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EVERY TIME I READ YET ANOTHER ARTIST STATEMENT written by a member of the Academic Lunatic Fringe, Photography Division, such as this…
….is a photographic case study based on still lifes that emerge from inherited trauma and post memory, exploring the family as an essential contributor to psychological and cultural processes across history….Immersing myself into this story, I fill the gaps with dreams, associations, and imagined scenes to create a narrative transgressing personal and national boundaries. The objects and architecture of the house become parabolic proxies and open a gate between the past and the present….By confronting a past spanning across four generations, a renewed sense of identity provides ground for a detailed investigation of post memory, mental health, war, and history.
…the first thing that pops in my head is this…
"...it's been quite some time since I read an artist speak so eloquently and clearly about the world beyond his/(her) own asshole." ~ Bill Jay
Now here’s the thing that gets me all agita laden…in this particular case-like most other ALF work-I really do not give a crap about the picture maker’s “study” about their inner life / personal make-up / struggles. AKA, “inherited trauma and post memory”.
ASIDE And, to be clear on the mater, I do not give a crap about any picture maker’s personal life. I might like to read / hear a picture maker’s thoughts, re: the medium and its apparatus, but, unlike the ALF crowd’s writing / art-speak (really? ….”objects and architecture of the house become parabolic proxies), I like to read / hear those picture maker’s thoughts expressed in good ol’ fashion, plain-spoken English. END OF ASIDE
But of course art-speak artist statements are long-winded gimcrackery cuz, to the ALF crowd, it is all about meaning. The actual referents are secondary. So consequently, again in this case (as is usually the case), the pictures are nothing to write home about and, to my eye sensibilities, offer little grist for prolonged viewing. And, no matter how long I look at them, they never attain the status of providing, for me, a “ground for a detailed investigation of post memory, mental health, war, and history.”
Of course, I am willing to admit that maybe I just missed it (the meaning) but, then again, I do not look at pictures for the purpose of finding “ground for a detailed investigation of post memory, mental health, war, and history.”
All of that written, I have to wonder where and when it was that Academia went so far off the rails as to propagate the idea that the very thing one sees on the wall of a gallery or in a photographer’s monograph is secondary to what the thing means. Not to mention the emphasis placed on the long-winded, art-speak infused, and TMI, re: angst and struggles, all of which is an attempt to drive home the exact meaning baked into one’s pictures. Ya know, just in case the un-washed, un-educated rabble don’t see it.
Re: my pictures - all I hope for is to put enough in them to interest and seduce the eye, cuz it’s a visual art, and, as a bonus, to stir in the viewer both memory and conjecture.