I am neither great nor a photographer, but, if you show up on time Saturday, I will start with a story I will call, "Why I want to teach this class, or, my boring story about knowledge sustains me and always has." Then, once the caffeine has kicked in, and the other half of the class shows up, I will start getting more serious.
In an effort to demonstrate how valuable research skills are, I will highlight some photographers I admire whose work researching their projects not only provides them with a solid foundation, but adds intelligence to everything they do.
She has spent years stalking the world's oldest living things to photograph them - TED video linked, above.
She says it better than I can - watch the TED video I linked to here!
The book In History that ICP has published with Steidl is a testament to fact that Meiselas is a researcher served by her camera. She has also gradually become an archivist of other people's pictures and stories for the very reason that she recognizes the value of preserving information to keep it safe and available to researchers in the future.
Dallaporta is a young French photographer who has already made quite a mark by formulating strong bodies of work that each require a considerable amount of research. Anti-Personnel, a project that was recently exhibited in New York at Silverstein Gallery, is an example of a project that weaves together informational and technical details in order to convey a larger, philosophical, message.
He lectured last year at ICP the week he won the Infinity Award - check it out: May 6, 2010.
Larry Towell is more than a Magnum photographer. He is a multi-media artist and writer whose work is educational without being didactic. Like Meiselas, he steeps himself in his topics, which are as diverse as they are complex.
Hassink is a Dutch photographer who is the daughter of a CEO, and has a great head for business and market research. Her conceptual photographic work is often conducted like market research. She does a lot of preparatory studying before embarking upon a project, like studying the Fortune 500 lists, the offices of Silicon Valley, Car Shows, etc.
I see a lot of photography in books, museums, and galleries, and I can tell in a few moments what projects have a strong base of knowledge gathering beneath them. If you want your work to have real credibility and added value, you will become a researcher par excellence.
Joachim Schmid, Tamas Revesz, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Channarin, Philippe Gronon, Ed Kashi, David Maisel, Ken Schles, Christian Boltanski, Vic Muniz, Dieter Appelt, Bill Burke, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Sebastiao Salgado, James Nachtwey, Candida Hofer, Thomas Struth, Gerhard Richter, Jules Spinatsch, Shomei Tomatsu, Josef Koudelka, Danny Lyon, Gilles Peress, and more and more photographers get maximum bang out of their work by being well-informed first. Some of them are ICP Library patrons...can you guess which ones?
I always am pleased to see an artist actually documented working in a library. Here is Josiah McIlhenny on Art 21.
Nowadays, there is a vibrant strain of research-based art which you can learn more about from journals like Cabinet and E-Flux.
There are entities like the Center for Land-Use Interpretation "CLUI" [based in Culver City, California], and its neighbor, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, that may stimulate your artistic curiosity, as well. They are both the result of scholarly inquiry colliding with art practice in a meaningful way.
I see a lot of photography in books, museums, and galleries, and I can tell in a few moments what projects have a strong base of knowledge gathering beneath them. If you want your work to have real credibility and added value, you will become a researcher par excellence.
Joachim Schmid, Tamas Revesz, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Channarin, Philippe Gronon, Ed Kashi, David Maisel, Ken Schles, Christian Boltanski, Vic Muniz, Dieter Appelt, Bill Burke, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Sebastiao Salgado, James Nachtwey, Candida Hofer, Thomas Struth, Gerhard Richter, Jules Spinatsch, Shomei Tomatsu, Josef Koudelka, Danny Lyon, Gilles Peress, and more and more photographers get maximum bang out of their work by being well-informed first. Some of them are ICP Library patrons...can you guess which ones?
I always am pleased to see an artist actually documented working in a library. Here is Josiah McIlhenny on Art 21.
Nowadays, there is a vibrant strain of research-based art which you can learn more about from journals like Cabinet and E-Flux.
There are entities like the Center for Land-Use Interpretation "CLUI" [based in Culver City, California], and its neighbor, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, that may stimulate your artistic curiosity, as well. They are both the result of scholarly inquiry colliding with art practice in a meaningful way.
No comments:
Post a Comment