Autumn in the Forbidden City

Hong Lei, Autumn in the Forbidden City: Eastern Veranda, 1997

Hong Lei, Autumn in the Forbidden City: Western Veranda, 1997

There is a eerie nostalgia to Hong Lei’s pair of photographs, Autumn in the Forbidden City: Western Veranda and Autumn in the Forbidden City: Eastern Veranda. In both images, the dark, mangled corpse of a bird, draped in long strands of jade and pearl, is sprawled in the foreground. Rust red columns stand behind the bejeweled roadkill, serving as silent witnesses to the bird’s death. The hazy, monolithic silhouette of the Forbidden City looms in the background. The photographs appear vintage, with their scratches, bleached background colors, and symbols of an ancient empire. Yet the blood-red ink splashes, violently splattered onto the surfaces, give the photos a sense of immediacy. Decaying luxury and power, embodied by the Forbidden City in autumn, is juxtaposed with the eternal, imminent fact of death. These photographs serve as chilling reminders on this chilly autumn day here in our own city.

Cause of failures… (You Press the Button, We Do the Rest)

W.R. McKeen Jr., Kodak No. 2 negatives, ca. 1891

These envelopes, dated November 4, 1891, contained 87 “good” negatives and 12 “failures.” The negatives were from a No. 2 Kodak camera. After 100 exposures were made, the camera was sent to the Eastman Company for processing. In this order, only 87 prints were returned to the photographer. The “failures” were segregated into a separate envelope and not printed. The Eastman Company provided a list of possible causes of the “failures” and the corresponding pages in the manual to help prevent them.

The North Gate of Baghdad (After Corot)

Simon Norfolk, The North Gate of Baghdad (After Corot), from Scenes from a Liberated Iraq, 2003

Simon Norfolk depicts landscapes affected by the perils of war and genocide. While showing the destruction caused by conflict, he also highlights signs of life and hope. His compositions, influenced by eighteenth century landscape painters such as Corot, present the viewer with the majesty of nature, but closer inspection reveals that the image is one of ruin as well. Norfolk had this to say about his experience in Baghdad and his series titled Scenes from a Liberated Iraq:

Arriving in Baghdad (after a $1,000 dollar taxi ride from Jordan) ten days after American soldiers pulled down Saddam’s statue. An entire city in absolute darkness at night. Distant buildings burned by unknown looters. Arguing with nervous American soldiers. Finding everywhere the discarded clothing of Iraqi conscripts who had demobilized themselves to save their lives. Destruction everywhere. The kindness of strangers but an utter inability to explain to them what kind of bombs had hit their houses and fields or why their children had been killed.

Che Guevara, died October 9, 1967

Unidentified Photographer, [Body of Che Guevara], October 10, 1967

The typed caption on the print reads:

Body said to be Guevara’s–This is a close-up of the body displayed by Bolivian army officers today at Vallegrande and said to be that of Ernesto “Che” Guevara. The officers said Guevara, former top aide of Fidel Castro, was slain in a clash with Guerrillas in the Bolivian jungle Sunday [October 9, 1967]. (AP Wirephoto by radio from La Paz)

Art Workers Coalition, Let Me Say, at the Risk of Seeming Ridiculous, That the True Revolutionary Is Guided by Great Feeling of Love, ca. 1971

Civilisation: Catcity and Dogcity

Vu, December 18, 1929, no. 92, pp. 1075-76 (photos by International Graphic Press)

Irving Penn, 1917-2009

Irving Penn, Mrs. William Rhinelander Stewart, New York, May 20, 1948

The Office

Signal, March 2, 1941, pp. 24–25

Signal, March 2, 1941, p. 26

The German periodical Signal was published by the Oberkommande der Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Germany, during World War II. First published in April 1940, it was intended as a propaganda tool specifically for readers in the allied, occupied, and neutral countries. It reached a maximum circulation of 2.5 million copies and was translated into 25 different languages. However, the publication was not accessible to everyone. The magazine was not translated for audiences in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, or the Baltic countries, for example. According to the publishers, these groups should make the effort to learn the German language. People of these nationalities were considered Untermensch, “inferior people” whose cultures were unimportant.

The content and lay-out of Signal were based on popular periodicals such as Life and Picture Post, where political articles alternated with everyday stories, written in a lyrical style and illustrated with full-page color photographs. The Signal issue of March 2, 1941 published page-filling color images of Hitler’s office space. The captions meticulously describe the grandeur and decoration of the massive room in the language of a home decorating catalogue:

The 27 meter long, almost 15 meter wide and 10 meter high space is the core piece of the new Reichskanzelerei. The walls are built out of dark red, Ostmark marble, the wall pieces consist of dark brown ebony. The floor is constructed of marble as well and the coffered ceiling is built of rosewood. The window doors (left) are 6 meter high and 2 meter wide, which lead to a porch connected to the garden. Across from the Führer’s desk is a large marble mantelpiece constructed in the wall. Above hangs a painting of [First Chancellor of the German Empire Otto von] Bismarck made by the artist [Franz] von Lenbach. (Signal, March 2, 1941, p. 24)

Still Lifes with Faucet

Louis Stettner, Phoenicia, 1998

David Seymour, [Guns in a bathroom, Spain], ca. 1936

Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark, Father and Son. Dallas, Texas,  1987

Mary Ellen Mark,  Las Vegas, 1991

Mary Ellen Mark, Christian Bikers, Arizona, 1988

Finding inspiration in the outer fringes of society, photographer Mary Ellen Mark is known for her highly humanistic images. Born in 1940 in Philadelphia, Mark attended the University of Pennsylvania earning a B.F.A in art history and painting and an M.A. in photojournalism. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the Cornell Capa Award from the International Center of Photography in 2001.

Mark has photographed a diverse range of subjects, including homeless families, Bombay prostitutes, Seattle runaways, drug addicts, and the sick.  Many of these images have been the basis  for books, including Streetwise (Aperture, 1992) and Ward 81 (Simon & Schuster, 1979). In stark contrast, Mark has also photographed actors and directors, shooting primarily on Hollywood movie sets. Most notable is her work on the set of  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Apocalypse Now. Many of these images, intended for reproduction in periodicals, have earned Mark  recognition in the media world in addition to the art world. Shooting primarily in black and white, Mark provides the viewer a chance to look at other worlds outside their own.

“No Really, You’re Such a Doll . . .”

Ruth Bernhard, Broken Doll, 1938

Hans Bellmer, The Doll, 1935

Fred Stein, [Doll in glass jar], ca. 1935

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #341, 1999

Dolls frequently manage to resist categorical definition because they hover between anthropological artifacts, toys, and avatars. More than just replicas of the human form, dolls mirror the more complex psychological states within the culture, the maker, or even the subject. Perhaps it is this ambiguity and allusiveness that accounts for photographers’ seemingly endless fascination with dolls; the inability to definitively describe their nature becomes not so much a conclusion as a discursive opening.

Although a completely compliant model, the doll and its character cannot be completely subjugated. In photography, the doll instead performs best as a reflective canvas onto which the artist can project his or her desires and fears. The ensuing and unavoidable dialogue with the doll’s character then becomes the essence of the work.

What then is the dialogue suggested by the mangled, distorted, encapsulated, and/or decapitated bodies of the dolls seen in the photographs of Hans Bellmer, Ruth Bernhard, Fred Stein, and Cindy Sherman? Do we simply read the artist as eccentric and or perverted? Or can we account for the artists’ experiences rooted in the time and culture in which they live? How does the work reflect these experiences? Could it be the fear of another world war with the rise of Hitler in the 1930s?  Or the relentless fighting in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and the Balkans in the 1990s? Whatever the intentions, the continued and pervasive impulse by artists to represent the human form as grossly deformed and aggressively mangled suggests a provocation beyond the personal interest of the artist and one that speaks largely from a more political agenda. And if the doll in the photograph is reflecting who we are and what we have become, then it’s more than just a frightening glimpse in the mirror.