Portraiture
Narrativity/Stasis
Narrativity:
~Sustain a readable discourse
~duration, movement and sense of plurality
~inherent embrace of duration, of time (historical consciousness)
Stasis:
~opposed to narrativity
~petrifaction of motion (freezing of time)
~instead of plurality (fixed or receptive motif)
~refusal of duration (anti historical)
Julie Blackmon, Girl Across the Street (2008) Shows Narrativity, The viewer witness an act showing a Readable discourse, Movement. Her work depicts her children engrossed in reality and fantasy narratives of their lives.
Jeffrey Wolin, Nguyen Vin Luc (2008) Shows both Narrativity and Stasis, Jeffs work is inserting to look at after completing this weeks reading, because of the literal narrative that is included in the portrait. Weather the viewer interprets the portrait has narrativity or stasis, Jeff inclusion of text in the image gives it a narrative (In his earlier work the text is hand written over the images)
Josephine Sacabo, La Jaula I (The Birdcage) (2005) Shows only Stasis, This image was choses for its lack of a narrative, however it has me second guessing that it could have a narrative. While the image does not have or hint at motion, its frozen in time it does have a historical element. So does this portrait have Stasis (at first glance) or narrativity or both?
1 comment:
I remember you mentioning Jeffrey Wolin in class last week and saw your example of his work. I'm wondering what kind of conversation can occur over the fact that he has writing with his photographs. If it is written on the photograph or on the negative, does the writing count as a second element or is it part of the photograph? Also then, how does a photograph of text compare to Wolin's photographs? Are we seeing a photograph of text or just a photograph? Or even more intriguing, are we seeing just text and no photograph? I've always found it difficult to read a photograph that includes text without reading far into the text itself. It seems as though one must be very careful when photographing text, as the viewer's eyes are drawn to it more so than anything else in the photograph unless it isn't legible. Maybe Wolin has found a cure for this hypnotizing effect text has in a photograph. Handwriting, as we see in the example you've posted, maybe turn the viewer off, having a more difficult time reading it than reading, say, a road sign. This might allow for the viewer to look at the person in the photograph and the text with equal interest.
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