuthing the grounds of a grand fictitious estate. Certainly not the environments that I experienced as a child, but they perhaps are fantasies of houses I would have liked to have lived in, maybe because they reference the novels I devoured, primarily Nancy Drew.

JM:Each of your images is impressively staged. From a technical standpoint, can you explain the process of preparing for some of your more complex pieces?

HA: Though the photos weren’t all shot in rooms in the same house or neighborhood,  I intended to create a fictitious space with hopes of creating more conceptual and visual unity with in the narratives. I’m really conscientious of the spaces in which the characters exist, and instead of finding houses to shoot in, I completely transform an existing space (usually my own home) to look like the one in my mind. They can be thought of as installations that are activated by the characters and then photographed.

This pre-production is a big part of the process. I engage in a lot of thrift shopping – often times I will find an object that will trigger a thought that I can craft a narrative around. I’m trying to create a non-specific time period. I like to think of them as sometime between the era of the 1950s – 1980s – but they’re not the present. I think this sense of nostalgia also reinforces the mystery.

Regarding the directing of my models, I revisited many of the Nancy Drew book covers that I read as a child and I love the melodramatic body language of the characters and opted to emulate that aesthetic – the way their bodies frame the scene, the separation of their fingers, the way their hair frames their face and their startling – but lovely- expressions.

The hyper-staged quality of the work is also part of the artifice of working with a large format 4×5” camera. Setting up the lights and dialing in the exposure is a very extensive process – there isn’t much room for experimentation – and so I exploited this limitation in the work. I should note that the photographic process is in collaboration with my husband Paul Rich, who is an excellent technical assistant. He’s an integral part of my work.

JM: What do you draw from for the inspiration of Sparrow Lane?

HA: Looking back on the trajectory of my work, it has always been self referential and filled with personal narratives. I continue to be quite mystified by the past and the experience of being a child.

‘Sparrow Lane’ was in part inspired by a conversation I had with my friend, Fiona –  who I’ve been photographing since she was 7 and who is the little girl who loosely represents myself in the ‘Short Street Series’. She was telling me with so much enthusiasm how she had been reading the Nancy Drew novels, and it was delightful to reminisce with her, because I too had read most of the books when I was a young girl, and although I couldn’t recall a single plot, I realized the provocative images from the book covers were still nestled somewhere in my mind. 

I also had been wanting to start a new photo narrative series with adolescent girls in more empowering depictions and of course Nancy Drew – the sleuth – has consistently been one of few smart, curious, and empowering role models for young girls.

I used these formal/thematic conventions as a point of departure, but ultimately the forbidden knowledge the adolescent girls are on the cusp of acquiring in the “Sparrow Lane” series is a metaphor for the precarious transition from ‘girl’ to ‘woman’.   

My photo process has been also informed and influenced by my early training in traditional painting, my interest in religious Renaissance art and the mise en scenes of classic films – such as Alfred Hitchcocks’ work – the highly theatrical lighting, rich color combinations, compositions, and his many female protagonists. He was also a master at creating visual clues to communicate narratives without relying on dialogue.

 Make sure to visit Holly Andres’ website to view the entire “Sparrow Lane” collection as well as additional photographs from her other bodies of work.

Jon: Photographer Matthew Tischler…

Artist Matthew Tischler uses very low tech tools in order to create images that, at first, visually appear highly didgitally altered. Each photograph is constructed by placing a metal screen between the lens and the subject. Tischler then shifts the camera’s focus away from the human subject, hightening the clarity of the screen. The end result is a pixelation of the subject matter. Those being photographed appear seperate from their surrounding (due to the color saturation) as well as unquesionabley a part of it (due to the way the technique blurs the edge of the subject matter, creating and equal playing field of importance for the human subject as well as their surroundings).  The images take on a certain similarity to video freeze frames made on a cheap VCR.

This juxtoposition between low tech hand manipulation and hi tech visual results forces the viewer see these mundane naturalist compositions in a new way. Though often attempted, this is not an easy task for most artist’s to accomplish.

Tischler is currently being featured on everyone’s favorite affordable online art gallery, 20X200. Check it out…

Jon and Paul: Christmas with photographer Holly Andres…

This past weekend we were invited to Portland sweetheart photographer Holly Andres’ annual holiday party via our mutual friends over at Digging to China. We had a great time mingling, drinking, and calorie loading on kitchy finger foods, but the highlight of the evening was Andres’ planned party photo shoot. We were not only lucky enough to get to meet one of our favorite local artists (and recent Art in America profilie) but also had the honor of being subjects in a several of her impromptu holiday portraits! How exciting!

Here are some of our favorite shots of us. To see a bunch more, check out the official slideshow. Also, make sure to look at Andres’ recent collection, Sparrow Lane, over at her website.

Jon: The Strange Light of Photographer Noah Kalina….

For more pieces, check out Noah Kalina’s Website

KEEP IT ON THE BROWNLOWE: The Sky Lit Up

What does it look like outside of gaycondo?

While this picture doesn’t quite capture the scale of the sunset’s intensity this must be the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen.

Jon: Meet Freddy 10…

To find out exactly who Freddy is, check out the first post of the series here.

To see all of the posts, click the link in the bar to the right.

 33.) “Aug. 1986. Our three boys, Jonathan, Freddy, and Ryan.”

(Gaycondo side note: That’s me and my brother. I’m on the left.)

 34.) “Grandma likes to hug Freddy. Do you like to be hugged? Go hug Momma, Daddy, and Brother.”

 35.) “Freddy says, ‘Let me get up there also’. All-bran and Cheerio says ‘no’.”

36.) “Freddy has a little sister now. Her name is Fredericka. We like to call her Ricky. Grandma thinks it is nice that Freddy has someone to play with.”

Jon: I am so jealous of all of you readers in Philadelphia….

Multimedia artist Stephen Scott Smith is easily one of the most exciting and noteworthy new talents based in Portland Oregon. His far reaching body of work explores many areas untouched by his forbearers, a feet few other contemporary artists can aspire too accomplish.

During the past few weeks Smith unveiled a new project, ME9, which was spread out over three seperate galleries (Painted Bride Art Center, Crane Arts Building, and International House) in Philadelphia.  The project involved installation, video, photography, and performance pieces created by Smith.

I am totally bummed that I didn’t get to see it… Here are some of the highlights:

 

Normally I would give you a detiled analysis of Stephen Scott Smith’s artwork, but I am not going to do that right now for several reasons:

1.) I am a little bit drunk off Miller Highlife, and it is currently 1AM

2.) I am currently in the process of finalizing a fucking A-W-E-S-O-M-E interview with Smith for Gaycondo

3.) Stephen Scott Smith has a super top secret project that I have sworn not to talk about for the blog yet on my mother’s grave. I have so much to write about that particular (mind blowing) and off limits project that I have decided to abstain from writing too much about ME9.

While waiting though, you should absolutely obsess over this and this. The second one in particular is worth exploring. It gives a little peek into the top secret stuff mentioned earlier.

Really guys, prepare to have your minds blown…

Jon: Meet Freddy 8…

To find out exactly who Freddy is, check out the first post of the series here.

To see all of the posts, click the link in the bar to the right.

24.) “Do you know that this is Grandpa? He told Freddy that it was too cold for him to help deliver the papers.”

25.) “Freddy said ‘I can draw a picture.’ Look what he drew. Do you like to draw?”

26.) “Andy came over to play with Freddy. He let Freddy wear his fireman hat. Freddy will let him sit in his chair next.”

27.) “Grandpa and Freddy think it is funny for Freddy to put Grandma’s bra on his head.”

Jon: Sage Sohier’s “Almost Grown”…

 

I’m usually not a huge fan of straight forward portaiture, but Sage Sohier’s series Almost Grown manages to strike a resonant emotional chord for me in spite of its stark simplicity. The series is comprised of images depicting parents posing with their on-the-cusp-of-adulthood children. The majority of the images create a visual triangle of spectatorial gazing, where in one of the subjects stares at the camera (and therefore at us, ther viewer), while the other model gazes almost longingly at their familial partner in the image.

This not only creates a visually dynamic image, it also creates a physically dynamic experience for the viewer, who immediately feels personally involved in the obvious emotional connectivety taking place.

These images expolore both the unbreakable connections between family members, and the necessity to at some point, and to a certain degree, sever those connections.

You should really go to her site and look at more of her photographs….CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!