Siân Davey – Title unknown from the Martha series (2016)

If you are at all political these days, you–like me–are learning that the 24/7/365 news cycle never allows you to take a minute and catch your breath. It’s like that stupid (and apparently immortal battery) operated rabbit…

There are only so many hours in the day and as I learned during my time as an undergraduate, I max out at around 1200 pages of reading in any given week.

Frequently, I find myself reading headlines and if you’re lucky the first couple of paragraphs before moving on to the next thing screaming for my attention.

All that is by way of introduction to the above photograph by Siân Davey.

I encountered it via @nevver (aka this isn’t happiness) who harvested it from a FotoRoom interview with Davey’s about the Martha series.

The background runs like this Davey produced a body of work focused on her younger daughter Alice–who was born with Down’s Syndrome.

Her 16 year-old step-daughter Martha eventually confessed that she felt a bit ignored and a new body of work was begun.

There are a veritable raft of things that interest me here w/r/t this project. But I am presently extraordinarily self-conscious about all the rambling diatribes I’ve posted recently so I am going to make and effort to stick with the richer considerations.

And first off, it really needs to be said that whomever selected the 10 photos from Martha to be featured along with the FotoRoom interview has no business curating.

I am not being bitchy here: review the FotoRoom selections first and then visit the full series. What in the former case seems to be an overly contrived fly on the wall, fetishization of youth becomes in the latter case, something much more fraught with ambiguity and complexity. (Also the focus in the FotoRoom piece presents the results as if Davey splits her time shooting between disposable film camera–an aesthetic I despise–interspersed with more technically accomplished/mannered portraits.)

Really the variance in quality is far more controlled, organic and immediate than is conveyed in the FotoRoom feature.

Based solely on that feature I was prepared to compose a catty missive bemoaning the execution while praising certain aspects of the photo above’s conceptual acuity. However, after actually spending some time with the whole body of work, my objections have pretty much evaporated.

Although I do have a bit of a nagging quandary that still lingers: It has to do with the fact that while I thoroughly adore the more fine art minded photos in the series. There is something uncomfortable about this image that I think causes this photo to actually rise above every other inclusion in the series.

It’s partly the fact that the camera isn’t a fly on the wall–not really. There’s the two boxes of Kodak Portra not entirely obscured by the the Budweiser beer and sea salt and balsamic vinaigrette Kettle Chips. (As well as the two young women chipmunking at the back of a dSLR–a snarky aside commenting not only on generational differences but also the immediacy of adolescence vs the mired trudge that is being right smack in the middle of adulthood.)

The full series is actually extraordinary at following the betweenness of not quite an adult but also no longer a child and the way that performance and community inform the inevitable and irrevocable transformation.

I have questions about some of the other photos. Why are so many of these kids smoking cigarettes? Why is a step-mother privy to these kinds of events her teenage step-daughter? (I suspect the answer is that she can only dictate to an increasingly limited degree what choices her daughter makes, so she prejudices being able to be present and ready to protect if necessary–which I admire and feel would probably be more take if I were ever to have kids: unlikely but two years ago I would’ve said it was never a possibility and now I am much less certain on that count.)

But what I want to know about the photograph here is: did the young woman cover themselves because the camera was aimed at them? Or were the directed to cover their chests because the camera was aimed at them?

I would bet it’s the latter. But even if that is the case, there’s still a wonderful mediation between being aware of being seen but pretending not to care but in a socially appropriate manner.

I love the you’ve got to be kidding me look of the young woman in the black undies with the black eye make-up and the friend she is facing in the rose print bikini bottoms with the matching top pressed incredulously against her chest and radiating feral fury at the indignity of her position.