I have to say though, I wish I wouldn't have gone. This isn't to say that the presentation was bad, he was unpleasant, the work wasn't good or anything like that. What happened was the magician revealed his trick or more specifically his source of inspiration. That tied his work irrevocably to one specific event, and the accompanying imagery of it.
His work is beautiful depictions of, most frequently, solitary individuals interacting with nature in the mass oceanic expanse. The individuals are so small, that even in the massive 16x20" book, they become difficult to distinguish from the surrounding water. The seascape is gorgeous but tinged with uncertainty. The people depicted could either be enjoying a swim or struggling for air. The first time I picked up the book as I leafed through the pages I had a chill run over me. Feeling of frailty and helplessness are definitely prevalent in an element so immense, powerful, and foreign. That said the uncertainty and the chill were my own.
I respect Richard's candidacy during his presentation, or at least the idea of being candid. He talked of having employed digital manipulation for the first time, he shared notes from his journal, and he said what inspired the shots. In this instance knowing his source of inspiration has taken away the subtleties of the foreboding connotations, while not offering insights that the pictures alone didn't have. The images now carry the weight tragedy and horror. The body of work has become iconic of the events preceding it and I will no longer see the one without seeing the other.
1 comment:
Hi there Erik,
I think we are on the same page here for the most part, but when I heard him bring up 9/11 I felt the air go out of my body. Like I said in the post everyone is allowed to own it in their own way but I find it hard to see it in all the work from this book. As someone who works on projects in a similar way, over a long periods of time I find it hard to believe that this was still the driving force for this project, four years after the fact. My gut says was he was torn about the project itself. There are great individual images, haunting, beautiful as you would expect. The quality and the presentation of the book itself is so impressive I almost get weak looking at it but I still believe it doesn’t work that well as a whole and after hearing all the justifications for the manipulation and cropping I can’t help but think he had to make this work no matter what. I don’t care what he does to get the image, and it works, (see Crewdson) but after 40 years to change your whole philosophy for his one project seems a little… frantic. There’s not many people who can spend 3 years and 4000 sheets of film and not have something to show for it. Anyway can’t wait for the next project, just like filmmakers, your not going to love everything somebody does, but there always the next one. Thanks again for the comment, keep in touch
Ber
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