HW#1 Holt

Meg Holt / ART333 Homework #1

Exploring the works of: Robert Frank’s The Americans (1959) Ivan Sigal’s White Road (2005) Taryn Simon’s A Living Man Declared Dead & Other Chapters I-XVIII (2012)

The photobook as a medium provides a canvas for which a story may be told, whether simplistically or otherwise, through the sequence of photographs.

As an autonomous art form, the photobook has the capacity to express comparable information and emotion to that of a literary novel without using a single written word. On the other hand, some artists choose to incorporate bodies of text in order to further enrich their pieces with background information and both visual and cognitive cues.

The works of Robert Frank, Ivan Sigal, and Taryn Simon provide examples of three different forms of the photobook in regard to the way written text plays a role in the artist’s overall concept. With or without written text, each artist successfully creates a story saturated with meaning. For the sake of this argument, I will refer to Robert Frank’s The Americans (1959) as the basis for comparison between the three works due to the chronology of production and completion.

Robert Frank’s The Americans (1959) captures moments in the 1950’s American lifestyle interracially and socio-economically through the use of unusual and sometimes blurred focus, low lighting, and specific cropping. The photobook itself is clean and orderly in regards to the way each picture is presented to the viewer. As the viewer turns each page, they will find the left page mostly blank with a short description of a location (e.g. Movie Preimiere—Hollywood) found in the bottom left corner, blatantly distanced from the right page with which the description corresponds. By providing a written location, which the viewer assumes to hold truth, the picture is instilled with predisposed knowledge and expectations. The picture instantly holds greater meaning than if the viewer were to guess the story behind each image.

The pictures vary in orientation, but each portraitoriented picture is positioned to the left-hand side of the right page, while each landscape-oriented picture is positioned directly in the middle. The organized manner in which the pictures are positioned functions as a way to allow the viewer to focus more so on the subject matter of the picture, rather than some varying orientation.

Although Frank traveled to many different cities, he captures a consistent tone throughout his work and finds similarities in the atmosphere and physical expression composed in each picture. The sequential nature of his photobook largely affects the fluidity of his subject matter, in which Frank does not sequent his images chronologically

based on where and when he took the picture. The viewer will find images from Nebraska, then New York, then Hollywood, then New York again, then San Francisco, then Detroit, and so on and so forth. By dispersing the images without a particular order of locale, Frank tightens the relationship between states and asks the viewer to look at the country as a whole instead of blatantly dividing the country into regions.

The similarities found in the subject matter of his photos also act as elements that illuminate differences. The first picture captures a department store selling flowers and crosses for remembering loved ones, which immediately creates a commentary on consumerism. The next picture provides a cowboy lighting up a cigarette on a city sidewalk, which further alludes to the commerciality of death, but also begins a shift towards style. Thereafter, the viewer observes a blurred movie star surrounded by fans and then a rich couple surrounded by material goods and people. As the book continues, there are blatant shifts in class, but the facial expressions remain relatively the same: mundane and lifeless.

The figures in each picture are either overwhelmingly surrounded by people and material goods, or have almost nothing at all. A major discrepancy is created between socioeconomic classes, and actualizes a tension between the optimism sparked by the consumerist nature of the 1950’s in regards to automobiles, fast foods, and various arbitrary devices, and the realities of living conditions for different classes and races.

Ivan Sigal’s White Road (2005) takes an even more simplistic approach to how he provides visual information to his viewer. The only text available is the cover page, which states his name, title, publisher (Steidl), and gallery for exhibition (Corcoran Gallery of Art). By knowing the publishing name, the viewer can infer that he is of European origins, where the subject matter might also take place. As an American viewer, this information slightly distances myself from relating or understanding Sigal’s meanings as well as I could. Further, the text is gray and capitalized with harsh straight lines over what appears to be a black fabric background. The cover page reads as ominous and somewhat permanent in the way that the information is instated.

The photographs that follow are straight forward in the way that they are centered in the middle of the page and cover a large majority. If a picture is not meant to stand alone, but instead as a two page experience, the pictures both on the left and right pages are pulled toward the increase of the spine so that they appear to connect. This provides even greater visual information for a particular scene by incorporating a wider setting and fuller experience.

The sequence of events is similar to Frank’s in the way that images are not in chronological order. However, recurring figures and settings do appear intermittently so as to almost create a parallel storyline between an old woman taking care of the sick, and friends drinking and partying together. The pictures of the elderly woman taking care of a sick person appear rather stagnant and apathetic in the way that she stares blankly into the camera, or carries on daily routines. In steep contrast, the pictures that capture a livelier nature in the younger figures drinking and enjoying their time shared together are illustrated through blurry images of raising glasses, laughing, and dancing. The lack of focus in these shots provides motion, or a dynamism that the elderly woman lacks.

Sigal creates a discrepancy within his work, similar to Frank’s commentary, through the way he juxtaposes the younger, happier individuals with the sickly and elderly. His sequence of events creates a dialogue within the work so that written text is not necessary; Sigal depicts a community filled with different responsibilities and priorities given the flagrant differences in age and culture.

Taryn Simon’s A Living Man Declared Dead & Other Chapters I-XVIII (2012) takes a drastic turn in approach to the use and effects of written text, in which each chapter provides a biographical introduction to the subject matter explored. For example, in chapter XI, she chooses to explore the life of Hans Frank, Adolf Hitler’s personal legal advisor, and displays four paragraphs about how he was associated with Hitler and how he affected the lives of others.

Similar to Sigal’s cover page, Simon uses a black background with white typeface to develop a serious tone in the information to come. Nevertheless, the way Simon builds the sequential order of her photobook is extremely different from the other two forms, in which she provides the majority of background information and meaning from the beginning, and then gradually deconstructs her larger images into their secular forms.

The fact that the viewer first looks at the portraits, whether they be empty or filled, and then reads the descriptions allows for the viewer to come to their own conclusions about each individual before they reveal the truth in the description. In this way, the viewer is more interactive with the piece.

After the initial biography, the next page provides what appear to be a familial tree in photos, with some empty, some only containing clothes, and even one person facing away from the camera. Then, the following page provides random pictures of artifacts, paintings, newspaper articles, and so forth, strewn about in no particular order, some overlapping each other. It is not until the next page that the viewer begins to understand the process Simon is attempting.

Once the portraits are finished, Simon provides corresponding letter descriptions for the paintings, newspaper clippings, and other images initially displayed after the familial tree. On some pages is purely the description, with the image on the next page, while some have both the image and the description on the same page. The spacing between the two creates an added drama to each description and how the painting is connected to Hans Frank.

Each page thereafter is composed of two vertical rectangles, the size of a picture, side by side centered on the page, each numbered, with their corresponding descriptions at the bottom left-hand corner of the page. As the viewer observes each page, they realize that the order of pictures correspond with the order of pictures from the familial tree previously seen. The viewer begins to understand that these people are in some way connected to Hans Frank through their descriptions of origins and names.

By choosing to incorporate blank canvases for those that chose not to participate in the picture-taking process, Simon illuminates the tension in her exploration of this particular subject. Some people do not want to be publicly associated with someone who is so negatively connected to the Holocaust.

She is highlighting the uncomfortable nature of remembering and acknowledging the past.

Copyright Š 2013 by Meg Holt All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Designed by Meg Holt Manufactured in the United States of America