Tag: julie van der vaart

Julie Van Der Vaart – Untitled 3 from Beyond Time series (2017)

I am v. into the way there’s a sense with what’s visible of these four frames that the motion the viewer is offered glimpses of is not unlike a flipbook animation. (My impression is that the subject is moving from laying on their side to kneeling with their back arched–not an especially comfortable movement to enact…)

The more I look at it though, it’s as if the subject is not only moving, the camera is moving in relationship to the subject while still preserving a sense of continuous motion. It’s really effing cool effect.

Julie van der Vaart – Untitled (2015)

A good percentage of folks reading this likelyknow that almost a month ago (at this writing) Ren Hang–one of the most ‘internet famous’ photographers–took his own life.

Now, I’m not now nor have I ever been a Ren Hang apologist. However, as–ostensibly a fellow photographer–who also suffers from fairly debilitating depression, the knowing in this case has not been exactly easy to process.

What I know of the man behind the work suggests he would vigorously disagree with my characterization of his work as ‘audacious’ and ‘brash’. It seemed very much like he was struggling to feel some sort of connection, any sort of connection (however ephemeral) to the world around him.

And on those grounds, he certainly succeeded–insofar as his photos presented a seamless stylistic imperative of casual confrontation and conceptual extremity.

My gut feeling is that history will likely not be especially kind to his work. And I would be fine with that were it not for a handful of things I think he did that were of crucial importance.

I can’t look at his work and not think of Terry Richardson’s bright strobe with the subject frozen against a milk white background. Hang unquestionably ‘wore’ it better and to more stunning/less predatory effect–harnessing the immediacy of a snapshot and anchoring it to a fine art formalism.

It’s unlikely that he intended to comment on questions of pornography vs art but there’s a way in which his work bucks the trend to which Rebecca Solnit points about how the balance between highlight and shadow is–in pornography–skewed away from the more typical human experience of sexual intimacy.

I have no way of knowing definitively but there are a handful of up-and-coming image makers that seem to have internalized the fetishized conceptualization of technique in Hang’s work and applied it exquisitely to their own work.

I’m thinking here primarily of Ao Kim Ngân [aka yatender], who for my money is one of the best upstarts actively making new work. But also van der Vaart. The hyper-bright, edging on over-exposure vibe is reminiscent of Hang–especially given his exterior, night work. However, the technique folds together seamlessly with the concept. The pose is at once confrontational and demurely modest–hiding as a sort of revelation.

Although I have objections to cutting off body parts with the frame edges and think there are far better ways to preserve anonymity without decapitation–this actually is an exception to that rule. There’s a logical consistency to the presentation here.

The point is I think Hang’s work is a long way from done with the world of fine art photography and the milieu of internet famous image making.

Source: julievandervaart.com