A Christmas present to myself… my most complex and enigmatic sequence to date.
Shot in Japan, all of the images come from two 1950s photography albums, one of which has a large drawing of a USAF bomber on it’s cover. The images were almost lost they were so dirty, scratched and deteriorated. It has taken me four long years to scan, digitally clean and restore the images, heightening the colour already present in the original photographs.
Sometimes the work flowed, sometimes it was like pulling teeth. Many times I nearly gave up, asking myself why I was spending my life cleaning dirt and scratches from these images. The only answer is… that I wanted to use these images so that they told a different story.
Then to sequence the work in such a way that there is an enigmatic quality, a mystery in that narrative journey. Part auteur, part cinema – a poem to the uncertainty of human dreams.
Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a digital colour 16″ x 20″ costs $1000 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my Store web page.
A selection of individual images from the sequence
Hand, clock, motel, scream, bird, body, river, stairs, hand.
Latent = (of a quality or state) existing but not yet developed or manifest; hidden or concealed.
Unresolved. Interchangeable.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“This exhibition features multipart photographic works by four contemporary artists: William Leavitt, Liza Ryan, Fazal Sheikh, and Whitney Hubbs. Juxtaposing images of people, places, and things, the works present fragmentary, enigmatic narratives that nonetheless establish a powerful, almost palpable atmosphere or mood. When sequenced by the artist in a specific order, the images recall storyboards used for motion pictures. When excerpted from a larger series, they suggest a stream-of-consciousness meditation on a theme.
By providing the visual cues or markers of stories still to be played out, these photographs encourage visitors to participate in completing the narratives. On view for the first time at the Getty, all the works in the exhibition are recent acquisitions drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection. Several were donated or purchased with funds provided by our donors, whom we would like to thank for their generosity.”
Based in Los Angeles, Leavitt is closely tied to West Coast Conceptualism, and frequently references L.A.’s entertainment industry and vernacular culture in his work, which includes performance, installation, sculpture, painting, and photography. Spectral Analysis (1977) is a triptych of photographs based on his one-act play of the same name, which featured a man and woman in conversation within a set furnished with a starburst light fixture, a sofa, a side table with a portable television, and a long beige curtain into which a rainbow of colour is projected. The four photographs of Innuendo (1995) depict the lobby of an apartment building, a painting of a fountain, a painting of a motel in East L.A., and a circular UFO-like construction made of PVC pipe. These images provide the loose structure of a narrative that moves unseen actors from one location to the next, suggesting the atmosphere of film noir.
Working primarily in photography and video, Ryan often incorporates references from literature, poetry, and film to introduce additional layers of meaning. By cutting, collaging, and grouping her photographs and installing them in a manner that borrows from sculpture, she establishes evocative associative relationships between multiple images. Measuring thirty feet in length, Spill (2009) is a running band of cinematic narrative that alternates images of the human body and nature. Ryan poured India ink onto the surface of the prints, coaxing the pigment into a continuous, organic line that links the 23 frames as it wends its way from a primal scream at far left to an intimate touch at right.
A painting of a motel in East Los Angeles. A primal scream. A funeral bier. A woman crouching in a bed of shrubs. These ambiguous images are each components within larger photographic works that juxtapose images of people, places, and things to present fragmentary, enigmatic narratives. Recent Acquisitions in Focus: Latent Narratives, on view September 13, 2016 – January 29, 2017 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, presents works by contemporary artists William Leavitt (American, born 1941), Liza Ryan (American, born 1965), Fazal Sheikh (American, born 1964), and Whitney Hubbs (American, born 1977). By providing the visual cues or markers of stories still to be played out, the works in the exhibition establish a powerful atmosphere and mood, and encourage viewers to take part in completing the narrative. On view at the Getty Museum for the first time since acquired, many of the works in the exhibition were donated or purchased with funds provided by donors.
“The Museum’s ‘In Focus’ gallery has generally been used to provide a thematic cross section of our photographs collection. This exhibition represents a slight departure in that it covers several recent acquisitions by artists of different generations, all of whom share an interest in telling stories with pictures,” explains Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “These works are mostly non-linear narratives that require close attention to symbolism, mood, and seemingly insignificant details that create an overall story. In much the same way as pieces of a puzzle create a complete image, these multi-part works are reminiscent of storyboards used in motion pictures to provide an outline of a visual narrative that still needs to be played out.”
Fazal Sheikh is best-known for documenting displaced communities all over the world. Executed in black and white with a large-format camera, his photographs typically portray the victims of human rights violations and social injustices, serving as a call to action. For the series Ether (2008-2011), Sheikh traveled to Varanasi (also known as Benares, Banaras, or Kashi), a city located on the banks of the Ganges River in northern India. Hindu pilgrims bring their deceased to this holy site for cremation, believing that the soul will ascend to heaven and be freed from the eternal cycle of reincarnation. Rendered in luminous, jewel-like tones, these photographs (his first images in colour) highlight the vulnerability of subjects captured in the still of night or during early morning hours. Excerpted from the larger series, the four images presented – a sleeping man, sleeping dogs, a funeral bier, and burning embers – suggest the narrative progression of a pilgrimage. Collectively they can be seen as a meditation on the cyclical nature of life, as well as on the universal yet elusive experience of dreams.
Hubbs’s installations of richly detailed gelatin silver prints in various sizes create lyrical but ambiguous juxtapositions. Citing music as an important influence, Hubbs is more interested in establishing a mood than in conveying a clear-cut narrative. The five images in the exhibition – a rock formation, a building entry, a set of stairs, a woman crouching in a bed of shrubs, and a baby lying on a blanket – are taken from the series The Song Itself Is Already a Skip (2012). The title of the work was inspired by a passage of text by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) that discusses the oscillation between order and chaos. The deep blacks of Hubbs’s meticulously printed photographs lend ominous overtones to her dreamlike imagery.
“The idea of a latent narrative is particularly pertinent to photographic images, which remain invisible to us between the moment of exposure and the moment of development,” says Virginia Heckert, head of the Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs and curator of the exhibition. “As much as we might want to know what the artist intended by bringing together diverse images, it is equally interesting to see how viewers interpret the relationship between images and bring to life their own narratives.”
Many thankx to Fenna Lampe and the Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam for allowing me to publish the photographs in the post. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
a shimmer of possibility is the latest project by influential British photographer Paul Graham. This work was created during Graham’s many travels through the United States since 2002. a shimmer of possibility consists of twelve sequences varying in number: from just a few images to more than ten. Each sequence offers an informal look at the life of ordinary, individual Americans – from a woman eating to a man waiting for the bus. The sequences focus attention on very ordinary things, which Graham has photographed with affection and curiosity.
Each sequence is a short, casual encounter, where we consider for a moment something that attracts our attention. Then life goes on, full of new possibilities. The way Graham presents the diverse sequences in the exhibition is crucial. Instead of being shown in a linear fashion, a sequence fans out over the wall like a cloud. Due to the carefully considered and inventive structure, no viewing direction or predominant hierarchy is imposed on the individual images. The eye of the viewer wanders over the photos, offering the opportunity to make personal connections in an associative manner.
a shimmer of possibility can be seen as the ultimate antithesis of what Henri Cartier-Bresson called ‘the decisive moment’. This French master endeavoured to record exactly those moments where subject matter and formal aspects combined perfectly in a single image. Paul Graham, by contrast, defends how we normally look around us. We move through the world and look from left to right, see something that grabs our attention, move towards it, glance to the side while en route, pass that by and continue on our way. Observation is a never-ending series of ‘non-decisive moments’, full of potential for anyone who is open to see it.”
Text from the Foam website [Online] Cited 06/06/2010 no longer available online
Graham walked the streets of residential neighbourhoods in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana, and the sidewalks of New Orleans, Las Vegas, and New York, and when he encountered someone who caught his eye, he photographed them: an older woman retrieving her mail; a young man and woman playing basketball at dusk; a couple returning from the supermarket. Graham followed people navigating their way through crowded city sidewalks, and tracked and photographed lone figures crossing a busy roadway, unaware of the camera.
Reviewing several trips’ worth of photographs on the large, flat screen of his computer, Graham realised that the more or less randomly gathered pictures could be united into multipart works. As in a poem, where language and rhythm organise words, lines, and stanzas into an imaginative interpretation of a subject, Graham’s imposed yet open-ended structures imply – through close-ups, crosscutting, and juxtapositions of people and nature-specific narratives and overarching ideas. Images of people placed in tandem with other people and with nature suggest the flow of life, pointing to the unknown and the possibility of change, with nature acting as a balm, whether as raindrops, trees silhouetted against a burning sunset, or the bright green grass on a highway meridian.
In his reconstruction of the world in pictures, Graham describes an America at odds with itself, filled with contradictions and inconsistencies. Yet, through the gloom, the small felicities of life peek through. Fluid, filled with desire, and marked by extremes, his view is what the late curator, critic, and photographer John Szarkowski called, in another context, a “just metaphor” for our times.
Inspired by Chekhov’s short stories – and by his own contagious joy in the book form – photographer Paul Graham has created A Shimmer of Possibility, comprised of 12 individual books, each a photographic short story of everyday life. Some are simple and linear – a man smokes a cigarette while he waits for a bus in Las Vegas, or the camera tracks an autumn walk in Boston. Some entwine two, three or four scenes – while a couple carry their shopping home in Texas, a small child dances with a plastic bag in a garden. Some watch a quiet narrative break unexpectedly into a sublime moment – as a man cuts the grass in Pittsburgh it begins to rain, until the low sun breaks through and illuminates each drop. Graham’s filmic haikus shun any forceful summation or tidy packaging. Instead, they create the impression of life flowing around and past us while we stand and stare, and make it hard not to share the artist’s quiet astonishment with its beauty and grace. The 12 books gathered here are identical in trim size, but vary in length from just a single photograph to 60 pages of images made at one street corner.
Text from the Mack website [Online] Cited 14/08/2019
a shimmer of possibility by Paul Graham 12 volumes 376 pages, 167 colour plates 24.2 cm x 31.8 cm 12 cloth covered hardbacks Limited edition of 1,000 sets MACK ISBN: 9783865214836 Publication date: October 2007
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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