john
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 13:02:06 -0700
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Subject: WOID #XIV- 46. Rage, embedded
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WOID #XIV- 46. Rage, embedded
The War In Iraq: Year 4 - Day 1
PhotoGraphic Gallery
252 Front Street,
New York, 10038
Wed-Sat. 2-9 Sun 12-7
www.photographicnyc.com
Through April 30
"Najaf, August 21, 2004." An Iraqi man carries his child with one hand
and holds up the other hand, fingers spread. The air is so sharp it
looks as if his fingers are reaching for an electric wire in the sky.
I've seen this before, in a painting by El Greco: there's a man in the
foreground with one hand extended, palm up, so that a figure in the
background of the painting seems to be a tiny dancer released from his
hand. It's unreal, of course, with that particular sharpness that says
this can't be happening - not in our world. As it happens the Iraqi man
is extending his hand to show potential snipers he's not holding any
weapons. He's holding his child.
"The War in Iraq: Year 4 Day 1" is full of these traditional formal
devices: a curtain of deep smoke flattens out the center of an image,
what's left after a car bomb burst outside a school in Baghdad. A
solitary figure stands in the foreground of another picture while the
background is articulated with a mathematical precision worthy of
Renaissance geometry. The four photographers in this show worked
unembedded in Iraq. All share an aesthetic of sharp, saturated colors
and contrasts, a deliberation and formal perfectionism which, like the
hard-edged thought of El Greco, only serve to underline the dream-like
irrationality of the scenes shown. The traditional purpose of a
photograph is to tell you what it's like to be there. You cannot begin
to imagine what it's like, these photos say.
The philosopher Theodor Adorno believed that art was most revolutionary,
not when it shouted its demands but when, with all the devices at its
disposal, it embedded within itself, in color, line, and symbolism the
hideous contradictions that art itself demanded be abolished. The four
photographers in this show, Kael Alford, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Thorne
Anderson and Rita Leistner, have seized the potential of documentary
photography and wielded it in a fashion that because it is so deadly,
cries out for the opposite of death.
- Wölfflin Jack
http://theorangepress.com
WOID: a journal of visual language
Dr. John M. Bennett
Curator, Avant Writing Collection
Rare Books & Manuscripts Library
The Ohio State University Libraries
1858 Neil Av Mall
Columbus, OH 43210 USA
(614) 292-3029
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.johnmbennett.net
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