Some photographers use the camera as a tool for self-expression. Others attempt to spurn subjectivity in favor of photography's apparent ability to objectively record the objects and events of the world. Those who know photography's ways however, know that the eye of a photographer is no freer than the hand of a painter or sculptor. Some photographers, and Ari Salomon is among these, skirt the artificial distinction between subjective and objective uses of photography by concentrating on camera vision. Cameras can see things that human eyes cannot. The very large, small, fast and slow - things we may "see" but usually cannot perceive - can show up in a photograph and show us a different, non-human vision of the world: camera vision.
Salomon shot Motion Study #8848 (The Red Line) in the New York subway "from a moving express train as it sped through a station." He calls it "The Red Line" partially because he is not sure which of the Red Line trains he was riding at the time, and partially because: "It refers to the abstract lines of the image. Like all the images in this series, it's a cityscape that captures the qualities of light that our eyes see but we don't notice." Chance is inherent in this project, and a further element of chance is introduced in the numerical part of the title, #8848, which refers simply to "the sequential number the camera assigned this image."
Salomon's work is formally cohesive within each series, but between series formal similarities give way to difference. They don't look alike. 18 Rue Dugommier: Reginka Cukierman Struzevska is a documentary series shot in the Paris apartment that his Polish great aunt lived in for thirty years. The compositions are in a still life genre, are all photographed as found, with no rearranging of the elements. They picture the mundane objects of one woman's everyday life: clothing, food, medicine, light bulbs, towels, wallpaper and soap. Salomon describes this work as the "layered compulsions of classification and arrangement. The natural accumulations that come from living in one’s home and living in one’s body. A spatial history of tchotchkes as well as living essentials."
In the whimsical Interface, he pictures mechanical objects that hint at human faces. He says: "I find in these objects a reflection of the people that anonymously build the cities around us; that anonymously roam the cities around us. Using fresh eyes, I can find fresh eyes winking back at me from surprising places." On the formal differences between his series, he notes that while they "vary widely from one series to another, a common theme throughout is an investigation into the nature of human perception and how photomechanical reproduction can help us see the familiar in a new light."
Or, in a word or two: Camera Vision.
Ari Salomon and Andy Vogt
SFMOMA Minna & Natoma Street Windows
February 13 – June 26, 2010
RECEPTION: Sat., February 20, 4-7pm
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