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New Photography 2007

The Arts in New York City

CCNY/MHC Class of 2011

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New Photography 2007

November 28th, 2007 · 1 Comment

For my individual visual arts outing, I went to the New Photography 2007: Tanyth Berkeley, Scott McFarland, Berni Searle exhibit at the MoMA. It’s a relatively small exhibition compared to others I’ve since so far, containing only about 3 pieces per photographer. Although there were only three artists, the exhibition covered a range of techniques and themes. Tanyth Berkeley (American and born in 1969) compiles portraits of a variety of people, from transgender women to close friends, celebrating unique beauty, as opposed to beauty perceived by the media. Scott McFarland (Canadian and born in 1975) uses digital technology to stitch together negatives taken over a period of weeks and months to create astonishingly detailed large works that record the passage of time. Berni Searle (South African and born in 1964) questions the processes of recollection and forgetting with the series of photographs About to Forget, based on the memory of her own fractured family.

There was one piece that I found particularly eye-catching. It’s a series of photographs taken by Berni Searle, but it’s not part of the About to Forget series. The title of the piece is Approach (2006). The piece contains seven individual photographs put together to create a large-scale piece that looks as if it were one large photograph. I saw this piece first when I walked into the exhibit, and immediately knew that this was what I was going to write about.

At first glance from afar, you think that that it’s a series of hills with men in a dresses scattered about. However, I realized that this was just an illusion. It’s actually just one side of a hill, with only one person throughout all the photographs. Each photo has the person descending the hill at a new position, on “each side.” After pondering on the pictures, I realize now that half the photos were reversed or flipped to create that symmetrical feel. It’s an interesting technique used by Searle, playing with the audience perception of what is the reality of what they’re seeing.

Another observation that I made about Approach was that as the person descended, they became more submerged into the ground. In the beginning of the photographs, they were sitting at the peak then standing. As the series progresses, the person slowly starts sinking, until at the end they are up to their knees in the mud, defiled by the dirt.

I read the information given about the piece given by the museum after the looking at it, and was shocked to learn the information behind the piece. The hill wasn’t a natural dirt hill at all. Instead, it is a mound created by discarded grape skins during the harvest season in South Africa. Also the person that I thought was a man in a dress was actually the artist, a woman. It’s a new concept to me that the photographer was the subject of her own photos, since the other two artists in the exhibit didn’t do that. And she’s soaked in grapes, not mud. The destruction of her white dress contrasts with the serene atmosphere surrounding her.

Thus, I think the purpose of this piece was for Searle to show us that even though something looks nice and calm from afar, it’s all an illusion. Nothing is what it seems. Even on close inspection, it photos look still look beautiful until you realize the flaw in Searle’s appearance. I’m glad that I chose to go to this exhibition. It allowed me to view a photography exhibit, as opposed to paintings, and to experience the wonder to visiting somewhere new since I had never been to the MoMA.

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1 response so far ↓

  • 1 eleung // Dec 3, 2007 at 8:32 pm

    Wow…that exhibition really reminds me of Martin Puryear’s deceptive pieces of sculpture. He employs the same technique as Searle, the illusive quality of art. Funny, both Searle and Puryear’s works are featured in the same institution, MOMA. That illusive quality must either be a theme of modern art or something that the museum does on purpose. Something to wonder about….

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