Breaking the Rules

Abstract

Fleisher/Ollman Gallery Philadelphia January 20-February 19, 2011 The exhibition Off Camera featured work from seventeen artists who challenge photography's conventions. Curator Amy Adams's original intention was to organize a survey of work by self-taught photographers; however, she quickly realized the magnitude of the project and refined her focus. She sought out artists who used photography in nontraditional ways. The resulting exhibition included photographers who are trained, untrained, known, unknown, historical, and contemporary. Each artist started with an original photograph as raw source material, altering it with a plethora of mark-making techniques bordering on defacement. Bending, doodling, writing, and scratching the image are simultaneously acts of play and rebellion that produced an interesting paradox; through alteration, the endlessly reproducible medium of photography is transformed into a unique object. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As I viewed the exhibit, a number of questions emerged. Why did the self-taught artists' work seem fresher and edgier than that of their formally trained contemporaries? Was it because they were the radar of the contemporary art world? Is it possible to break the rules if you don't know the rules? There were several interesting rule breakers in this show. Miroslav Tichy's voyeuristic black-and-white photographs of young Czech girls looked as if they had been rescued from a moldy box in someone's attic. Out of focus, off-center, folded, ripped, bent, and stained, Tichy's photographs would appall photography purists. Tichy is quoted as saying, If you want to be famous, you must do something more badly than anybody in the entire world.(1) To further his intention of making bad photographs, Tichy constructed his cameras from disposable materials such as cardboard and aluminum cans. One imagines these unobtrusive cameras made Tichy a less-threatening ogler. The artist would produce a contact print and then destroy the negative, leaving only one weathered, tattered print. While the male voyeur perspective disturbs my feminist sensibility, I am in awe of Tichy's subversive strategy in refuting photography's formalist traditions. While Tichy photographed his subjects unaware, Oliver Herring creates TASK parties, in which he photographs his subjects engaged in performative acts. According to Herring's blog, a TASK event provides a space in which participants collectively interact with props, casting off their inhibitions and acting out specific tasks drawn from a collective pool.(2) For this series of images, the task was to make a weapon and kill someone. The teenaged participants fashioned costumes, masks, and faux weapons from innocuous arts and crafts materials such as construction paper, markers, glitter, pencils, plastic bags, and tape. Flashy and frightening, the resulting digital C-prints reflect urban youth culture and the desire to kill if only during playtime. Herring creates a three-dimensional effect by applying metallic photo paper to portions of the portrait. The bas-relief heightens the tension, directing the viewer's focus to the weapons and faces. The 3D effect also heightens the photograph's price tag. At $18,000 each, these were the second-highest priced works in the show.(3) Self-taught Chicago artist Lee Godie lived on the streets for the last twenty-five years of her life, selling her French Impressionist paintings in parks and on the steps of the Art Institute. …