Christine Collins, 'Trees'.
Take a quick look at the photographs to be included in 'A new American portrait', opening in a few days at Jen Bekman Gallery in Soho, New York - not your standard head and shoulders picture of an 'interesting' face. A lot of the images in the exhibition take a 360 degree look at the idea of portraiture and focus in on the photographer's figurative distance from its subject, resulting in a variety of angles, whether it be of faces seen from behind or of individuals lounging, suffering or just passing time as if unaware of the camera's presence - often angles which suggest a portraiture morphing from specificity into anonymous collective consciousness.
Alec Soth, 'Bonnie'.
Featuring photographs by Christine Collins, Jen Davis, Benjamin Donaldson, Amy Elkins, Peter Haakon Thompson, Todd Hido, Alec Soth, Brian Ulrich, and Shen Wei, the show offers a variety of issues to think about, but point of view might be one of the most fascinating here. All of the works share an ambiguous, theatrical sense of detachment, a way in which the exhibition suggestively opens up a conversation on the inherently contradictory elements in contemporary portraiture. Curated by gallery director Jen Bekman and Joerg Colberg of Conscientious, one of my favourite art blogs, the selection of images owes much to the generational influence of the constructed narrative in photography (see Cindy Sherman's cinematic toying with identity roles, or Gregory Crewdson's use of critical mise en scene).
Peter Haakon Thompson, 'Pushing mesh'.
Colberg comments, "a portrait lives in the interaction between the photographer and the sitter, a relationship which banishes any notion of objectivity. The work included in this exhibition explores, and at times exposes, this fragile intriguing dynamic." Bekman elucidates part of the concept behind the show further by walking us through some of her selections: 'Alec Soth's Bonnie smiles sweetly while holding her photograph of an angel, serene in her faith, having just shared a Bible passage with Soth condemning people to hell for their sins. Soth's presence, however, remains as it does in all his work: compassionate rather than condescending. In an untitled portrait from Ulrich's Thrift series, a young girl assumes a Classical pose amid the glare and chaos of a shopping mall. Hido's portraits are suffused with sadness and sexuality, ripe with a mysterious narrative. Davis's self-portraits brutally confront our abiding obsessions with thinness and desirability. The eighteen portraits in this exhibition explore potent themes and emotions which shape contemporary America: sexuality, gender, desire, heroism, consumption, fear, class, hope and loneliness are all in the mix'.
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez
'A NEW AMERICAN PORTRAIT'
Opening: 22 July, 6-8pm
22 June - 3 Aug 2007.
Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
New York, NY 10012
T: +1 212 219 0166
)
)
)