LAND/ART NM Exhibitions & Lectures at 516 Arts in Albuquerque

Grasslands

October 3–December 12, 2009 at 516 Arts

Grasslands is a photographic series by Michael P. Berman about the Chihuahuan Desert grasslands in New Mexico, Texas and the northern border of Mexico, where he has wandered into the desert without a compass to, in his words, “live deliberately.” He believes that how you see the land comes down to what you value. “I believe art has a greater potential for meaning when it serves some purpose. People have started to recognize these lands as significant and this is something art can help along. If anything my work is to generate small symbols that reveal the greater complexity of things.” This exhibition is presented together with Separating Species, both curated by Mary Anne Redding, Curator of Photography, Palace of the Governors, New Mexico History Museum. The exhibition catalog for Grasslands and Separating Speciesis published by Radius Books, including essays by William deBuys, Rebecca Solnit and Mary Anne Redding. Available from 516 ARTS, Radius Books, and select bookstores nationwide.

Separating Species

October 3–December 12, 2009 at 516 Arts

Concurrent with Grasslands, the Separating Species exhibition features artists focusing on animals, humans, the biosphere and the U.S. Mexico border, including photographers Krista Elrick, Dana Fritz, David Taylor and Jo Whaley. Curator Mary Anne Redding recounts an essay by Terry Tempest Williams, In the Shadow of Extinction, about the destruction of prairie dogs on the Navajo Reservation. The Navajo elders objected, insisting that if you kill all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain. Redding says, “all things are intertwined: the rain, prairie dogs, folklorists, environmentalists, writers, academics, even those in the government.” Grasslands and Separating Species look at these disappearing desert grasslands and the animals that are affected when ecosystems, both in the desert and elsewhere, are destroyed: “no one is left to cry for the rain.”

Ed Ranney Exhibition and Talk in Albuquerque

Ed Ranney and Charles Ross (creator of Star Axis) will talk about their years of collaboration around the project, Star Axis. The talk will take place at the Albuquerque Museum on Sunday, August 30 at 1pm.

The talk is part of the show "The Shape of Time: Photographs of Star Axis by Edward Ranney, 1979 – 2009" and it runs from June 28 - September 20, 2009

More details at http://www.cabq.gov/museum

About the show:
Edward Ranney has photographed the growth of the earth-sculpture Star Axis since 1979, when Charles Ross began excavation of the southern edge of Chupinas Mesa, near Las Vegas, New Mexico, for the construction of the site’s eleven story Star Tunnel. The large-format photographs Ranney has taken each year since then reveal a major site growing out of its own rubble. For Ranney, with his extensive experience photographing pre-Columbian sites of ancient America, this process might be described as a kind of visual archaeology in reverse. Inherent in a project spanning a generation are visual observations of the power of a specific site as it grows and changes over time, as well as a poetic sense of the changing shape of time itself. Here photographic documentation speaks not only of architectural construction, but also of process and duration, intuition and aspiration, and a shared desire to understand cosmic phenomena on a human scale.

The exhibition is part of Land/Art NM.

Alec Soth is Mean-Spirited?

I attended a lecture a few nights ago at University of New Mexico where Alec Soth was the featured speaker. During the course of the lecture, Alec discussed his work and also brought up a variety of interesting topics directly and indirectly connected with his work. At one point, he said that one fellow Magnum photographer, who I will not mention here, viewed his work as mean-spirited. He left this description with very little detail in the beginning, but when he reached a particular image, he said this is the one that sparked the comment.

The image in question, Michele and James 2004, from the Niagara series is one of a middle aged white couple sitting nude on a burgundy sofa with burgundy carpet below their naked toes. She is guarded with one leg and arm reaching across her body resting on her lover and covering all of her intimated parts. The man lovingly places his arm on her lower back as she rests upon his chest and gazes down to the floor. She is bleached blonde, tan, and full-bodied. Her partner is large, redheaded and pale with a few visible sores on his lower torso. His penis rests between his large legs. He softly stares into the camera with a very receptive and unsuspicious tilt of his head. He emits a sense of pride in his partner and himself visible with his posture.

This delicated and intimate moment usually shared only between couples is now presented to the world. Alec states that portraiture is more of a photo of the space between the one how resides behind the camera and the subject in front. Photographers are agressive beings by nature: we shoot and we take. Can we take at will without any thought of the ramifications? Where does the responsibility of the photographer end and the responsibility of the sitter begin? Is the photographer ultimatley responsible for what contemporary society, and ultimately posterity, will think of the work? How can you control how your audience will perceive your photographic intent and should you even bother?

In a post lecture conversation totally unrelated to the topic mentioned above, Alec mentioned that there was a Little House on the Prairie that he had recently seen with a dwarf named Lou (who also happened to be a circus performer). Although it might have been perceived by some at the time of airing in October of 1982 to be acceptable, it is not so kosher in 2009. The producers of this episode were responding to the contemporary society. The photographer who commented on Alec's image is of another generation and is responding to the work according to his own set of values. Just speculating (and maybe defending), as I do not know if this particular photo sparked the comment or just exaserbated the perception of his work as a whole, but maybe the labeling of "mean-spirited" by the unmentioned photographer shows a certain acceptable predjudice in society today. Not all will look at this photo in this light and who knows how the future generations will judge his intent.

Going to See Alec Soth Tonight in Albuquerque

Alec Soth will be speaking on the campus of the University of New Mexico at 5:30 pm February 19th in the George Pearl Hall auditorium (the new architecture building across the street from Frontier Restaurant.)

The lecture is part of the Robert Heinecken Memorial Lecture Series.