kathrynjeanhamilton's blog

Naomi-art

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:57:18 +0000

Naomi Campbell -- not her career, not her art, but her body -- is the subject of Art Photo Expo's contribution to Miami's art festival, Art Basel Miami Beach, this year.

This photograph, by Seb Janiak, is one of fifty included in the expo. New York Times readers expressed dismay at this bit of news on the Times's fashion blog. "You guys are kidding, right? Why is Naomi Campbell art?" wrote one. It's a fair question. Checking out the images included on the blog, it becomes apparent that Campbell's body is, in fact, art -- or at least that it serves an artistic purpose. This has always been the case for models, women and men who make their livings (and photographers' careers) off of using their bodies for artistic ends, like living sculptures, walking canvases. What might be new about this particular exhibit is its specificity, its focus not on fashion or photography per se, but on one woman's iconic image. Move over, Marilyn?

Save the date!

kathrynjeanhamilton — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:32:54 +0000

Is the cat a nurse? Is the STD it's referring to that sort of STD? What the...

I noticed this postcard on a fridge in a kitchen I was hanging out in recently, and I was intrigued. Someone had riffed on the lolcats meme for their nuptial save-the-date.

The image interested me because it is an instance of an author using a very specific visual and cultural reference for a less specific purpose. How many people over 50 do you think know what lolcats are? Nay, how many people over 50 do you think would even find them funny? And how many people, period, do you think would find a double entendre about an STD delivered by a cat with a Red Cross cap on appropropriate visual fare for a missive delivering news of a wedding? The whole thing tickled my funny bone. Did they send that to their great aunts and uncles?

Poverty as poetry

kathrynjeanhamilton — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:35:11 +0000

On Tuesday, November 18, Slate featured pictures by photographer Jonas Bendiksen in "Today's Pictures."

The blurb about Bendiksen on Slate describes his work: "Between 2005 and 2007, photographer Jonas Bendiksen spent many months in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya; Mumbai, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Caracas, Venezuela, studying the daily lives of their occupants. The neighborhoods pictured in the book and exhibition of the same name (on view at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway) are some of the most densely populated places on earth. Cramped homes, often just a single room, provide little privacy yet contain complete domestic universes—everything a family owns. The book is a collection of voices and reflections on living in the world's fastest-growing human habitats—the slums."

Like much of the best art out there, Bendiksen's photographs find beauty in the forgotten places of the world. His lens transforms an empoverished landscape, like this slum in Mumbai, into a startlingly vibrant patchwork of color. The water pipe running down the center of the photograph provides balance and symmetry; the path the girl follows grows dim in the distance, but the viewer can see it continuing on through the stands and aside the wreckage.

This next photograph, of the Kibera slum in Nairobi, also takes an industrial fixture -- this time not a water pipe, but a railroad -- as its visual focal point. It is nighttime here, but light glimmers off of the wet ground, and passersby with their bright umbrellas provides specks of color against the blue-black night.

Do Bendiksen's photographs exoticize poverty? In turning urban blights into poetic expressions with the help of his camera lens, does the photographer minimize the tragedy of the scenes he's depicting? An alternative point of view would be to say that drawing the Western world's attention to forgotten slums in huge, developing cities in places like Kenya and India is a service, no matter what.

Alcohol ads target Latinos

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:55:43 +0000

A study recently conducted by researchers at UT-Austin and the University of Florida has shown that alcohol advertising is significantly heavier around schools with Hispanic populations of 20% or more.

While this news is troubling in and of itself, I think it bears noting the number of alcohol advertisements that are also targeted at Latino consumers in particular. I see them whenever I drive around town here in Austin -- billboards with beer ads in Spanish, with the colors of the Mexican flag self-consciously employed. For some reason, however, I could only find two on the web (and one of them -- a Tecate ad -- hearkens from 2004). Latinos are comprising a larger and larger portion of the market for all sorts of products, not just booze. Quick and dirty evidence of this is in the preponderance of caramel and dulce de leche flavoring in everything from M&Ms to ice cream. I kid you not: this is the result of Latino-directed sweet market research. Of course one could point to all the alcohol ads aimed at white people -- there are plenty -- but when you couple the findings of this UT/UF study with the marketing effort, the move seems all the more sinister.

Women and politics, then and now

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:29:31 +0000

Visual rhetoric blog "No Caption Needed" featured this doctored photograph in their "Sight Gag" section a few weeks ago.

The bloggers wanted this image, like all images they include in "Sight Gag," to speak for itself, and in many ways it does. The photograph, which appears to date from the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century, pictures women standing outside the White House in cold weather. They are bundled up; we can barely see their faces, but we respect what we understand to be their mission: to communicate a political message. What that message might be we don't know because the joke of the photograph -- the sight gag -- consists of replacing the text on their banners with, "Obama" and "Mr. McCain, America's women have not waited 232 years for Sarah Palin." The text is clear enough. These women aren't alone in feeling that they want more than just a woman in the Vice Presidential office; they want a woman who supports women's issues, a capable leader, someone who's qualified. They want Obama as their president -- even if he isn't a woman.

To me the photograph is poignant because it reaches back into history, juxtaposing the efforts of those first advocates of women's suffrage with the identity politics at stake in the election that just transpired. It makes the argument that the mothers of feminism were after more than just being represented in their capacity as women. It's also worth recalling that in the nineteenth century, advocates of women's equality allied themselves with abolitionists. And for a long time, they focused their energies on ending slavery before turning to the goal of women's suffrage. In fact, it was largely in their capacity as abolitionists that they got political practice, and it was because in many cases they weren't allowed to take leadership roles within that group that they sensed the need to focus more explicitly on women's issues.

So who's to say what women during this period would have thought. It's a clever argument, for sure, but it also brings to mind, for me at least, the disappointment many baby boomer women, those who raised on first-wave feminism, felt when Clinton lost the democratic primary.

Cipher-Obama

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:41:22 +0000

Like Sarah, I've been paying a lot of attention lately to how journalists photograph the two presidential candidates. (And I apologize that this image is so tiny.)

Photographer Damon Winter, for the New York Times, has been following Obama on the campaign trail and generating a wealth of stunning, provocative photographs. When I saw this one on the home page -- it was the first slide in an interactive slideshow that ran on October 24 -- I started thinking about one of the major criticisms of Obama leading up to the Democratic primary.

There were those who said he had no substance, that he was all rhetoric, all hope and change and empty promises. A related criticism was the idea that he was a cipher, a blank screen onto which every American could project whatever she wished.

And aren't those ideas just what this photograph suggests? We can't see Obama's features, but we know his silhouette by now, and in this image it stands out in black against the blue, yellow, and white sky. Devoid of context, Obama's figure seems other-worldly and enigmatic. Blank he is -- all emptiness ready to be filled with the dreams of voters.

Listening to Winter talk about his journey with Obama during this campaign -- he says that he's taken tens of thousands of photographs of the senator -- I get the feeling that he's sympathetic to and probably supportive of Obama's candidacy. Does a photograph like this make a statement, one way or another, about Obama's readiness, his substance? Is that what Winter's thinking about, or does he just want to take a beautiful picture? And does it matter?

You can see an earlier Damon Winter slideshow here.

Obama poster art

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:59:33 +0000

"The Thinker," by gausa

A recent New York Times "Campaign Stops" blog brought my attention to the incredible variety of poster art being produced in support of Obama. The blog post I link to here discusses a few of the images in detail, but it leaves a lot untouched.

At the Design/ers for Obama site, graphic designers submit their pro-Obama poster designs, visitors to the site rate the posters, and anyone can print them out. The group, founded by two seniors at the Rhode Island School of Design, seeks to "bring the spirit of grassroots style organizing and collaboration to poster design." It's visually stunning, interactive, provocative, free -- and also very weird. My thoughts on a few of the posters follow.

This one was a big hit among viewers, garnering a score of 3.3 out of 5 (which seems to be quite high, given the preponderance of 1.4s and 2.1s). It's a beautiful poster, but what bothers me is the way Obama and the American flag bleed into each other. Are metonymic assertions of Obama as nation any more excusable than attacks on his patriotism? Here, Obama's trademark sun on the horizon hovers above his head like a halo, and he has the glow of virtue and the determined look of the anointed on his face. It was just this kind of image that got under my skin so much during the primary race.

"Obama Commemorative," by Changethethought

While most of the posters are pro-Obama in that they tout his accomplishments, character, and potential, some of them are pro-Obama in that they are anti-McCain/Palin. This one didn't get a particularly good score on the site; viewers thought that it went too far in poking fun at the Palins' youngest child, Trig, who has Down Syndrome. What startled me about it before I even noticed the "baby"'s face was the caption. "We don't need another Bushbaby" -- ? Who was our first Bushbaby? And is the reference to "the bush," i.e. wilderness, purposeful? Is Trig a bush baby because he comes from the wilderness of Alaska?

"Bushbaby poster," by ameyer

I found this one eerie, but asking viewers to consider the historical connections between Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama is a powerful move.

"Abraham Obama," by aperryz

Though this one's arresting, I can't help but agree with the comment a viewer left below it: "is he like underwater? in a tank?"

"Hope in Our Reach," by mikewirthart

And then there are some that don't look professional at all.

"Obama Earth," by amypb

But that's the fun of it, it seems -- a democracy of the visual.

"That's so gay."

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:51:18 +0000

A recent series of public service announcements sponsored in part by the Ad Council sends the message that using the word "gay" as an insult is, well, insulting.

The video I've posted here features Hillary Duff, but it's just one of three you can see on television (presumably, though I haven't) and at the "Think Before You Speak" campaign's website. What was interesting to me is that in two of the ads, including the one I posted here, only part of the argument is stated explicitly, but what is perhaps the most political aspect of it is left unstated.

In this ad, for instance, Hillary Duff overhears two teenage girls in a tony boutique discussing a blouse. "Do you like this top?" one asks. "That's so gay," her friend answers. Soon after, Hillary Duff steps in and attempts to educate the pair (and here I'm paraphrasing) by telling them that they shouldn't use the word "gay" when what they mean is "bad." The two shoppers stare at the actor, puzzled, and she explains with this: "What if every time somebody wanted to say something was bad, they said, 'that's so girl wearing a skirt as a top.'" The shopper, who is of course wearing a shirt that looks oddly like a skirt, is abashed.

What's the lesson here? It seems to me that the ad, while well-intentioned, equates the category of "girl wearing a skirt as a top" with "gay." Hillary Duff, herself very trendily attired, counters the girl's ignorance with catty commentary about her clothing choice.

While a second ad on the site pretty much replicates this argument, a voice-over at the end of the third ad (which, again, features pretty much the same plot line) injects a necessary corollary to the dramatization. "Imagine if who you are were used as an insult," it demands. I think this gesture toward the general is necessary to make the political point the PSA's seem to be aiming for. Without it the dramatizations are too narrow, too idiosyncratic, too petty. There's a difference between being a fashion victim and being gay. Wearing a skirt as a shirt isn't who the girl is.

Campaign rhetoric of yore

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:09:20 +0000

During this campaign season it's enlightening to recall a little history.

This was one of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt's 1900 presidential campaign posters for a race they won handily. (McKinley was assassinated in 1901, so it was T.R. who followed through.) Note the parallels to today's political situation. The McKinley ticket is running on its record, which includes industrializing the nation, establishing financial stability, and freeing Cuba from Spanish rule. (You'll note that no reference is made to the Philippines, a less swift, clean, in-and-out kind of imperial project.) The before and after images create a straightforward visual argument about the progress that has been made under Republican rule, and McKinley and Roosevelt's brave-looking visages straddle the center of the poster. Ethos is established via their record, here visually depicted as an undeniable march toward better days. The argument? Vote for us, and we'll keep going forward together.

The issues in the 2008 campaign aren't much different: we're talking job creation, economic prosperity, financial soundness, and the success of our overseas ventures (undertaken, as the poster insists, "for humanity's sake"). But today the Republicans can't fall back on their record to convince voters that they're the safe bet.

Rene Alvarado

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:34:46 +0000

Mexican-American artist Rene Alvarado currently has an exhibit at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts through November 12.

"Madonna and Two Horses"

Is this stuff cool, or what?

"Songbird"

If you go to the artist's website, you can see even more of his fantastic paintings -- and find out more about the artist, whom I'd never heard of before hearing of him on KUT a few days ago. On the website his work gets compared to Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo's, but I see similarities between Alvarado's work and a host of others. You can see the surrealist influence of Dali, without a doubt, and an almost Chagall-like dreaminess. Picasso is there as well. But what Alvarado brings to the table is a specifically Chicano approach to these surrealist landscapes. According to his site, he is concerned largely with the psychology of identity. His parents brought him to the States when he was 7, and it is through his art that Alvarado tells the story of creating a new life in West Texas.

Recurring images in his work are bulls, the sea, and the female form. In some paintings Alvarado seems to be asking us to contemplate the art of display, as his still lifes stare back, accusingly, at the viewer. In another eerie painting, all in red hues, three mysterious bird-like creatures look over the sculpture of a torso -- with a dolphin's head. I chose the two paintings here because they seem to represent two different directions Alvarado takes in his work: abstraction and portraiture. In the first, the Madonna's triangular form occupies most of the canvas, her dark head and halo standing out against the softer pastels. Within those pastels, horses and fish and faces lurk, swimming and whispering and standing alert. The triangle of the Madonna's form intersects with a second, shadow triangle, the base of which is the blue feathers behind the horses' heads. All these triangles -- not to mention the look of the Madonna's head -- bring to mind ancient Mesoamerican civilizations that this Madonna might have been a part of.

The second painting, "Songbird," doesn't beg for the same kind of symbolic unpacking. It's what Alvarado does with color here that's so interesting to me, the play of shade and light that makes the soft grey feathers on the bird stand out so strikingly against the woman's hair. On the right side of the painting we see the faint imprint of a flower shoot.

Alvarado has converted an old church in San Angelo into his studio, blending community, tradition, and functionality in practice as well as in his art. It may be well worth the 4 1/2 hour drive from Austin to see.

Responsibility Project

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:38:26 +0000

Liberty Mutual, the insurance company, is the sponsor of "The Responsibility Project," a multimedia effort to get people to consider what it means to do the right thing. The project was spawned by the overwhelming public response to a Liberty Mutual commercial -- you've probably seen it -- in which a chain of strangers in some urban setting do nice things for each other without recognition. The "nice things" are mostly small acts of courtesy -- we're talking moving a stranger's coffee cup away from the edge of a table so that it doesn't fall off, opening a door, keeping a van from backing into a motorcycle. Not world-changing acts here. Yet the argument of the commercial, apart from "buy Liberty Mutual," is that these chains of small acts of kindness have big results. With Hem's weepy song "Half an Acre" playing in the background and city-dwellers pausing in contemplation of an unexpected kindness, wistful looks in their eyes, the commercial probably elicits a groan from the cynical and a tear from the sentimental. Or, if you're like me, a tear followed by a groan.

That was the seed. The flower is a website with numerous short films exploring the issues of responsibility, obligation, community, and, yes, serendipity. The website reads, "We believe that the more people think and talk about responsibility, and even debate what it means, the more it can affect how we live our daily lives. And perhaps, in this small way, together, we can make the world just a little better." I watched one of the short films, "The Lighthouse," which was all about the way a community comes together to keep the lighthouse lit and prevent a ship from foundering disastrously on the rocky shore. It was sweet. Inspirational. Manipulative?

Now, it's not that I don't think that discussion of these issues is important. It is. And it's not even that I object to pathos-laden appeals to duty. But something about an insurance company sponsoring this discussion really bothers me, probably because these short films, while interesting statements on their own, are being used in the service of promoting Liberty Mutual. "The Responsibility Project" is an ethos-builder for the company. But is that a bad thing? Check out the website; I'm interested to know what others think.

One of these things is not like the others

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:23:24 +0000

This photograph ran in a photo essay accompanying a September 12 The New York Times story about Chile's recent "sexual revolution."

The article chronicles the sexual revolution in one of Latin America's most conservative countries by describing, in titillating specificity, a network of urban partiers among Chile's young elite. The Chilean teens attend gatherings at which making out with as many people as possible is the goal. The power of an image is one of the more significant engines driving Chile's sexual explosion. The teenagers, explains the Times, come together because of the social-networking site Fotolog, on which they post provocative photographs of themselves and engage in digital flirtations with their peers. In its online version, the Times ran a photo essay along with the article. Predictably, most of the pictures were somewhat lurid and voyeuristic: close-up shots of writhing teenage bodies, hands, tongues, bellies, legs. This last one, though, was what caught my eye. The photograph provides a visual counterpoint to the liveliness and, one could say, hedonism of the others. A young girl sits in what looks like a kind of antechamber. The room is bathed in red light, and Beethoven looks over her, forebodingly, from the wall behind her. The girl is sitting alone on a couch. Is she stunned? Scared? And what's going on with that floating male head on the right? The red, black, and gold tones, combined with the austere framing of the photograph, create a frightening, almost Gothic, image. A frightened woman awaits her fate. Though the text of the article does not take a stated position on the explosion of teenage sexual activity in Chile, could this photograph be functioning as a kind of warning? And what might it suggest about the dangers of unleashing female sexuality, specifically?