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According to Roland Barthes “a text is not a line of words releasing a
single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-god),
but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original,
blend and clash…” Barthes denies the concept of originality and authenticity
just as other artist’s such as Sherry Levine thought to explore. I however
am not interested in proving my originality or disproving it. This issue just
comes with the territory of using appropriation as a tool. Sherry Levine’s
art “explores the possibility of expressing oneself using the ready-made
expressions of someone else…” I think that it is true that you can
utilize the words or artwork of someone else to express yourself but even in
doing so you are having a unique experience of your own.
I manipulate as a tool or a technique just like a painter uses oils on
a canvas. I am either changing using the camera and film directly,
or in the dark room,
or with chemicals, or cropping, as a means to get an effect that I am after.
I feel more of a connection to my photographs when I have had a direct effect
on them with my touch. Each time I enter a dark room it is different for me.
Each set of chemicals and mixtures are my own. Maybe because I am appropriating
images I really need to feel as though the work I am producing is uniquely mine
and a wet dark room experience is a better means of having that hand on working
feeling than pointing and clicking a mouse on a computer.
Diane Arbus produces raw photographs that are very interesting and different.
Arbus is intrigued by “freaks,” or the unusual, as I am interested
in what is different, hence my photographs are from a different period of a life
I don’t know. Our subjects are clearly dissimilar but I think we both share
the same sense of a need to find a connection to what we do not know. It is the
mystery of the unknown, for instance, I know my mom but I also do not because
I was not there when she was growing up and so I did not experience what she
did. Using photographs of her is a way to identify with her more and learn more
and get closer to her.
In an attempt to reconnect with my mother through a photographic ritual
I am interested in her life before I or even my father was a part
of it. I am not
only interested in her but in the elements that surround her (old cars, trees,
paint cans etc.) I have taken my focus inward just on my mother to do an examination
of her using the photograph. This entails zooming in and taking snippets of
individual images from the mundane or random to really focusing on
her face. I will include
part of my process somewhat subtly by leaving words from the copy machine that
was used to re-photograph the images. I also included words that appeared directly
on the original image in one photograph. I changed my style from last semester
which involved a lot of chemical manipulation to doing more direct changes
to the prints and also going back and re-photographing the already
re-photographed
images thus taking my process a step further. I want the focus to be more inward
at what is actually inside the picture. I hope to take the meaning deeper than
the literal and give the viewer at least a taste of what it was like to be
my mother and/or see what it means for me to look at her life through
this form
of art. Rather than just telling these stories verbally I am having a visual
discussion letting the works speak for themselves.
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