Eyemazing: The New Collectible Art Photography

Product Information

In those performances where Soltau carries out the binding on members of her audience rather than herself, for instance Permanente Demonstration am 21.1.1976, questions arise as to issues of power, of victim and perpetrator, of deprivation of liberty, of reduction of identity. Hans M. Schmidt describes Soltau’s performances as acts of mummification, which on completion change the viewers’ perception of the participants. He suggests that from initially empathising with the increasing physical restriction of the participants, once the limit of the wrapping has been reached, the viewer feels “less a feeling of compassion than a relatively disinterested curiosity.” In this reading, issues of ‘otherness’ might be seen to arise once the body no longer looks as we expect it to. If it no longer fulfils our perceptions of the body because it fails to remind us of our own, or reminds us too much of what our own might look like in similar circumstances, for instance, bound, degraded and abject, then our reactions to it might be called into question.

AS: I have pursued an artistic career all my life. There were moments of great success. I won many second prizes in painting and drawing competitions. I always came in second, though. And I know why. It’s because a gallery didn’t represent me in those days. I was independent, so I always got the jury’s prize, but never first prize. understand that the issues were much more complex. I try my best to approach any given project with an open mind and to bridge the gap between “us” and cast aside. This sadness was often countered by the heartening bonds and sisterhood that the widows created amongst themselves, bolstering one other and empowering the community in a way that I hadn’t expected. CM: I think that comes through and makes your work different from a regular fashion shoot. Your subjects do seem powerful and, like you said, in charge. There seems to be a respectful intimacy that comes through your images.Delano does not view this series as being in any way a comprehensive study of street prostitution—it does not try to explain the sociological or political reasons behind the phenomenon, nor does Delano suggest that his photos explain the lives of the women. “This is not as much a documentary project as a silent movie,” he says. “It is a drama play without dialogue. It is intended to raise more questions than deliver answers. Most people engaged in such work are not going to open up. Life can be that way. It can be exceedingly unfair but still there is a distinctive grace to these women.” The figure represented in Ana/chrony is neither erotic nor social. It is surely not political, but it looks nice. The figure we see in Hammam’s set is an allegory—I've found out—a representation of the ultimate truth, in the Arabic world. Her name is Al Haquiqa. It is said that by removing the veil of Al Haquiqa, a person will know the ultimate truth. AS: Little Red Riding Hood was a little girl with her first period. That’s what Freud says. It is her sexuality that is emerging. And all the dangers that come with sexuality. The wolf, according to some interpretations, is the lover, according to others, the father. Why does the grandmother die? Because a woman is born, i.e. Little Red Riding Hood, and an old woman dies. The wolf, the lover, replaces the grandmother. For many years, Euro Rotelli had the need to express his feelings and emotions towards the phenomenon of immigration through photography. Not wanting to make a display of suffering and tragedy but more of hope and a successful living together. His new project started when an architect friend who lived in Paris suggested him to visit Saint-Denis and Aubervilliers, two districts that were protagonists of a phenomenon of constant change and movement. Several decades ago, during a psychosis-ridden period in his life, Mills discovered something entirely different in the forest of his mind: an enduring sense of harmony. Whether because of or despite his lengthy hospitalisation period, he came to feel in harmony with himself—and with his art: a substantial body of photographic work that includes an acclaimed street-photography collection. This work reaches a second, aesthetic height with its collection of provocative photomontages. In the distant past, Mills arrived at one of his key realisations while creating his early photomontages: “Every object is meaningful, and every individual is a glorious creation.” This oddly inspiring idea (also a private credo) remains no less relevant when studying the photomontages that Mills creates today.

accompanied by a first-person testimonial, explaining how the women found themselves in their current situation. TH: Making my first pieces, I never realised that aging would later play a part in my work. Now I feel my aging is something that works in my favour, it makes the images more serious, and more ridiculous also. Apart from my thinning hair, it is difficult to see for myself how my art, my ideas, have evolved over time. To know that, I think one needs a lot of distance. Of course, I hope my work has evolved but when I’m starting on a new piece I always feel I’m starting from scratch. CM: Do you feel like your work has a particularly gay content? There are beautiful men, and there is longing and attraction between them, is that enough to categorise the work as gay? Are such categories useful? Beneath his lens, the women are freed from the gaze by which they are usually seen—sexual objects to be used and discarded. His images dig deeper into who they are. When possible, he has heard their stories; he has given them the dignity that most people crave—to be heard.Heather Snider: How would you describe the connection between the real world and the world in your imagery? HS: Because you use yourself as your model and main character, the process of your own aging appears in your imagery. How do you see age or aging as an element of your work? How do you feel that your art, your ideas, and yourself have evolved over time?

I see Liulitun now through inri's eyes, its rambling, riot of greenery—vine tendrils reaching out into space, grasping for each other, like the new lovers united after a nine month separation of agonising, mute phone calls—and bohemian ambience offering a delicious space in which to breathe freely. I see the sensuality of their half-eaten dragon fruit, suggestive, moist and magenta-skinned; the shy declarations of their bare feet touching; inri's wonder at the unfamiliar foods in local stores, the rows of strange meats in plastic wrap, culinary mysteries to lay on their table; red roses, hot crimson and belligerent with fragrance; carnal-ethereal moments of the sort we pray never to end, those moments of corporeal discovery in which the tangled limbs of self and other become momentarily indistinguishable, and in the eyes of one's mate you see your own soul; the journeys and homecomings; the mundane rituals of the everyday that make the string of moments hold together in the irreducible chain of subtle repetitions and variations that you come to call your life. render a place through the specificity of an individual and his/her story rather than make broad, sweeping generalisations that can distance the viewer. SL: Maybe I should have been more organised! A lot of my negatives were destroyed in a flood and there were two fires where my files were kept, and the fireman came in and sprayed the place and a number of things were badly damaged. But I figured that if I had everything I did it would be terrible; at least I don't have to deal with all of it! Pasternak said something like one should lose a quarter of one's work. I think I lost more, and I think that's good. People who keep everything amaze me. I keep a lot and my house is a mess, a disgrace… I'm ashamed to have anyone come in now! (Ha, but not really.)pictures Saul Leiter, Courtesy Saul Leiter Foundation, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York and Gallery Fifty One, Antwerp DH: Yes, gay content for sure. I hope you noticed that! And yes, there are beautiful men…yet there are also not so beautiful men. But I find them all beautiful. I would argue what unites them is how they’ve been photographically rendered. I am interested in beauty and where it’s found. Sometimes it exists in the world and sometimes I make it. Or both. In some of the photographs I depict men I love, have loved, could never love, never have, never be, etc. Yet I don’t know if I feel comfortable categorising the work as solely gay. Although I’m a gay man that’s not all I am. It is important for me that the viewer is aware that my imagery, all of my imagery, has been made through the lens of a gay man. This does inform the entire body of work and is ultimately my biggest political statement. The story of Chris Sky Earnshaw would be a sad one if I did not know him to be such a spirited man, even at this stage of life when it seems he has next to nothing. Without a doubt, he is a masterful photographer, one whose work has been lost to all up until now. As an artist he is nearly anonymous, and as a human being he hovers inches away from a destitute life. To offer him a hand, to save his work for others, is all that one can do to express one’s gratefulness for what truly enriches our lives.