ISO Magazine Issue 14: Anomalous

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SPRING 2017 ANOMALOUS

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ISSUE 14: ANOMALOUS

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LETTER FROM THE EDITORS The word anomalous found its

way. However, what if instead of

way to us while we were searching

pushing anomalies aside, we choose

for a theme that encompassed the

to embrace them?

strangeness and uncertainty that

In this issue of ISO Magazine

sometimes exists within visual culture.

we

Photography is often thought to be

‘anomalous.’ There are provocative

subjective, to reveal truths, provide

images that are weird, not pretty,

evidence. However, photographs can

and gross. At the same time are

also raise more questions than give

photographs

answers. We are interested in work

challenging the norm, giving insight

that deals with the strangeness of

into atypical ways of living. By

our world and the disillusionment we

putting these images in conversation

tend to feel within it. Often we are

with each other, we aim to foster new

taught to stick to convention, so when

thoughts about the medium and its

presented with something abnormal,

possibilities.

we feel discomfort and look the other

explore

different

whose

notions

subjects

of

are

—Vida Lercari & Alex Trippe

ISO Magazine is a student-run publication based at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Since 2008, our rotating staff has worked to explore contemporary themes in photography and image culture. We place the work of emerging photographers in conversation with that of established artists, as well as write critically and creatively on photography.

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Front Cover: Laurence Rasti Inside Cover: Fyodor Shiryaev

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THERE ARE NO HOMOSEXUALS IN IRAN LAURENCE RASTI

SILVER PIXELS NINA DIETZ

VOLTE-FACE OLIVER CURTIS INTERVIEW BY NINA DIETZ

WOMEN WITH THE GOOD MEAT REMOVED ZOË LIGON

SCRUBLANDS ANTOINE BRUY

TRO TRO CHARLIE KWAI TEXT BY RACHEL HETTLEMAN

CARAMEL CURVES AKASHA RABUT TEXT BY RIANA GIDEON

ANOMALOUS THE GALLERY 5

Il n’y a pas d’homosexuels en Iran.

There are no homosexuals in Iran.

LAURENCE RASTI

On September 24, 2007 at Columbia University,

In Denizli, a small town in Turkey, hundreds

former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

of gay refugees are in transit from Iran: they put

said, “In Iran, we do not have homosexuals like in

their lives on pause waiting to one day join a host

your country.”

country where they can freely live their sexuality. In

While today some Occidental countries accept

an uncertain context where anonymity is the best

gay and lesbian marriage, in Iran, homosexuality is

protection, this work throws into question fragile

still punishable by death. This sanction prohibits

identity and concepts of gender. In a way, it tries

homosexuals to live their sexuality. Their only

to give back to people a face that their country has

options are to choose transsexuality, a practice

temporarily stolen.

tolerated by law but considered pathological, or to flee.

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SILVER PIXELS Text by Nina Dietz

Photographs used to be beautiful objects, artifacts of memory collected over a lifetime.

Carefully tucked away like a bit of luck for a rainy day, to be excavated by descendants someday and lovingly reassembled into a life.

Now they exist as a series of ones and zeros contained in a glowing LED screen.

The significance of a photograph is a precariously fluid concept.

In the past 200 years, the photograph has gone from concept, to keepsake, to the standard of nonnegotiable proof of fact, to art form, to digital, to fast, to fake-able, to language.

But somewhere along the way we stopped being able to hold a picture in our hands.

Photographs have a strange magic to them; they capture the character of an age, Image by Jeffrey Valdez

retain a visual record of the subject’s persona, and each is a minuscule time-capsule unto itself; passing down the quiddity of an era in a single image.

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volte-face OLIVER CURTIS Interview by Nina Dietz

For his series Volte-Face, photographer Oliver Curtis travels to famous monuments and photographs what lies in the opposite direction.

Reichstag, Berlin, Germany

Taj Mahal, Agra, India

What were the reactions of tourists, shopkeepers, and other spectators to your practice of observing and documenting everything in the vicinity of famous, historically significant monuments, except the monuments themselves?

More often than not I was ignored. These are places populated by people all capturing images with cameras and smartphones, so one more tourist with a camera is usually unremarked upon. However, there were a couple of exceptions to this...At the Korean DMZ, we were told in no uncertain terms not to take pictures looking South, so when I swung around I only had time to take two shots of the South Korean guard before being told to desist.

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How do you know when you've taken the right picture for a particular monument?

My approach to taking the images for this project often involved me spending many hours and sometimes several of days at each location. I found that the longer I looked, the more the landscape would reveal. So taking time to see each place under different lighting conditions and inhabited by ever-changing visitors and sometimes workers, became key to the process. I would sometimes take many hundreds of shots since as a rule I don't crop or re-frame in post-production, always preferring to capture compositions in-camera... overall the process felt more akin to chiseling away at the space in front of me with subtle changes of angle and framing until I felt the composition worked. And knowing if you’ve taken the right picture? I suppose that’s a gut instinct thing.

What is the effect of using context to allude to subject; particularly with subjects so well-known and grand?

By giving each picture the title of the monument it relates to my hope is that the viewer will begin to make their own associations; between that which they can’t see but know very well (the monument), and that which they can see and yet is unfamiliar (the view I present).

We all have some knowledge of these historic places however superficial even if we’ve never visited, such is the ubiquity of photographic imagery these days. The effect very much depends on what each viewer brings to the equation. Nevertheless, these are very much taken from my point of view and will reflect in some measure my feelings about the monument, its history and iconography.

North Korean JSA, DMZ, Panmunjeon, Korea 13

Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Parthenon, Athens, Greece

Ministry of Internal Affairs, Place of the Revolution, Bucharest, Romania 16

ZoĂŤ Ligon Repurposed pornography from collage artist and sex educator ZoĂŤ Ligon.

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S C RU B L A N D S ANTOINE BRUY

From 2010 to 2015, I traveled throughout Europe and the USA with the aim to meet men and women who made the radical choice to live away from cities, willing to abandon their lifestyle based on performance, efficiency and consumption.

Without any fixed route, driven by encounters and chance, this trip eventually became for me a similar kind of initiatory quest to those of these families. Eight of these experiments are shown here, and display various fates which I think should not only be seen at a political level, but more importantly as daily and immediate experiences.

The heterogeneity of places and situations shows us the beautiful paradox of the pursuit of a utopia through permanent empirical attempts and sometimes errors.

Unstable structures, recovered materials, or multiple applications of agricultural theories allow us to see the variety of human trajectories. All of which aiming at developing strategies to gain greater energy, food, economic or social autonomy.

These are in some way spontaneous responses to the societies these men and women left behind. Therefore their land is exploited but never submitted, the time has lost his tight line-arity to become a slow and deliberate pace.

No more clock ticking but the ballet of days and nights, seasons and lunar cycles.

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Charlie Kwai

Text by Rachel Hettleman Tro Tros in Accra, Ghana blend seamlessly into the multi-colored, crowded, hot cities and towns they charge to connect. The painted vans facilitate the necessary amplification of distance otherwise stymied by obvious limitations of feet and bicycle wheels. They are so packed that a simple look inside yields a harsh craving for fresh air and an instinctive hunt for a window, by which seats are coveted real estate. Friends should be made of the customers, drivers, and mates who can teach how to safely arrive at a desired destination while hanging partway out of the van.

Charlie Kwai called on those people to create “Tro Tro,” his series that captures not only the chaos and fun of Ghana’s public transportation, but also its grit, grind, and the faces of those who pack in, to go to work, to the market, to skip town.

The faces star equally alongside the aesthetic intrigue and loud character of the vehicles – both main players collaborating on functional, cultural, and social experience.

The van doors are livened with stickers of text at once so seemingly out of place and perfectly where it should be. Where did these stickers come from and who put them there? Kwai does not provide answers or contextual clues, but he uses their text to construct funny, serious, contradictory, and provocative narratives. Within these stories are the everyday faces which vary unpredictably: young and old, sweaty, shouting directions and destinations, exhausted, caught in conversation, weary, inviting; drivers, mates, customers, an occasional chicken, a goat. Kwai creates pairs of some of his images and he lets other ones stand alone. Both presentations explore the relationship between the vehicles and their cargo, intimate quotidian interactions filled with mutual respect and need – simply, one cannot function without the other.

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A young man clad confidently in bright purple striped yellow poses left hand on hip, his eyes and set jaw warning that the metallic blue Tro Tro his right hand clutches is his; his van, his world.

His stripes match those in the paired photo that encircle “This Life” on a sticker slapped diagonally across a white door’s window. In another pair, two customers, one lucky window seater to be envied and a middle-seater, speed by – a yellow sticker interrupting bright red body paint reads “Schwarzenegger.” Squawking chickens stand on plywood shavings strewn in the backseat of an unidentified van – “ISSUES” figures prominently in the window of a rusting brown door. A spotted goat measuring no higher than a tire runs next to a deep blue van – a Tro Tro trunk sports a jagged lettered sticker with “Simple Burger” written proudly two feet above a fist that recalls that of the black power movement.

Perhaps these moments are commonplace and un-extraordinary to the Ghanaians they feature, and the Tro Tros are nothing but sputtering vans they resign to fix out of necessity. I have surely let myself fantasize about photographers’ romanticized presentations of the NYC yellow taxi and subway systems – a reality different than the one I face in my own daily use. I am not a player in the reality Kwai has captured, for which I am grateful. One day, I hope to find myself in Ghana in need of a place to go and can explore Tro Tros for myself. Until then, however, I never have to leave Kwai’s colorful exciting version of Ghana’s world of transit – men and machines filled equally with character, personality, and intrigue. Between Kwai’s captured shirts, faces, and stickers, I will never be bored.

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Tru,

formally

known

as

Shanika Beatty, started riding

Akasha Rabut

Text by Riana Gideon

motorcycles when she discovered her father’s 1970 Honda in her family garage. Because motorcyclists are generally males, especially in her town, Tru had to push herself to keep up.

She quickly learned how to ride from other bikers in New Orleans and, in 2005, found other women who also rode. The group started by casually riding together, but eventually decided to form a crew. They decided on calling themselves Caramel Curves; a title that members collectively decided on. As female motorcyclists, the Curves were keen on distinguishing themselves from the male groups and on maintaining their femininity. Tru and the other women wanted to ride motorcycles, a hobby that is traditionally seen as masculine, while dressing in pink and purple and while wearing stilettos. Shortly after Tru assembled her team of strong, confident women, Hurricane Katrina hit, which devastated the women and their families. The Curves were able to officially come back together in 2008 to continue riding on the streets of New Orleans.

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Photographer Akasha Rabut introduced herself to two women from the Curves at a parade in 2010.

Rabut was immediately gripped by their ability to bring femininity to a traditionally male-dominated community. In the following weeks, Rabut visited the Curves at a member’s nail salon and began taking portraits. Her images capture their sisterhood, one that has continued to form through the years and has been strengthened by their mutual interest in the hobby. The Curves often match in checkered jackets, stilettos, and gold hoop earrings. Often times, they bring their own personalities to the crew by choosing colorful lipsticks or, in a few cases, having their bikes painted with a personalized design. Rabut photographed the Curves for several years, giving her an opportunity to capture a variety of close-ups, individual portraits, and wider shots with the women riding their bikes in unison.

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In photographing these women, Rabut came to understand how the hobby gives them an outlet and a sense of liberation. The photographs, especially because they were created by a woman, give the project an added layer of importance. Rabut’s visual documentation of the Curves helps to de-stigmatize female presence within a masculinized hobby to debunk societal regulations about what women can and cannot do.

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THE GALLERY The Gallery is a curation of images submitted by young photographers from across the globe in response to the theme ANOMALOUS:

unsettling, illusion, weird, off the grid, false, plastic, cartoon, irrational, bad, clandestine, costume, fantasy, absurdist, provocative, underbelly, ugly, mystery, Rahcel Kober, Untitled

unidentified, incognito, invent.

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Brendan George Ko, Head In The Sand Left: Shawn Bush, Untitled

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Meatwreck, Secrets

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Meatwreck, Hairline

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Brendan George Ko, Product Placement (Malthusian Catastrophe)

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Julian Slagman, Kummer um die Welt Right: Morgan Sloan, Oreo

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Shawn Bush, Untitled

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Bridget Collins, Untitled Left: Bridget Collins, Untitled

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Yuka Lou, Untitled Left: Meatwreck, Feeling Lucky

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EDITORS: Vida Lercari Alex Trippe HEAD OF DESIGN: Morgan Sloan DESIGN: Jay Arora Taylor Bissey Raafae Ghory Yuka Lou EDITORIAL: Nina Dietz Riana Gideon Rachel Hettleman PUBLISHING: Allegra Levy FACULTY ADVISOR: Editha Mesina SPECIAL THANKS: Edgar Costello Niki Kekos Tess Mayer Caroline Wolfe Pappochia Todd Pettiford Julia Wang Deb Willis, Chair of NYU Tisch, DPI

GALLERY CONTRIBUTORS: (in order of appearance) Rachel Kober, New York, NY, rachelcober.com Shawn Bush, Providence, RI, sheenographs.com Brendan George Ko, brendangeorgeko.com Meatwreck Studios, Los Angeles, CA, meatwreck.com, YouTube: meatwreck Julian Slagman, Berlin, Germany, slagman.me Morgan Sloan, New York, NY, morgansloan.com Bridget Collins, Brooklyn, NY, bridgetcollins.com Yuka Lou, New York, NY, yukalou.com FEATURED ARTISTS: (in order of appearance) Laurence Rasti, laurencerasti.ch Oliver Curtis, olivercurtisphotography.co.uk Zoë Ligon, zoolioncomplete.com Antoine Bruy, antoinebruy.com Charlie Kwai, charliekwai.com Akasha Rabut, akasharabut.com GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM: Tisch Undergraduate Student Council Tisch Office of Student Affairs Dean's Profunds The Department of Photography and Imaging Recipient of 2017 PRESIDENT’S SERVICE AWARD Printed at OFFSET IMPRESSIONS Edition of 500

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Back Cover: Laurence Rasti Inside Back Cover: Fyodor Shiryaev

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