digital photography

Lauren E. Simonutti | 1968 – 2012

July 25, 2024

LAUREN E. SIMONUTTI | 1968 – 2012

It is somewhat at a remove, but no less sad, to mourn the passing of a person whose artwork comes into your purview and you find it enticing and uncanny and unsettling in the best way ― and then you find out that they passed some time ago. There won’t be anything more than what is already there, and there is a finality there – even a loss, perhaps, though it’s oddly ‘retroactive’, though that word seems inexact – that adds a further tinge of sadness.

Simonutti passed at the age of 44 : her struggle with schizophrenia ‘consumed her until she was torn from life’ (to quote one of the many online testimonials to her). It was not stated in any of my research whether she took her own life, but the idea that the darkness swallowed her is not an unconsidered one, nor one that I offer without empathy.

A number of Simonutti’s evocative images appeared in my social media feed, and that led me to research a bit more, and become enamoured of her haunting photographs. Perhaps that’s a dangerous word – ‘haunting’ – to use : she passed over a decade ago, and her images still proliferate appropriately, but there’s that notion of what is left behind and lingers…like a ghost. If you believe in such things, that is.

These are powerful images, and have even more to consider in that the artist died so young, and struggled with mental illness. Often, as a critic, I wonder if my words add more or simply distract : when considering writing about her work, this was a concern, and so I thought it best – most appropriate – to present them with the more resonant words of others that engage in a dialogue with the photos, perhaps in unison, perhaps in a contested manner.

I will say very little, but will try to be like Bruno LaTour’s assertions about what an art critic should be, and try to simply offer a bit of direction while not being overt and overbearing….

Simonutti, in speaking of her life and work, was unapologetic and frank about her struggles with mental illness. When I read her words, I was reminded of one of my favourite statements about ‘sanity’ (it comes from G. K. Chesterton, whom I have mixed feelings about, but I became familiar with it from Timothy Findley’s fine book HEADHUNTER – which I cite below – so I feel Findley’s empathy overrides Chesterton’s smug catholic ‘knowing’…) :

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason.
The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

This was where Marlow began the treatment of every patient.

I also thought of Findley’s HEADHUNTER for an exchange between Doctor Marlow and the sister of one of his patients. They’re discussing how Marlow wants Olivia’s permission to discharge her sister Amy, who is an award winning, acclaimed poet but also suffers from bouts of schizophrenia :

Olivia who had been faithful in her visits—and had seen Amy twice a week—said: “But she hasn’t been cured.”
Marlow said: “She will never be cured, Mrs. Price. Never. As a consequence, we have two choices. We can opt for one Amy or another.”
“One or another?”
“One of them—assuming we can adjust her medication successfully—would spend the rest of her life in a drugged condition that would amount, in effect, to sedation. This Amy would have no poems, no birds, no Wormwood [her cat], no other world but the dead world out there now—and she would be incapable of responding to it. It would simply be a landscape through which she moved— deadened, uncaring and uninvolved.”
“And the other Amy?”
“The other Amy would have a minimum of medication. Only enough to reduce the extremities of her anxiety. She would be a slightly less tense version of the Amy we have now.”
Olivia looked from the window. “What would become of her?” she said.
“She could go home to her house—and be with her birds.”
“But—dear God. Doesn’t freedom put her in jeopardy?”
“Not in my view, no,” said Marlow. “It would give Amy back the only life in which she can function—in which she is happy.”
“What about her writing?”
“There is every chance this Amy would continue to produce poetry. After all, the Amy who wrote in the past was very nearly the Amy we have.”

An excerpt of Simonutti’s own insightful and almost painfully self aware words :

This is a visual narrative of an unexpected & devastating situation in which I find myself, which also is relevant to the lives of many others. It’s just not often spoken about.

Madness strips things down to their core. It takes everything, and in exchange offers more madness, and the occasional ability to see things that are not there.

I’ve selected a number of Simonutti’s images below to share, with my ‘speaking in collage’ to accompany them. I have attempted to find a synchronicity between the tableaux the artist has presented, and the titles and words she chose to accompany them.

You can explore those at the main post here.

Robin Claire Fox | Reflections

March 17, 2023

Robin Claire Fox | Reflections
Photography is inherently nostalgic. Every image taken is essentially the capturing of a moment from the past. That moment no longer exists, just the memory of it and an analogue print or a digital impression trapped on an electronic device. Many modern photographers harbour longings for the saturated or contrasty renderings of images made with processes and media (like Kodachrome) long out of use or no longer in production. Quite a few of them try to recreate the look and feel of these processes digitally, running their captures through filters and algorithms to bring back the visual past. While many are overdone (why keep it at 3 when you can dial it up to 10?), there are a few who have mastered the ability to make us believe that we are viewing an image taken decades ago. The evocation of this photographic past is (I believe) an effort to physically reconnect with it in a way that seems familiar, safe and warm… like sitting with your family watching slides projections of photos from a vacation taken years ago.

Ancaster, Ontario’s Robin Fox started taking photographs around the time of the birth of her most recent child as a conscious attempt to document her family’s childhoods for her future self to enjoy. She is a natural at capturing the uncertainties alongside the joys of growing up. A huge fan of Saul Leiter’s colour work, she has found a method of perfectly capturing the deep saturation and contrast Leiter exhibited in his work with Kodachrome and other slide films[1] in the 1950’s. Her images seem imbued with palettes that exist only in the memory of childhood, where everything was so much bigger and the world was awash with primary colours.

Jug Top, Lake Superior | John Healey

June 6, 2022

Jug Top, Lake Superior | John Healey

“Plastic Beach is a set of still life images of plastic refuse discovered along the shores of the Great Lakes and key locations along the St. Lawrence river.

Here, discarded shopping bags, fragments of milk jugs, and crushed bottle caps — among other things — are reanimated to show us the carelessness with which we treat this habitat that is home to millions of creatures.

It reminds us of the cost of convenience, and serves as documentation of the relentless poisoning of the environment and ultimately ourselves.”
– J. Healey

John Healey was born in Toronto and grew up along the St. Lawrence River in Brockville, Ontario. Since 2015 he has devoted himself to lens-based image creation and education. John has just completed an artist in residency and is currently a full-time educator at the School of The Photographic Arts: Ottawa. He lives with his wife Amy, and Arno their Boston terrier.

~ Peppa Martin

Jerusalem floor, 2012 | Larissa Sansour

March 22, 2022

Jerusalem floor, 2012 | Larissa Sansour

Jerusalem floor, 2012 | Larissa Sansour, C-print (23 3/5 × 47 1/5 in / 60 × 120 cm)

On the flight from London I sit opposite a rumble seat where the stewardess places herself during takeoff. The stewardess is an Asian woman with a faraway look. I ask how often she makes this flight. Once or twice a month. Does she enjoy Israel? Not much. She stays in a hotel in Tel Aviv. She goes to the beach. She flies back. What about Jerusalem? She has not been there. What is in Jerusalem?

The illustrated guidebook shows a medieval map of the world. The map is round. The sun has a beard of fire. All the rivers of the world spew from the mouth of the moon. At the center of the world is Jerusalem. (Robert Rodriguez, The God of the Desert, Harper’s Magazine)

One can’t help but be thinking of the displaced, of refugees fleeing strife, with the situation in Eastern Europe right now; and let’s be frank – not all refugees are ‘equal’ with race and geopolitics rearing their ugly heads, as we see in both the history and present of Canada, and the wider world. I’m not often a fan of Ai Weiwei, but his work about Alan Kurdi touched a nerve that many of us may not have known – or my still deny – was exposed.

In light of that unpleasant reality, the works of Larissa Sansour, a Palestinian born artist were on my mind this week, especially her series Nation Estate. Jerusalem is not a neutral place, or an unloaded term. It may be the best example in ‘Western’ nation states – though in the Middle East – of a place that is intensely contested, an apex of Salman Rushdie’s notion of an ‘imaginary homeland.’

Even that tepid taupe of Wikipedia offers this: Given the city’s central position in both Israeli nationalism and Palestinian nationalism, the selectivity required to summarize more than 6,000 years of inhabited history is often influenced by ideological bias or background (please see Historiography and nationalism).

“In her Nation Estate (2012) series, Sansour conceptualizes an immense high-rise as a new home for her people. In each digitally manipulated photograph in this series, she places herself on a different floor of the edifice. We see her travel from the main lobby, to the Dead Sea, to Gaza, all in the space of a single building.”

“….Nation Estate takes place…in a mammoth high-rise that houses the entirety of the Palestinian people in one easy-to-navigate complex. Blurring the lines between utopian and dystopian realities, she paints a seemingly peaceful, albeit unfathomably sterile future where walls cease to function as barriers to human interaction.

“In a way there’s something positive about ‘Nation Estate.’ There are no check points and people can visit one city from another just by the use of the elevators. It’s an easy life that questions progress in general. Certain things are becoming easier, yet this skyscraper environment is completely inorganic,” Sansour stated. “It’s actually really a mockery when you think about it — living in a skyscraper. So it’s completely dystopian in the end.” (from here)

Who is a ‘real’ refugee? Who has a ‘right’ to live in a space, and to claim that they ‘own’ the land? Sansour’s works have often addressed this; we live in a world where to be Palestinian is often dismissed as illegitimate, if even ‘legal’, whatever that might even mean. Perhaps, as alluded to in Sansour’s work, the idea of ownership and wealth not only preclude but define / deform what it means to be a citizen, or even to be human.

In looking at this work, I also cannot help but consider the lament of Psalm 137: For how are we to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

You can see more of her work at her site, and her Instagram is @larissasansour.

~ Bart Gazzola

Karolina Kuras – Romance, Flight and Fluidity – Femme Folks Fest

March 14, 2022

Karolina Kuras Romance, Flight & Fluidity by Mark Walton ~ Karolina Kuras The COVERT Collective is pleased to be participating in Femme... Read More

Discovering Self: The Photography of Vera Saltzman

January 4, 2022

Discovering Self The Photography of Vera Saltzman Grain Elevator No. 18 This article originally featured in the TYPOLOGIES edition of photoED... Read More

ISABELLE HAYEUR: Monograph

November 2, 2021

ISABELLE HAYEUR: Monograph
By Mona Hakim, Peggy Gale, & Ann Thomas
Hardcover, 2020, 360 pages, available from Les éditions Plein sud
Texts in French and English $70 + Shipping

Committed to environmental causes since the 1990s, Isabelle Hayeur takes an acute critical look at the changes in our ecosystems caused by the devastating impacts of massive urbanization and industrialization on our territories.

This monograph, the most exhaustive publication to date on this artist’s work, leads us to the heart of her creative activity. Bringing together numerous visual documents, from her composite photo-graphs to portraits of citizen gatherings and activist groups by way of videos, installations in public spaces, and reflective texts, this richly illustrated book explores the vast production of an artist who has gained recognition in the contemporary art world, in Quebec and internationally. The texts present the reader with enlightened insights into the artist’s various accomplishments.

Read more about this monograph and order it here.

This recommendation appeared in the Fall 2021 – ECO ISSUE of PhotoED Magazine. If you’re looking for more Canadian photography inspiration check out PhotoED Magazine, in print + online https://www.photoed.ca

~ Rita Godlevskis

Forest for the Trees – Rita Leistner

September 16, 2021

Rita Leistner
Forest for the Trees
Dewi Lewis Publishing

Rita Leistner’s latest, Forest for the Trees, is a feature documentary film and a book (published by Dewi Lewis UK), based on Rita’s fine art series The Tree Planters and Enchanted Forests, represented by the Stephen Bulger Gallery.

Rita is an award-winning multi-media artist and documentary filmmaker with a history of using photography and film to create portraits of communities in extreme conditions —such as soldiers in Iraq, female patients at psychiatric hospitals in wartime, and women wrestlers in the United States — exploring themes of purpose, struggle, and belonging.

Forest for the Trees is the story of the vast landscape of clear-cut logging and reforestation as experienced from a community of a hundred tree planters, tree planting by hand in remote locations in Canada.

Planting trees one at a time is the overarching metaphor of how we can achieve things we think are impossible: reforesting the earth one tree at a time, getting through life’s challenges one day at a time, and making a film one picture at a time.

www.forestforthetreesdocumentary.com

~ Rita Godlevskis

Untitled – Jennifer King

August 29, 2021

Jennifer King’s photography has always intrigued me, so much so that I put this photo of hers (above) on the front cover of the first edition of foto:RE|VIEW magazine in 2019. Her work seemed to capture a certain type of childhood perfectly… all its innocence and curiosity, along with its foibles and anxieties.

Jennifer had always taken photographs but found a stronger connection with the medium after the birth of her first child. “The camera became a tool that allowed me to respond to and embrace a new identity that included motherhood. It also became a way for me to discover who my children were.”

King excels at capturing those minute, physical clues that reflect one’s emotional state: a hooded brow, the quiver of a lip, a flash of exasperation, unbridled energy brought on by wonder and adventure.

You can read more about Jennifer’s work with her children in the article BECOMING, found here at foto:RE. You follow her @jencking and contact her HERE. ~ Mark Walton

Untitled, from Joe Martz’s Underpass series

July 15, 2021

Waterloo Ontario based photographer and graphic designer Joe Martz has a strong eye for the architectural. His ability to capture the beauty in the details and structure of buildings and infrastructure we barely notice as we walk by them is powerful. One cannot help but begin to seek them out on one’s own after seeing his work.

A member of the foto:RE collective, Joe seeks the “strong lines, patterns and symetry” of a subject and often tries to find an “abstract perspective to present a different view”.

Joe’s work can be found on Instgram @joemartz and at joemartz.com – Mark Walton

In: digital photography