Stationed in Seoul as a member of the Peace Corps in 1969, U-M alumna Dr. Margaret Condon Taylor was a witness to monumental shifts in South Korean society. Accidental Photographer: Seoul1969 opens at the Institute for the Humanities this week, and presents her color snapshots of the city for the first time in nearly 50 years.
On view December 7th – Jan 12th at the Institute for Humanities Osterman Common Room (202 S. Thayer St).
Opening reception, lecture by Assistant Professor Se-Mi Oh (Asian Languages & Cultures), and Q&A with Dr. Taylor on December 8th from 12-1 PM.
Presented by the Institute for Humanities and the Nam Center for Korean Studies. Curated by Associate Professor Youngju Ryu (Asian Languages and Cultures) and Professor David Chung (Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design).
Gloss: Modeling Beauty was a pleasant surprise. All I knew about this exhibit was that it “explores the shifting ideals of female beauty that pervade European and American visual culture from the 1920s to today,” which was the UMMA’s online description. I expected magazine covers of willowy, white women in the highest fashion from the early 1900’s and today’s fashion magazines with sleek, androgynous women. Maybe it was just me, but I found the theme of the exhibit to be different from what the online description conveyed. Rather than depicting shifting trends in actual beauty standards, I felt like the exhibition portrayed the photographer’s stance and mentality towards fashion and beauty in their time period.
For example, one of the first images shows a black women posing for an advertisement in typical Harlem 1920’s attire. The photographer, James Van Der Zee, tries to offer an alternative to the mainstream white models of the time. Another photographer had several images of women in more experimental, sexual clothing, but it was the 1970’s during the sexual revolution… so it’s not too out of place. The gesture of empowering women was appreciated. To be honest though, some of them I just didn’t “get”. According to the plaque, Paolozzi’s pop art photos were supposed to “engender comical and ambiguous analogies”. Yeah, I found them very ambiguous.
The work that stood out the most for me was a set of six photos from a clothing catalog for the store Bloomingdale’s. The set of photos are honestly kind of creepy more than anything else. Each photo has several women in the shot, but it looks like they are all doing their own thing and just happen to be in the same space. There is little interaction between them and their expressions are oddly intense. One woman sits on a couch and stares directly into the camera completely straight faced, which I actually found a little unnerving. Maybe that was the point…? I’m not sure. Each image also has a high contrast between light and shadow which heightened the bizarreness for me.
One thing did disappoint me a little. The exhibition was quite small– taking my time and reading every single plaque, I went through the two walls of photos in about twenty minutes. Overall, I appreciated the few pictures with women of color. I wish there had been more diversity but the absence makes sense since the exhibition is a reflection on whom society deems worthy of representing beauty.
Would recommend if: you have spare time between classes, you understand photography more than me, you want some insight into how photographers use media as a tool for communication.
Interested in fashion and photography? How about beauty and culture? If so, come peruse the photography gallery in the UMMA, right on central campus— for free.
GLOSS: Modeling Beauty examines how beauty ideals have changed in America and in Europe since the 1920’s. The exhibition features glossy images of female models from fashion magazines. Hanging along side these works are images from documentary photographers who depict the fashion of everyday life. Lastly, artists like Nikki S. Lee contribute photographs presenting alternative notions to mainstream beauty and fashion. Come see how beauty standards for women have evolved and, of course, for some fashion *inspiration*. After all, it’s only open until January 7th, 2018.
Prior to tonight’s lecture I knew little about Hank Willis Thomas aside from the fact I had seen and been particularly struck by one of his pieces in the Detroit Institute of Art. I had no idea what a treat that night would be.
When Thomas walked out onto stage in a still brightly lit theater, phone clutched in hand, I’m sure many of us were unsure what to think. He said he then wanted us to start off the night with a collaborative project, to take a picture of a stranger or friend sitting nearby and post it on social media with the hashtag “#thetruthisIloveyou.” You can find a smattering of these photos on his twitter account here. This immediately set the tone for the overall optimistic and hopeful presentation, despite the dark subject matter.
Hank Willis Thomas and his Mother
After this brief activity, the lights were dimmed and Thomas started his presentation by introducing the audience to his mother, a talented photographer herself. He told us about how his mother was once told by a college professor that she, as a woman, was taking up the space of a “good man.” She carried those words with her for the rest of her life, but in spite of that professor, she has gone on to publish books well into the double digits and is currently a professor at NYU.
He then transitioned smoothly into talking about his own development as an artist. Thomas said that he had not originally planned to become an artist, but rather fell into the role after his close cousin was murdered in 2000. Finding himself lacking motivation and drive, Thomas eventually found his way into the artistic field.
An image from a sweater ad
He then took us chronologically through the various pieces and series that he has done. He began to talk about his fascination with framing, and how the theme of frames showed up in many of his college works. He also produced the B(r)anded Series in which he explored the African-American male body in relation to popular brands and advertisements. He was particularly fascinated with taking advertisement and stripping away all of the words and identifying information to let the images speak for themselves. He showed us the various depictions of women throughout the last century, first showing the image and then making his audience guess what the ad was actually for. It was an eye-opening and sometimes chilling experience.
He then talked about this idea of reformatting images and advertisements so that they can be viewed in a new way. He would find photos that particularly resonated with him, often of apartheid South Africa, and then find a different way to frame those events, often through cast sculptures where only parts of the original photograph will be shown, leaving the viewer to fill in the rest of the information.
Lastly, he finished up the speech by showing some of the video recording from people across the globe for the “The Truth Is” traveling project. This project involved a recording booth shaped like a giant speech bubble that simply says “truth” that was then placed in high traffic areas. Civilians were invited into the booth to record a short video telling what they believed “the truth is.” One of the most touching and heart wrenching videos, especially because of the recent developments in the news, was of a little boy not even 8 years old who wanted to share the truth that Muslims, like him and his family, were good, peaceful people.
One of the most inspiring things about his presentation, was how captivating of a speaker Thomas managed to be. He managed to be calm and yet passionate at the same time, providing a wonderful and entertaining balance that still remained informative.
When Thomas finally walked off the stage, there were whoops and cheers scattered among the fervent applause, making this the warmest and most enthusiastic sendoff of any speaker I’ve seen here yet. True to this reception, the Q&A session was the most well attended that I had seen so far, while still remaining fairly small and intimate in the Michigan Theater’s annex. Thomas got to answer questions ranging from his work, to his history as an artist, to his political views.
You can find out more information about Hank Willis Thomas at his website. The STAMPS speaker series is free to the public and is offered every Thursday at 5:10 at the Michigan Theater. You can find a full list of the upcoming speakers here.
When did photography become an art form? At some point, the technology for capturing images of people, places, and things developed enough that people could start adding artistic flair.
At the turn of the 20th century, a young Alfred Stieglitz had a radical idea that photography could be art, which clashed with ideas of older, more established members such as Charles Buadelaire, who considered photography nothing more than a “servant of the sciences and arts.”
Luckily for us, Mr. Stieglitz would have none of that. He formed the Camera Club of New York and started an avant-garde photography journal that changed how people saw photography.
These new artists, rather than simply pointing and shooting, used more artistic methods for their photographs. They took pictures with a soft focus to try and emulate the “look” of paintings. They used more expensive materials to get better contrast of lights and darks. They printed on Japanese paper, because nothing says classy quite like Japanese paper.
Seeing the pictures was enough to see the transition to photography as an art form, but going on a tour of the exhibit helped place the photos in a social context.
Our stupendous tour guide compared two images of the Brooklyn bridge and pointed out how one was a standard picture of a bridge, while the other focused on the shapes and form of the structures of the bridge.
At the end, we learned about Stieglitz’s most famous work, The Steerage. He considered The Steerage to be his most important work because, while I only saw an interesting photograph with a lot going on, we learned that there was a deeper meaning.
The Steerage was one of the first photographs to make a social statement. Before the photograph of the protester in Tienanmen Square, or anything from Vietnam, there was a photo showing two separate classes in one photograph: the immigrants both literally and figuratively below the rich on the same ship.
The exhibit made it easy to see why opinions changed from viewing the camera as merely a gadget, to viewing it as a tool of the artist.
All the hard work put in by the photographers to distinguish their work as art, however, made me stop and think. In the era of iPhones and Instagram, where anyone can take a decent photo, are we regressing to a time where the photography is becoming a lesser art form?
When did photography become an art? At some point, people took cameras and tried to capture people and places and things not simply for the sake of capturing them, but for the beauty of it. This was the beginnings of pictorialism.
As the UMMA web site states about the early pictorialist photographers:
Their poetic compositions drawn from contemporary life, combined with the use of expensive and labor-intensive printing materials such as platinum and gum bichromate, established these photographs as complex and nuanced works of high artistic quality.
The exhibition is open now and will remain open until March 5th.
Their next FREE upcoming gallery talk/tour is:
Sunday, December 11th at 2pm
Check out their calendar here for more information on the other upcoming gallery talks:
stupendous tour guide compared two images of the Brooklyn bridge and pointed out how one was a standard picture of a bridge, while the other focused on the shapes and form of the structures of the bridge.
