although her response to my current senior portfolio work didnt seem to give any real sense of direction (atleast any that i am particularly ready to follow at this point in time), i did have a very good talk with justine kurland .needless to say we ended up talking more about motherhood than images i project and re-photograph... yet she made the comment that she wanted me to be the little girl again that took the original pictures.....being a product of yale, she has a very specific idea of what photography should be and the techniques that really speak to the traditions of the medium. (while i have my own ideas of what is inherent in the medium)she did however really seem to like my self portraits with miles; these were images i have been taking before and after he was born that i havent shown anyone yet....she said something along the lines of how motherhood, (when done right) can be just as raw as those larry-esque heroin addicts......" you could photograph the shit that gets under your fingernails when you change his diaper" ~kurland

"making friends"

A question was asked during the justine kurland lecture about whether she felt distanced from her subject(s), and it seemed she didnt quite know how to respond. (as the other shanna later mentioned ; " i mean just how close does she get? is she getting naked with them?")based on my perception of what she said in her tales of making the photographs, i answered the question for her in my own mind. no, there was not much separation going on between the photographer and her subjects. it was not as if she was a diane arbus, capturing that "other", but more as if she were almost part of the other; she seemed to fit in with them.hearing her speak of her mother working in the renaisssance fairs, and then seeing the image of this woman next to a young girl blessing her with the smoke from a sage stick,i began to feel as if i knew this side of her, who she was and what kind of people she most likely interacted with her entire life. i myself had know as a child friends of my own mother'swho loved to be naked, wore feathers in their hair , talked about the meaning of "positive energy", and who always seemed somewhat removed from the rest of the world. they lived in their own little universe. i felt i had had so many similar relationships with people who are on that "wavelength", and even though i might not go to the extreme lengthsthat they might, i still feel more at home with them than many other "normal" people.........
i found it hilariously genius how she again and again referred to those without clothes as "the nakeds" (as opposed to "the nudes") ; it made sense as she explained how her models' function were not to be merely a nude form, but an expression of "freedom of nakedness" (this idea also made them much less sexualized and more innocent/pure)upon hearing kurland speak, it became apparent that she herself shared a similar lack of confining inhibitions created by the "norms" of society....
lastly, i feel her notions made a somewhat nostalgic connection with myself, particularly the "doodling- on- eachother's- back- with -your- fingernails game" that me and my own sister played.........her photographs (and her words) evoked such familiarity with my own way of thought, life experiences, etc

friedrich

Su Friedrich's talk was , although intreaguing, a tease! i wish she had talked less and shown more of her videos.yet her words somehow exposed the way in which she worked; it was very apparent that she relied heavily on analmost photograph memory to engage her creative process. the way she told of the car she and her girlfriend got, her writing a letter to her father about her mother listening to classical music, and then how she didnt send it to him....she had an ability to evoke mental images in those in the audience's heads simply orally (she did with me anyway)then again, her rhetorical approach also seemed a reflection of her film work, hence the reason why we saw only small portions of her films. it did become difficult to make ones own interpretation as she sometimes even spoke over-top of the films,almost pushing the ways in which she wanted them to be read..... (it was distracting)i do remember upon viewing the first film thinking that the urg machine rowing appeared very sexualized. (i am assuming this was her intention as she was dealing with gender ambiguity)
in the end i felt a little cheated; once i became pulled into a film , like the one with the two little girls or the one with the nuns, she wouldturn it off! was this cencorship or just a ploy to get us to go out and get the films on your own?

(submissions)

VMFA

Photo on Campus

imitation pumpkin

happy halloween.