Open Studio Week

A couple weeks ago I converted my studio into an open gallery space for my thesis work. This provided an opportunity for viewers to see my work in a more professional setting and prompted me to think about how I would want my pieces displayed. I had the wonderful opportunity to have a studio visit with the well known New York based photographer Suzanne Opton who received the 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her soldier series is currently showing at the Linfield College gallery... It was refreshing to get a critique from another photographer and she seemed genuinely intrigued and interested in my thesis work. Opton is an experienced portrait photographer so our common interest in photographing people gave us common ground on which to discuss our inspirations. She enjoyed my purely photographic pieces and pointed out something significant that had not occurred to me. My pictures are abstract portraits of the human body and she pointed out that most of the time when people look at such things, the art becomes a guessing game in which they try to figure out what part of the body is photographed. Opton said that is all very boring for her and my pieces that are most successful are the ones that allow the viewer to go past that guessing game and thus enables the pictures to just be seen as artworks in themselves, in their line, shadow, color and form. As the photographer, I know what parts of the body are being photographed and thus I am not concerned with the fact of what I am photographing, but instead, am simply entranced by the form, line and color that is created. To me, they are not simply photographs of the human body, but become something entirely of its own. I'm grateful to Opton for making this comment that reminded me of the difference between how I see my work and how my work is perceived by others.

In respect to my instillation piece, she commended me in broadening my horizons and branching out into mixed media as another way for my photography to manifest itself; however, she gently cautioned not to get too caught up in making it complicated. She enjoyed the simplicity of my concept of floating skin and said that the concept itself was enough for her.

This week I photographed my studio with the lighting system in an attempt to document my work more professionally. I'm discovering that instillation pieces are much more difficult to document well. With photographs, they are already documented in their original medium ha-ha, so I guess even expanding into different media is helping me to become a better photographer!