Snapshot Photography and Awkwardness

in ,
Family vacation snapshot from the highly addictive Awkward Family Photos website
As summer draws to a close, many of us will no doubt be getting to the task of downloading, arranging, and circulating all of the digital photographs from the various family events, weddings, vacations and BBQs that have made up the leisure moments of the past several months. Some of us will spend the now expected time editing and trashing any of the images that are unflattering, out of focus, or just plain bad, while some of us will take the extra time to “enhance” via Photoshop those pictures that merit the mark of the professional. What will inevitably be lost in this process, or relegated to neglected trash bins on computer desktops forever, will be the many snapshots that didn’t make the cut—those awkward photographs—that still litter many of our family photo albums of the analog variety.

The snapshot photograph is usually understood as an informally composed and quickly taken picture without any artistic or journalistic intent, often “flawed” and possessing the mark of the amateur. Snapshots are what many of us think of today when we look back at family photo albums from a decade or more ago—those material relics that house the personal memories and traces of our imperfect past—and find the less than flattering and often revealing photos which were not as easy to “delete” back then. Before the advent of digital photography, the task of editing and enhancement was of course very different. The time lag between taking and developing a photograph was measured in days and not seconds, and the final pictures had a physical, not digital, trace. Photographs were also far less ubiquitous, more difficult to circulate, and so each individual image seemed to be more valuable, and families were far less likely to trash the “bad ones” (preferring to jam them into old shoe boxes for later sorting).

The nostalgia for this quickly disappearing category of photography is partly responsible for the popularity of the highly entertaining Awkward Family Photos website—a growing repository of the imperfect snapshot (among other badly posed and “professional” portraits). Here, individuals can view and comment on each submission while debating the finer points of technique and intention. In a conceptual move, the website bestows each photograph with evocative and sometimes ironic titles that point audiences to the photo’s “flaw.” The image I featured above is catalogued under “Vacation” and titled “Sugar Magnolia” and subtitled “with just a touch of grey”—enough said. Interestingly, the comments have largely been concerned with whether or not the image was manipulated to achieve its final effect. The original photographer—an unnamed Mom from cyberspace—finally intervened to claim that it was in fact a snapshot taken with a cheap camera on a family trip to San Francisco. Perhaps the American art critic John A. Kouwenhoven summed it up best: “No painting can tell the truth of a single instant; no snapshot can do anything else”

**P.S. Congratulations to my brother and his beautiful bride who were married in a lovely beachside ceremony this past weekend—we hope you have a blast on your European honeymoon and bring back many great snapshots!

Further Reading:

Kotchemidova, C. “Why we say ‘cheese’: Producing the smile in snapshot photography.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 22.1 (2005): 2-25.

Zuromskis, Catherine. “Ordinary Pictures and Accidental Masterpieces: Snapshot Photography in the Modern Art Museum.” Art Journal 67.2 (2008): 104-125.

Weekly Twitter Round-Up

in ,
It has been a busy week of classes, meetings, and general settling in for the term. Grab a cup of coffee and check out a few of the tweets I added to my favourites over that time. If you like what you are reading, you can link directly to each item's Twitter account and follow the individual feeds. Enjoy!



Quick sit down with Douglas Coupland at InterviewMag


Lady Gaga Warhol's biggest fan at TheWarholMuseum


Internet access in China, still subject to strict controls at chronicle


Apps as tours in NYC museums at GettyMuseum
 Celebrity as the subject of contemporary art at Slate


Special events and films at Vancity Theatre leading up to VIFF at VIFFest


Marina Abramovic: The Movie

in , ,
Abramovic at MoMA, March 2010 (my photo)
This past spring, I had the pleasure of traveling to New York and visiting the much discussed Marina Abramovic retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Abramovic, often called the “grandmother of performance art” (she is thought to have coined the term herself) was then in the beginning phases of her longest ever solo performance, a seven week endurance piece called “The Artist is Present” where Abramovic sat silently at a table while museum visitors took the chair across from her and met her gaze for as long as they desired. The morning that I arrived at MoMA, I entertained the idea of standing in line and becoming part of the performance, but lost my patience when a young hipster presumably trained in marathon meditation took the seat across from Abramovic and did not get up for what seemed like over an hour. Later, I spotted him giving an interview to a reporter waiting outside the exhibition about his moment in the spotlight. If you look here, you can probably locate him among the portraits that were recorded of every museum goer who took part in the performance. Actress Sharon Stone (Day 18, portrait 10) and CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour (Day 34, portrait 7) even got into the act.

Abramovic performing at MoMA, March 2010
(a picture I took from one floor above the main action)
While weighing the option of getting back into line, I was able to climb the stairs to the top floor of the museum and take in the stunning retrospective which featured live “re-performances” of Abramovic’s most famous works by a group of young artists she had specially trained to participate in the show. These individuals, some completely naked, performed milestone Abramovic works such as Relation in Time (1977); Rest Energy (1980); Luminosity (1997); and The House with Ocean View (2002), bravely enduring the combination of probing eyes, difficult to hold poses, and mental tedium that is part and parcel of performance art. While I was there, a minor scandal erupted when one patron was ejected from the museum after inappropriately touching a male artist performing Imponderabilia (1977) --a performance where the public must navigate a very limited space between two naked performers to gain entry into another space.

All of the publicity surrounding Abramovic during and since the exhibition has once again raised important questions concerning the place of performance art in the public gallery and the role of performance art in the canon of art history. How are explorations into the limits and discipline of the body related to the current, and some argue limited, state of contemporary art? At what point does Abramovic’s work blur distinctions between spectacle and artistic performance? Does it matter that Abramovic herself is now seen as a kind of celebrity? It is notable that the Abramovic show stands as the largest and most substantial exhibition of performance art ever staged at MoMA, and it is clear that the large crowds surrounding her work are as much the result of human curiosity as they are the genuine interest in her artistic achievement since her early days working in communist Belgrade.

Perhaps some of these questions will finally be addressed in a new film that is currently in development and titled simply Marina. Unlike the highly conceptual and experimental fiction film Balkan Baroque produced by Pierre Coulibeuf in 1999, this film is far more documentary in its approach and includes fascinating interviews with Abramovic concerning her preparation exercises and training methods while planning and training artists for the MoMA exhibition (see film clip below). I for one have a great deal of respect for the discipline and the focus required to pull off the range of works Abramovic has accomplished over the four decade span of her career. I am just left wondering how much her message was lost during her much discussed and often misunderstood retrospective.

Marina Trailer from New York Times T Magazine



Further reading:

Kaplan, Janet A. "Deeper and Deeper: Interview with Marina Abramovic." Art Journal 58.2 (1999): 6.

Phelan, Peggy. "Marina Abramovic: Witnessing Shadows." Theatre Journal 56.4 (2004): 569-577.

Guest Blog| Jass Takhar: We've All Fallen in Love with an Ass

in , , ,
I am delighted to present our first guest blogger, Jass Takhar, Vancouver actor and student in Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts and the founder and co-artistic director of Escaping Goat Productions: a new company interested in interdisciplinary practices and collaboration, covering a featured event at the Vancouver International Fringe Festival (running September 9-19).
Frances Kitson in TITANIA- Playing at Studio 16

The Vancouver International Fringe Festival visits Vancouver yearly and with it brings a plethora of new and exciting theatre to see. From the absolute absurd to the “real-est” of realism it has something to satisfy nearly everyone. This year it has TITANIA to delight and enthral audiences looking for comedy, deep audience engagement, insightful questions and an all around FUN time!

TITANIA; a one woman show was written by Frances Kitson, a graduate of the Simon Fraser University Contemporary Arts Program. I had the privilege of seeing the first “version” of her show in December of 2009 and was thrilled to hear it would be premiering at the Fringe Festival this September. I got the chance to sit down with this emerging and exciting young artist and ask her about her experience and trials in creating her delightful piece.

The first place we began was the history of the show and the length of the process:

Frances, at the age of fifteen when performing William Shakespeare’s, A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Arts and Umbrella (A Vancouver based children’s visual and performing arts society) discovered the play had quickly become a favourite of hers. However despite it becoming a favourite play there was also an element of frustration: Mainly the relationship between Oberon and Titania.

Frances states, “Oberon and Titania begin the play fighting over a child, and when Oberon doesn’t get his way he magics Titania and manipulates her into falling in love with an ass! When Titania is made better, she instantly forgives Oberon and doesn’t once mention the child! You can’t just ignore that-that was the conflict! And it’s just neatly packaged away at the end?”

Frances wouldn’t re-look at this issue until years later when writing an honours essay where she revisited the source of her frustration in her paper. Forty pages later, and it still wasn’t enough: Frances found a story to tell and finally when doing a directed studies for her BFA found something substantial in her first written piece-TITANIA. In total this project was being thought about and in the works for thirteen years!

With this much history you knew there must be a lot of critical work so we then moved on to the research and different artists’ influence on TITANIA:

“The most obvious artist this work is influenced by is William Shakespeare. It is the back story between Oberon and Titania that wasn’t seen in his Midsummer Night’s Dream. As for research, I looked at a lot of different artists renditions of fairies for imagery and inspiration, after all the play is about the Queen of Fairies. I also researched child birth; specifically what kind of complications cause a woman to die during childbirth, as I have a character that dies giving birth. I also played with pre-recorded music and how its utilization affects the show.”

As mentioned I originally saw the show in early December of last year, since then the show has been gone over, performed across the country and been revised and reworked. I asked Frances what kind of changes were made and why? How did this improve the art?

“There were some script changes based on feedback from audience members where certain small moments came across unclear in meaning. I really wanted to specify my framework and make sure it was as clear as possible. I also needed fresh eyes, I actually left the show alone for a bit and then came back to it when my spot in the Fringe was solidified. In the time performing it, I realized performance was a key discovery method as well. It definitely reshaped how I saw the show and gave it new meaning. Other than that, not much has changed.”

When first seeing the show, I was struck and intrigued by the usage of light as character, placing an interesting post-modern (Yup, I went there!) spin on the show. As an actor myself, I know how hard it is to play to an invisible scene partner so I asked Frances what that was like:

“It’s definitely hard; having to talk to someone who is not really there! I realized early on that I would have to write in “his” dialogue. To really know what he was saying and how he was responding to my words. There had to be a clear conversation, not just me saying words to air. Then there was a lot of work spent on creating the physical body of a person. I had to set height, weight, shape...I couldn’t be looking a little above me one time and then a good two feet another! Or swing my arm out one moment and end up having it go through what was earlier established as his throat or something! Consistency was definitely a needed factor. In terms of the scene partner you were talking about, I learned to discover it in my audience. At first I discover the audience and then I discover what kind of partner they will be. It keeps it interesting and fun for me because each audience is different and I really need to listen to them.”

Finally we got to the question that lays it all on the line-Why should people care about TITANIA? What does it offer as a work of art?

“The thing I wanted it to offer, and I feel I succeeded in this, is questions. Specifically questions about relationships and how we perceive them. I don’t want to preach to an audience, they’re smarter than that. Instead I want them to think for themselves about why we fall in love? And what does it mean to stay in love? How do we see our partners? Do we see them as they are? Or as we want them to be? I wanted to explore what may not have been a problem back in Shakespeare’s day (Manipulating your wife is okay because all will be forgiven!) and see how it differs to our time. But really why people should see this show is because it is Fun! Lots and lots of fun!”

I urge everyone to see this play as it will be well worth their time! I also thank Frances for sitting down with me during her immensely busy schedule and answering my questions.

-J Takhar

TITANIA runs at Studio 16 on 1555 W 7th Avenue in Vancouver

Show Dates are:

Tues Sept 14 @ 7:45
Thurs Sept 16 @ 5:00
Sun Sept 19 @ 8:25

$10 M-Th, $12 F/Sat/Sun, +$5 Fringe membership

For more information on the show and its history you can visit:

http://www.franceskitson.com/
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=146596572046690&ref=ts