observer observed meghan krauss
Vernon Public Art Gallery January 7 - March 6, 2019
Meghan Krauss: Observer Observed
Meghan Krauss’ exhibition titled Observer Observed addresses several interesting issues pertinent to her lens-based studio practice, the nature of photography in art making, the true nature of an image and a social commentary on the various trends of the use of the camera in today’s image based cultural era. In 1839 when Louis Daguerre invented a type of photographic process, the world was introduced to see the first rare urbanscapes of Paris. Because of the technology and chemicals used, Daguerre had to set up his camera with the lens open in excess of 10 minutes, which was too long a time to capture moving people, hence his images of the streets of Paris seem to be devoid of pedestrians.1 Now, some 180 years later, taking photographs has become ubiquitous and in addition to the high quality film-based cameras, the use of digital cameras is dominant. Critics and historians often describe photography as a transformational technology and it was true in the 19th century as it is now.2 The invention of photography changed stereotypical attitudes about the nature of art and since then different types of photography genres have developed. Today we live in an image culture era where an uncountable number of images are taken and shared worldwide daily. Krauss’ ambitious project, Observer Observed, uses source imagery from locations in Iceland and Banff, Alberta. Over periods of years, Krauss observed and photographed tourists taking photographs - and ‘selfies’ - on both locations and then produced sophisticated photomontages in her studio through the use of the Photoshop editing software. In her landscape images, she implanted images of tourists she photographed. The titles of the photomontages are condensed to the number of tourists she implanted, for instance 94 Tourists, or 243 Tourists and so on. Contrary to Daguerre’s images of the human free streets of Paris, digital image editing technology allows Krauss’ landscapes to be intentionally populated with dozens and hundreds of people photographing the sites of interest, other tourists and themselves. Krauss’ studio practice also brings into questions the nature of the photographic image. Despite the fact that there are multiple definitions of what photography is, Krauss’ practice can hardly be identified with any of the concepts. If we consider an old definition and purpose of photography to be to produce multiple copies, Krauss usually produces one original. If we understand photography as a means for copying or capturing observable reality, Krauss’ images are made to portray something that has not transpired in its entirety. Her photomontages are examples of times and spaces which would affirm that someone was there or that something happened, but all existing in a non-linear passage of time. From this point of view, Krauss manufactured the images according to her narrative where observers are observed during their visits to various tourist locations. It is interesting to observe that her photomontages convey the feeling of here and now in an unified time somewhere on a real location, but upon a careful look we can discover that some ‘tourists’ are portrayed or inserted into the tableau several times but in different positions and locations, just as Krauss might have photographed them originally on site.
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While Krauss’ studio practice relies on photography with focus on composition, light, human form, and landscape, all the images she captures are intended to be source imagery for the larger body of work. With the aid of digital editing software she can later extract shapes (images of tourists) from multiple images and collage them into the compositions in order to keep true to the narrative she extensively constructed. Krauss’ creative process extends past just ‘taking’ photographs. In her post-processing sessions she is building images and just like other artists making paintings and drawings, Krauss ‘makes’ images. Lubos Culen Curator Vernon Public Art Gallery Endnotes 1 Mary Warner Marien, Photography and Its Critics: A Cultural History 1838 – 1900 (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 1-10 2 Ibid.
94 Tourists, 2014-2015, panoramic Inkjet print on vinyl, 3 x 10 feet
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artist statement In 2012 I moved to Banff National Park, an area that attracts over three million visitors per year. It is this incredible number drew my attention to the idea of tourism. I am fascinated by the abundance of photographs taken by people and that wherever we find ourselves in this world, we are compelled to document and share our experiences. British photographer Martin Parr, a pioneer in documenting the impact of global tourism around the world wrote: “[m]y theory is that the act of photographing ourselves at tourist sites becomes so important because it makes us feel reassured that we are a part of the recognizable world.” My awareness of the ease in which people archive their lives, made me question how many photographs from similar angles and heights exist of the most predominant feature in Banff, Cascade Mountain. In 2013, I began to explore these ideas by creating large-scale panoramic photomontages, where multiple images of tourists are compressed into a single image. One of the first photomontages in this series was of this mountain and is titled 94 Tourists. In Observer Observed, these masses of tourists condense together within each of the eight panoramic photographs in the exhibition, representing the flurry of human activity that occurs at these sites of significant activity. The desperate attempt to document our individual lives, to account for the uniqueness of who we are as individuals, leads us to end up doing the same thing as everybody else. My panoramic photographs are seamlessly stitched images that range between thirty to fifty separate photographs. Once I have established the base layer, additional photographs of people that I have taken over a course of time, are layered on top of the original image through a photomontage process. The idea of photomontoge originated in 1853, when Swedish artist Oscar Rejlander “developed a technique of ‘combination printing’, in which a photograph was produced from multiple negatives,”1 and this technique was later referred to as photomontage. Through the use of this process, Rejlander made Two Ways of Life (1857), an image that consists of thirty separate negatives: a difficult process to master, as it consisted of the laborious process of disguising numerous joints in the darkroom. It is stated by Edwards that Two Ways of Life took a period of six weeks to complete, a much more difficult method then our current Adobe Photoshop. In 242 Tourists, I merged together two hundred and two photographs taken over fifty-three minutes in a single location. Each individual depicted in the image is derived from one of these layers, and the title refers to the total number added to the photograph. According to David Harris and Eric Sandweiss in their text Eadweard Muybridge and the Photographic Panorama of San Francisco, the photographic panoramic format has been in use since the mid-late eighteenth century and in the nineteenth century, it was described as “a succession of illusionistic devices – the painted panorama, the diorama, the cosmorama – present[ing] the city as a visual spectacle.”2 Eadwead Muybridge, one of the commercial photographers of the late 1800s in North America, was using panoramic images to document San Francisco in ways that suited contemporary tastes. Today, Muybridge’s images provide rich historical information of the city and show the changes that occur to cityscapes over time. Like the panoramic photographers of the 1970s, I embrace and appreciate the format for its “compatibility with human vision, as well as the distortions that arise from the translation of 120° to 140° view onto a flat surface.”3 As Steve Edwards notes in his Photography: A Very Short Introduction, for spectators, “the panoramic effect is a sensation of being surrounded by, and thereby part of the histories of place,”4 thus my reasoning for using the panoramic format. In September of 2014, upon expanding the project to Iceland where I attended the Listhús í Fjallabyggð residency program with support from the Saskatchewan Arts Board’s independent artists grant program, my focus expanded to the travelers there, creating a thought-provoking comparison to the photographs taken in Banff. In 2008 Iceland experienced a major economic and political financial crisis and because of this, tourism has become a much more significant part of their national economy. In 2014, the population of Iceland was 300,000, yet there were over a million tourists that traveled throughout the country annually. This is in comparison to the three million people who pass through Banff National Park’s gates every year. Although initially a blessing to the country, according to the Wall Street Journal, “[t]he scale of the 4
tourism explosion has caught the government unprepared, leaving infrastructure strained and outnumbered Icelanders complaining about scarce housing, rising rental prices and roadside litter.”5 This phenomenon is not unique to Iceland, and discussion around it has become a more frequent topic of conversation, the world over. By emphasizing the volume of people who visit and document these picturesque places, I present the tourists interacting with each other and the world around them through the use of their technology, with the inclusion of myself taking a “selfie” into each image. In The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age, Richard Louv states that “in an age of rapid environmental, economic, and social transformation, the future will belong to the nature smart – those individuals, families, business, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of nature, and who balance the virtual with the real.”6 While observing tourists documenting the landscapes around them, I wonder if this is the new generation of “nature smart” people. While it may initially appear that they only have a superficial relationship with these locations, as they are all taking the same standard snapshots of easily accessible, scenic viewpoints, it is their mere presence that becomes significant. As portions of society have lost their connection with the natural world, this increased interest in the outdoors and parks is good for our overall psychological and physical health. Similarly to Louv, I also believe that “[w]hat’s different now is not the presence of technology, but the pace of change – the rapacity of the introduction of new media and adoption of new electronic devices,”7 and although this change is occurring, as a society we can balance our technological selves and become “nature smart” through our constant desire to have a close connection to the natural world. Over the span of working on this series, I have witnessed this rapacity, as social media is changing the tourism industry and our interaction with the natural world daily. On platforms such as Instagram, Geotagging technology shows us where a photograph was taken, no matter the destination. While there is nothing wrong with seeing a beautiful place on the Internet and deciding to go there, who is become the ultimate gatekeeper, unless it is on private land. Although not my original intent, the photomontages do accentuate my ever-increasing anxiety felt while visiting these ever increasing, overcrowded tourist locations myself. In Observer Observed, through the photomontage process, I seek to engender in my viewers a similar angst to my own feelings about the current state of tourism. Compressed together, these people are all equally enthusiastic to be documenting the same picturesque landscapes, regardless of the quality of images taken or on what social platforms they will ultimately be displayed. In my analysis of this digital revolution we currently find ourselves in, I emphasize the number of visitors that document these places, and the euphoria it brings becomes quite apparent. Thus, the tourists reflect individual attempts to seek out and become part of the recognizable world through the use of their technology, yet highlights the lack of uniqueness of each individual’s image. Meghan Krauss November 2018 (Endnotes)
1 Steve Edwards. Photography: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 43-4. Print. 2 David Harris and Eric Sandweiss. Eadweard Muybridge and the Photographic Panorama of San Francisco, 1850-1880. Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, Distributed by MIT, Cambridge, MA, 1993. 15. Print. 3 Ibid. 4 Steve Edwards. Photography: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 296-7. Print. 5 Adam, Nina. “Tourism Boom Bogs Down Iceland.” The Wall Street Journal, 21 Aug. 2017. 6 Louv, Richard. The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin of Chapel Hill, 2012. Print. 4. 7 Louv, Richard. The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin of Chapel Hill, 2012. Print. 37. 5
243 Tourists, 2014-2015, panoramic Inkjet print on vinyl, 3 x 10 feet
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124 Tourists, 2014-2018, panoramic Inkjet print on vinyl, 3 x 10 feet
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197 Tourists, 2014-2015, panoramic Inkjet print on vinyl, 3 x 10 feet
227 Tourists, 2014-2018, panoramic Inkjet print on vinyl, 3 x 10 feet
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186 Tourists, 2014-2018, panoramic Inkjet print on vinyl, 3 x 10 feet
125 Tourists, 2015, panoramic Inkjet print on vinyl, 3 x 10 feet
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Meghan Krauss
CURRICULUM VITAE
meghankraussphotography@gmail.com www.meghankrauss.com Education 2012 Masters of Fine Arts; Visual Arts (Photography) The University of Windsor – Received a Joseph-Armand-Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship-Master’s Scholarship SSHRC – Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada 2005 Bachelor of Fine Arts; Visual Arts (Photography) The University of Saskatchewan - Honours with Great Distinction Selected solo exhibitions 2019-20 Observer Observed Vernon Public Art Gallery: Caroline Galbraith Memorial Gallery, Vernon, British Columbia Gallery 2, Grand Forks, British Columbia 2018 Busy Town, Ministry of Casual Living Window Gallery, Victoria, British Columbia 2015 Ísland, Philosophers Knoll Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta 2013 autotopia, Philosophers Knoll Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta Banff Public Library Gallery, Banff, Alberta 2012 autotopia, SoVA Project Gallery, Windsor, Ontario A Tale of Two Cities, SoVA Project Gallery, Windsor, Ontario 2011 A Tale of Two Cities, Frances Morrison Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan The World Is Too Much With Us, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan 2008 The Visual Orchestra, STM Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Grace Campbell Gallery, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan Joe Moran Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan Selected group exhibitions 2017 Vancouver Island School of Art Faculty Show, Slide Room Gallery, Victoria, BC 2015 The Arbornauts at FAC, OCAD University, Toronto, Ontario The WATER Exhibition The Whyte Museum, Banff, Alberta 2014 The Arbornauts at Nuit Blanche, Forest City Gallery, London, Ontario 2013 Paducah Photo Exhibition, Yeiser Art Centre, Kentucky, Paducah Transitory Spaces, Abegweit House, Banff, Alberta 2012 State Changes, Gallery 129 Ossington, Toronto, Ontario Poacalypse: Apocalypse, CAID - Contemporary Art Gallery Detroit, Detroit, Michigan, USA 2011 May Works, SB Contemporary Art, Windsor, Ontario 197 Tourists (detail), 2014-2015, panoramic Inkjet print on vinyl, 3 x 10 feet
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Selected group exhibitions continued 2011 Make it Work, SoVA Project Gallery, Windsor, Ontario 2009 Environmental 911, Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Metamorphosis, Marjori Wood Gallery, Red Deer, Alberta 2008 The Visual Orchestra, Cre8ery Auxiliary Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba Visions of Light, Marjori Wood Gallery, Red Deer, Alberta 2007 Red Friends, The Red Shift Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan 2005 En Route, Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Residencies 2014 Listhús Artist Residency Program, Self-Directed Residency, Ólafsfjörður, Fjallabyggð of Iceland Collectives The Arbornauts - http://arbornauts.org/, Lydia Burggraaf, Amanda White, and Meghan Krauss The Boot - Lydia Burggraaf, Amanda White, Sarah Chomko, Riaz Mehmood, and Meghan Krauss Selected Grants, Awards, and Scholarships 2015 Visual Arts and New Media Individual Project Grant, Alberta Foundation for the Arts 2012-15 Photography Practicum Tuition Scholarship and Stipend, The Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta 2014 Saskatchewan Arts Board - Independent Artists Program Grant – Visual, Saskatchewan Arts Board 2011 2011-12 Joseph-Armand-Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship-Master’s SSHRC – Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Faculty of Graduate Studies Conference Travel Grant, The University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario 2010 2010 PSAC National Coughlin Scholarship, Public Service Alliance of Canada Postgraduate Tuition Scholarship, The University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario 2005 Phase II Photography Scholarship, The University of Saskatchewan The University of Saskatchewan Student Travel Grant, The University of Saskatchewan Reviews and Features 2015 “This Photographer Inserts Selfie-Takers into Beautiful Landscapes.” YouTube. The Banff Centre, 23 Nov. 2015. Web. 23 Jan. 2016. “Photographer Composites Photo-Happy Tourists into Unusual Panoramas.” PetaPixel RSS. The Banff Centre, 26 Dec. 2015. Web. 23 Jan. 2016. 2013 Krauss, Meghan. “Meghan Krauss.” LandEscape Mar. 2013: 40-47. Web. 03 Mar. 2013. <http://issuu.com/landescapeartpress/docs/landescape_art_review_-_march_2013/1>. 2011 McLeod, Scott. “Exhibit P: Photography and Media Arts from the Praries” Prefix Photo Nov. 2011: 40-71. Print. 14
Books and Exhibition Catalogues 2014 - The Banff Centre. Verlage Notes: An Exhibition of Artists’ Books. Banff: Banff Centre, 2014. Print. Publication © Peta Rake and Suzanne Rackover. Edition of 100 2010 - The Best of Photography 2010. California: Photographer’s Forum - Serbin Communications: Santa Barbara, 2008. 200. Print. 2008 - The Best of Photography 2008. California: Photographer’s Forum - Serbin Communications: Santa Barbara, 2008. 105. Print. - Polachi, Darlene. “Merging Music and Art.” The Saskatoon Sun [Saskatoon] 10 Aug. 2008: 25. Print. 2007 - The Best of Photography 2007. California: Photographer’s Forum - Serbin Communications: Santa Barbara, 2008. 113. Print. Selected Artist Talks and Presentations 2018 Urban Streets - Speaker Series, Waterfront Gallery, Ladysmith, British Columbia 2014 Exposure - Photography Lecture, The Juniper Hotel & Bistro, Banff, Alberta Presentation on my artistic work. 2012 Symposium - New Growth: Dialogues on the Tree, York University, Toronto, Ontario The Arbornauts (an artistic collective of three) gave a presentation proposing how public city parks exist in the marginal space between nature (where humans are not) and the city. This definition of the space necessitates our engagement with the park to be within our capacity as a cultured human in contrast to that of the uncultured child or animal climbing trees.
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This publication was produced in conjunction with the exhibition: Meghan Krauss: Observer Observed Vernon Public Art Gallery, January 7 - March 6, 2019 Production: Vernon Public Art Gallery Cover Image: 94 Tourists (detail), 2014 - 2015, panoramic Inkjet print on vinyl, 3 x 10 feet Printing: Get Smarter Copies, Vernon BC, Canada ISBN 978-927407-48-6 copyright Š 2019, Vernon Public Art Gallery All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the Vernon Public Art Gallery. Requests for permission to use these images should be addressed in writing to the Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3, Canada. Telephone: 250.545.3173 - fax: 250.545.9096 - website: www.vernonpublicartgallery.com The Vernon Public Art Gallery is a registered not-for-profit society. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee/RDNO, the Province of BCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, British Columbia Arts Council, the Government of Canada, corporate donors, sponsors, general donations and memberships. Charitable Organization # 108113358RR
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