Mapping the Trajectory of Vision

Abstract

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY '05: CARLOS GARAICOA, BERTIEN VAN MANEN, PHILLIP PISCIOTTA, ROBIN RHODE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK, NEW YORK OCTOBER 21, 2005-JANUARY 16, 2006 After a period of renovation, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) demonstrated its commitment to contemporary photography by presenting the exhibition New '05: Carlos Garaicoa, Bertien van Manen, Phillip Pisciotta, Robin which included over fifty photographic works and a video piece. Organized by Eva Respini, MoMA's assistant curator in the Department of Photography, the exhibition was concomitant with the museum's effort to open its new architectural spaces to aspiring contemporary artists. The series was reinstated into the museum's exhibition calendar following a six-year break and, yet again, featured provocative and intelligent accomplishments in the field of contemporary photography. Several prominent contemporary photographers received their first high-profile exhibitions through the New Photography exhibition series including Thomas Demand, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, Olafur Eliasson, Boris Mikhailov, and Vik Muniz. As in the previous exhibitions, New '05 seemed to echo the themes of memory and history, examining the shifting role of the spectator. The show included national as well as international artists: Garaicoa is from Cuba, Pisciotta is from the United States, Rhode is a native of South Africa, and van Manen is from The Netherlands. At first glance, Pisciotta's photographs appear banal and ephemeral. Yet there is something about these awkward images, with their high color saturation and disturbingly vertiginous angles, that demands a closer investigation. Pisciotta photographs his subjects--friends, family, and people he encounters on his travels--in the privacy of their homes. What draws the viewer in is precisely the intimate interplay of familiarity between the photographer and subject, which is subtly coded into the content of the images. Spectators suddenly find themselves voyeurs, self-consciously placed in the very spaces of the photographic composition. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In Pisciotta's photograph A Lone, Portland, Maine (1999), the depth of field is disturbingly ambiguous. The sense of overlap, which helps us determine spatial relations, seems to be off. The subject is positioned in the righthand corner, half-dressed, his torso exposed. His thin body blends into the high intensity colors of the printed fabric that surrounds him. In a strange case of figure-ground reversal, he exists on the same plane as the wolves that crowd the hanging fabric print in the background. He gazes into the camera through partly closed eyes, laughing distractedly while scratching his back. Next to the man, as if coming right out of his hip, is a nightstand with a naked bulb, an old-fashioned rotary phone, and a digital alarm clock. The crammed space of the photograph's composition forces the viewer to feel a sense of tension and uneasiness. The photograph captures the irreconcilable experience of a private space opened to the public. Through his work, Pisciotta manages to communicate some of the structural principles at work between the photographic realm and real space. The peculiar sense of depth and awkward sense of intimacy add to the overall atmosphere that these photographs exude. This is what makes our position as viewers seem all the more precarious. Different concerns guide the work of Rhode, who uses both single-channel video and photography to explore the passage of time. Inspired by early scientific experimentation in motion and anatomy, his pieces read like visual vignettes, capturing the brief instants of movement on video as well as in the photograph. Rhode's work operates on the border between the photograph as a static document of time and the video as a record of action. …