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MoCP Newsletter
September 6, 2006
MoCP recieves grants from National Endowment for the Arts, Lloyd A. Fry Foundation for Picture Me programming
To expand our reach and impact beyond the museum’s walls, MoCP has established an educational outreach program for teens, entitled Picture Me, at three Chicago high schools, Curie Metropolitan High School, Juarez Community Academy and Uplift Community School. Through Picture Me, students are cultivated as independent, self-reflective artists by collaborative teaching teams made up of high school art teachers and Columbia College photography faculty, graduate students, MoCP staff and guest artists. These teams guide core participants through projects that provide intensive training in the media of photography while also improving students’ critical thinking and communication skills. Field trips to the museum provide students vital exposure to contemporary art as well as interaction with a prominent cultural institution and professionals working in the field.
Each spring the museum hosts the exhibition Talkin’ Back: Chicago Youth Respond featuring work made by over two hundred youth throughout the city of Chicago who create works combining text and image in workshops led by writers and photographers. Support of Picture Me and the Talkin’ Backexhibition is now made possible through organizations such as the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, whose commitment to education focuses on projects that support youth appreciation and understanding of skills in the arts.
NEW MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM PROVIDES GREAT BENEFITS, NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR PHOTOGRAPHY LOVERS TO SUPPORT MoCP
Whether you are a photographer or an avid connoisseur, you’ll find membership to MoCP a rewarding experience. Enjoy exclusive events that connect you with fellow photography enthusiasts and world-class artists, take field trips around the city and the region, and access the exceptional faculty and facilities of Columbia College Chicago. Members receive a discount on an upcoming digital photography workshop led by acclaimed photographer and MoCP permanent collection artist, Matt Siber (details)… Now is the perfect time to join. Our new membership levels make it easier than ever to get involved!
LEVEL I ($50/household or $20/student only)
* Advanced email announcements and the MoCP newsletter
* 20% off Museum publications
* Discounts at photographic institutions nationwide
* Photography workshops at Columbia College Chicago
* Invitation to exclusive annual field trip with Midwest Photographer’s Project artists
LEVEL II ($100)
* Level I benefits + discounts on annual MPP field trips.
LEVEL III ($250)
* Level II benefits + invitations to private viewings of the MoCP collection led by the curators.
LEVEL IV ($500)
* Level III benefits + invitation to receptions with MoCP curators, artists and fellow photography enthusiasts throughout the year.
DIRECTOR’S CIRCLE ($1,000 and above)
* All the benefits of MoCP membership plus entrance to the President’s Club, Columbia College’s prestigious giving society that engages in several special events throughout the year.
Call us at 312.344.7794 or email MoCP to request a brochure, and become a member today!
Scenes From a Mall: An Interview with MP3 Artist Brian Ulrich
In August of 2006 MoCP will release a trio of books by artists from the Midwest Photographers Project (MPP), a rotating archive established in 1982. MPP is a collection of photographs by both prominent and emerging artists from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The Museum utilizes the images in print viewings, exhibitions, and for the first time, publications. MP3 will include the work of three rising stars, Kelli Connell, Justin Newhall, and Brian Ulrich, and will be published by the Aperture Foundation.
When, in the wake of September 11th, Americans were encouraged to respond by shopping (so as to maintain the nation’s economic stability), Brian Ulrich began documenting consumerism. Shot in malls, grocery stores, and commercial warehouses, Ulrich’s pictures document the bounty of commercial goods available to consumers and the peculiarities of the places that offer them for sale. MoCP web administrator Audrey Michelle Mast conducted this interview with Ulrich in August 2006, and learned about his process, his conceptual considerations, and the monotony of Target.
MoCP: Do you surreptitiously photograph your subjects? Do you get permission to photograph in retail stores?
BU: Most of the pictures in the big box and retail stores are done candidly without any kind of permission. I do this for a number of reasons, most obviously, for making a certain kind of picture where I can capture a specific moment. I also know that in most cases the stores wouldn’t give me permission especially to make pictures that are in some way critical. With that in mind, I do try to make the pictures as beautiful as possible. I’m not really looking to make fun…I am trying to make photographs of a very subliminal and often taken-for-granted situation.
MoCP: How would you describe your process when photographing in public, especially in stores? What has been the reaction, if any, from staff at these establishments?
BU: I use a medium format camera with a waist-level viewfinder so the camera is never to my eye. Finding a setting that is bright enough and works for a background in a picture is the first part. Often waiting for someone to enter into that space, hold still and focus long enough for me to make the picture is another. There is a lot of chance involved, and I like that. It keeps me looking and really slowing down to pay attention. It’s not as dramatic as it seems — often I am simply sitting in one place for a long time, waiting patiently. I have photographed in some for editorial assignments and had permission, but that is a rarity. I very rarely get bothered in the stores, if anything, someone will explain that I can’t be taking pictures in the store. They never ask you to leave because you may buy something! Only in maybe one instance was an employee rude about it, but most often if you sit in one place long enough, you become peripheral.
MoCP: Did your series of photographs in thrift stores arise as a foil to the Copia series? There are the obvious differences of mise en scene, so to speak - big retail stores are sparkling wonderlands in comparison to the dingy disorganization of the thrift. But in your photos where shoppers are present, there’s a similar quality. Natasha Egan [MoCP’s Associate Director] refers to it in her essay about your work for the MP3 book as “capturing people frozen in a trance, somewhere between ecstasy and torpor.” Is “torpor” present in the shoppers in both series? How do the series speak to each other?
BU: I’ve been working on photographs in thrift stores for about 2 years. In the beginning, I tried doing it as I had in the chain stores, candid with the medium format camera. I found that the pictures, while some good didn’t really capture the subtle situations and the amazing mass arrangements of stuff. I began using a 4×5 camera and this resolved things very well, as it yields such rich, detailed and formal pictures. This formalism added an elegance to the strange still lifes, mountains of discards and the portraits of workers and shoppers. With these, I arrange a time or day to come and photograph which allows me access to the backrooms and to take my time working with the view camera.
Chicago, IL, 2004
The thrift stores seemed a logical place to spend time after the Copia pictures. These are the places where all the stuff ends up and the people who have to deal with it. The portraits exhibited in the show are earlier ones which do deal with this similar sense of estrangement. My intentions are to make this state and expression something that is consistent throughout the work. As a visual strategy, it serves as a psychological blankness, eyes are never confronting the viewer, one can easily project what may be the cause of the this puzzled state which becomes the setting. But I also feel this is a contemporary gaze, one possibly representative of our culture as a whole. In the thrift stores, in some ways the only difference is the changing backdrop from the Copia pictures, in others it’s clearly a social and economic class divide…
People are overwhelmed with an endless influx of discards and the responsiblity of salvaging the remnants of a fickle middle and upper class. I’ve met some very amazing dedicated people out there sorting through our throwaways from Chicago to Atlanta to Palm Beach. Many of these people are mission-minded and have a more humanitarian agenda so I don’t have to go to lengths to explain why I find them or their store interesting, it’s usually pretty clear when I’m setting up a large camera on a tripod in front of a two-story pile of clothes.
Las Vegas, NV, 2003
MoCP: Text is often a small but integral focal point of your work. In the Thrift series, “not for sale” is written on a broom in thrift store; in the Copia series, the words “Cash & Redemption” loom above an ATM in a Las Vegas casino; in another photograph, senior citizens roam the condom aisle at Wal-Mart, and their cart bears a sign that reads, “For Our Valued Customers who would like a lift.” In some photos (like the Las Vegas photo) it seems that the text directed your composition; in others text might be a happy accident. How do you work with text?
Elkhart, IN, 2003
BU: This is a great question and one I’ve thought about but not been asked. It really gets down to how I think about making pictures. I look for visual clues all the time while photographing, ones that may either be a surreal/ironic message, “Cash & Redemption” or things more subtle that you’ll notice only when combing the picture like the broom. Some call this little addendum the punctum; that thing which, though not obvious, can really tip the meaning of an image in a specific way. Text is one strategy of doing this. Of course it can’t be the whole picture unless the text is so outrageous you can barely believe it exists, as in “Homeland Security Threat Level Today”. My good friend Matt Siber’s work has done well to teach me how powerful the relationship between text and images is.
Black River Falls, WI, 2006
MoCP: It’s interesting that you bring up the idea of punctum – we like it so much it’s part of the title of our newsletter. It figures prominently in work about popular culture. In Hal Foster’s essay “Death in America”, he claims that the “punctum” in Warhol’s disaster paintings is found in his technique - that it’s not only the repetition, but the slippage of register, the imperfections and blurs, of the silkscreen printing that “allows the real to poke through.” In Copia, text might be the punctum because it grounds the viewer in reality, lending an instantly recognizable quality to an otherwise surreal scene (I think: “oh, they’re at Home Depot”). This seems similar to what Matt Siber does - exposing, in a way, our conditioned familiarity with the fonts, colors and shapes of mass-market brands.
BU: Yes, Matt and I are responding to the current cultural climate. I always find it interesting to think of artists as cultural barometers, they kind of spit back what it is in front of and surrounding us; these can be things seen, unseen, and not wanted to be seen! Warhol is someone who was so aware of himself as one who takes the culture and re-presents it in new context for new understanding/debate. I think that many young artists are making work that deals with this heightened culture climate. These are indeed strange times and to not be affected would be difficult. Matt and I try and consciously tackle these issues head on, in many cases using the same techniques as the commercial advertising world to point out our criticisms. The punctum is something I do actually think about often…in some images it can be text, in the whole project it can be the fact that we know every one of these settings all to well. This is why I title the Copia pictures by place, to point out that it makes no difference really, aisle 5 of Target in Indiana is the same as in Wyoming and so forth.
img alt=”UlrichChicago,IL.gif” src=”http://mocp.org/newsletter/uploads/UlrichChicago%2CIL.gif” width=”225” height=”169” />
Chicago, IL, 2003
Ones to Watch
With Natasha Egan
Associate Director Natasha Egan represented MoCP in May at Review Santa Fe, a three-day conference for photographers seeking wider recognition, sponsored by the Santa Fe Center for Photography. As the only juried portfolio review event in the United States, with up to 100 artists selected to participate in two days of reviews with esteemed curators, editors, art directors, publishers, gallery and agency representatives, Review Santa Fe attracts the best of the best emerging photographers. Here, she shares three of her favorites.
Rachel Papo, from Serial No. 3817131, 2005
Rachel Papo
Rachel Papo’s photographs of young female Israeli soldiers during their mandatory service from age 18 to 20 are a way of revisiting her own experiences as a soldier. Born in Columbus, Ohio but raised in Israel, Papo served in the Israeli Air Force as a photographer from 1988-1990 and titled her current project, Serial No. 3817131, after her own military identification number. Papo’s series investigates the complex emotions, loneliness, identity crises and, as she describes, “abrupt transformation” and “wistful compromise” that arises when teenage girls enter into a masculine, militaristic world and the realities of daily violent conflict.
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Erika Larsen, from The Hunt, 2005
Erika Larsen
Erika Larsen’s most ambitious and acclaimed body of work captures the beauty — and brutality — of one of America’s favorite outdoor sports, hunting. The Hunt, a sixteen-page portfolio published by Field and Stream magazine, was also exhibited at Redux Gallery in New York. Larsen’s intimate, elegant photographs are dramatic document of hunters’ culture, their connection with nature and their role in the cycle of life and death.
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Simon Roberts, from Motherland, 2005
Simon Roberts
Brighton, U.K.-based photojournalist Simon Roberts traveled over 75,000 miles across Russia, the largest country in the world, over the course of two years. His documentary portfolio of his journey, Motherland, is an arresting mixture of sweeping landscapes and revealing portraits of the diverse, resilient Russian people.