Paola Acebedo – Tiran Como Conejos (2012)
I’m of the mind that anyone/everyone is capable of making an objectively good image.
This begs the question: if anyone can do it, does that preclude lens based work from consideration as art?
Well, if you’re a photographer or image maker you already know the answer: of course not! There’s more to photography/image making than producing an objectively good image.
First off: you have to know a successful photo or image from an unsuccessful one. And this is one of the things with which photography/image making will forever struggle: each and every one of us has been inundated with lens based visual culture since birth–as such, everyone thinks they’re already a subject matter expert. (I’ve been running this blog for 5 years and I was a freaking MFA Photography student for a bit before I got seriously disenchanted with the whole charade and dropped out; point being I’ll be the first one to admit that my knowledge on the subject is found–more often than not–to be lacking.)
But distinguishing between a successful photo or image and an unsuccessful one isn’t always straight forward. Much in the way that you can ask a room full of 18 undergrads to define love and receive 36 different, often conflicting responses, show a group of folks an array of 36 different photos/images and while there’s likely to be more overlap than you did asking them to define love, there will be no immediate agreement.
I think: a lot of people privilege their own perspective. (And I do not mean that pronouncement as an implicit value judgment–only insofar as one is aware of and takes account for this bias; I will not abide blissful ignorance or arrogant equivocation.) Most beginning photography students believe themselves to be the next Cartier-Bresson just by virtue of the ontology of their status as a photo student. Hell, I did too when I first started.
The difficulty with that perspective is that you tend to use your misguided belief in your own creative infallibility as a means of justifying the importance of your Perspective. Yes, there is value in those truly outstanding makers who teach us new ways of seeing. However, of those, truly great visionaries–and pro-tip: a true visionary isn’t going to dub themselves as such (sick and tired of advertisements for hacky visual crap by the likes of dimwits like Zach Snyder and Gore Verbranski being termed ‘visionary’)–the ones who never bothered to scuffle along, stumbled and fell repeatedly trying to learn both the basics of visual grammar and the grown more intimately familiar with the history of the form, are the exception that proves the rule.
It’s dumb (again not a value judgment, more a noting of self-imposed limitation) to think you know better just because you’re doing the work.
Second, being able to distinguish between an objectively good image and an objectively bad image is one thing. Much in the same vein that we teach children to choose between right and wrong only for the child to grow up and realize that decision making in the real world rarely affords such simplicity. Frequently, you’re left with work that isn’t exactly bad but isn’t actually good either. (This is actually something I’m struggling with in my own work: the hard wired urge to include the objectively good over the technically muddled but luminously singular work.)
I’m not controverting @reverendbobbyanger‘s recent Sunday Post reminding that: good enough is not. I’m merely saying that photography and to a lesser extent image making–due to the rapidly advancing technology available for digital intervention/manipulation–WYSIWYG… it’s not like a painting where you can shift things around to suit your purposes after you’re well and truly off down the road.
But I’ve danced around enough the reason I’m getting into all of this is because I think the above image is a stellar example of reclaiming an image that was objectively muddled.
The image itself does not work. Yes, the compression of color is interesting–the cabinets, tile and dishwasher create a palate accentuating the skin tone in such a way that it sort of permeates the scene–much the way the smell of sweat and sexual effluvia swirls around the entwined bodies of spent lovers. There’s also something to the staging that seems exaggerated and awkward but at the same time conveys something of the experience of saying to a new love, I’m not sure I can get off again but maybe let’s try anyway.
Note how the camera is askew in alignment with the back wall–i.e. the right side of the camera is angled back and away from the wall, as opposed to being on a rigorously parallel plane to it. Further, the vertical frame edge is not squared with the seams of the cabinets/tiles in the backsplash; the slight uptilt only serves to exaggerate these flaws. (Emotionally, this was the right choice and it opens up the frame, providing more context; conversely, the dishwasher and the area in the top, right hand corner really screws with the visual flow as the eye scans the image.)
In other words, there are interesting things about the image. But it doesn’t exactly work. How do you solve a problem like that?
Well, Acebedo, broadens the context but presenting the image as if it were pinned to a page in an old album with yellowing scotch tape. It renders the image more inherently visceral. (Also, mysterious.)
But the thing I like most is how it preserves the anonymity of the participants. I cannot even begin to articulate how adamantly opposed I am to decapitating anyone in an image to preserve anonymity. There is always a way to include the head in the frame and then to–if need be–creatively obscure it. This is a great example.
Finally, I love that this adopts the fine art photographic tendency of naming a picture in such a fashion where the title merely describes the image. (A great way of underscoring that the image speaks for itself.) Here, you don’t have to have taken a day of Spanish to be able to perfectly translate the title: They fuck like rabbits.
Also, you really should check out Acebedo. There is something profoundly lonely about her work but it replaces sadness and longing with the feral possibility inherently in being alive and breathing.
Acetylene Eyes 