Slightly Lucid

Bill Diodato – Care of Ward 81

Aislinn Leggett — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:16:16 +0000

If you go to Bill Diodato‘s website you will be surprised to only see a commercial body of work. But there is a small selection of this series that can be found on his blog and even better the entire series is published in his first book titled Care of Ward 81. In this particular work, Diodato photographed a mental hospital where Ward 81 was a psychiatric ward for women. The lovely colours and textures of these images counter balance the desolation that resonates through his series.

Helen Flanagan – No Strings Attached

Aislinn Leggett — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:36:29 +0000

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, while I was away I received some interesting emails. One of them being from Helen Flanagan introducing me to her work and new series No Strings Attached. Flanagan describes her project to document an online world that revolves around sex. It looks deeper at current issues such as technology, modern human relations and sexuality by talking and photographing willing people whom use adult dating and swinging Internet websites. Contact would rely solely on web based interaction and as a result initial encounters were based upon the models profiles made up of personalized text and self-chosen imagery.

I find this series really interesting because these people are used to revealing a very intimate side to strangers but Flanagan seems to capture a more melancholic nature or a softer side that they might not normally reveal on first encounters. But then again, I don’t know much about interent dating…

Shirin Neshat – Women Without Men

Aislinn Leggett — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:46:45 +0000

When I first moved to Montreal, more than 10 years now, one of my first exhibits I remember going to was Shirin Neshat‘s retrospective exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in Montreal. It was Wednesday free night at the museum and it was packed but Neshat’s work was just so incredibly striking that sitting on the floor watching Rapture, I was momentarily lost, alone and captivated in her work. That exhibit, the memory of how I felt watching her work has stayed with me all this time and Neshat remains a very favorite artist of mine.

A couple of months ago Neshat’s first feature film Women Without Men, based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel, was screened at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. She was even there for an introduction to her film and a Q&A after the movie. After viewing the film, on my way home, I sat down and wrote some notes about the film and I’m happy I did (because now I can share this little bit with you!). Neshat introduced her film as a magical surreal genre and told the audience (I’m quoting her as close as I remembered that night) “Imagine your grandmother telling you stories, where things don’t make sense but because it’s your grandmother you believe her. Imagine me as your grandmother.”

The film was beautiful. The imagery, the story, the characters, the light, the entirety of the movie was incredibly compelling and moving. Scenes are still lodged in my head, like Zarin planting paper flowers or Faezeh digging Munis from her grave and unveiling her face and the forest where the women find refuge. How I had felt some 10 years ago at my first introduction to Neshat’s work, in awe and visually enlightened, happened again while sitting in a small theatre.

Here is the official trailer of the movie. If this plays near you don’t pass up the opportunity to see it.

Hiatus stunt is over

Aislinn Leggett — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:39:10 +0000

Well, let’s see….has it been that long? Uuh, yes!

This summer has panned out to be a busy one. No real excuses not to have been posting, I guess a break sort of happened. But things should start getting back on track now. While on this hiatus stunt I also did a lot less computer time, which I got time off from other blogs and emails. So I’m doing catch up and there’s so much interesting work to look at, which is great.

For the past couple of months I was teaching teenagers at F/Start, a photography camp in Montreal, where I enjoyed my time with the kids and my co-workers Kate Hutchinson and Roxanne Ross. I also got to take a vacation out West. We stayed a short time in Vancouver, then drove around the province down to the Okanagan for my cousin’s beautiful wedding and from there headed south to San Francisco. It was an awesome trip. San Francisco has some serious vibe going on, I wish we could have spent a couple more nights! But I did get the chance to catch the New Topographic exhibit at SFMOMA, which was really exciting. The exhibit was probably one of my highlights of the trip, along with hearing rattle snakes (for a first time) at a look out point in Washington and finding a town named Leggett in California. – If you’re interested, I’ve started posting a couple of images from the trip on my personal blog.

For my personal work, I was in Toronto at the beginning of July for the opening night of Proof 17 at Gallery 44, where I exhibited images from my series Lost Faces along with artists Roger Proulx, Christophe Jivraj, Meryl McMaster and Karen Zalamea. And will probably be returning to the city this fall to check out the Magenta Flash Forward Festival, which I was selected as an honorable mention for this years Flash Forward. Lost Faces also made it’s way to Arles France for the Voies Off Festival, which the entire series was projected as a curated group show titled For Intérieur by Michel Poivert.

Now back, settled and happy, Slightly Lucid will be returning to normal posting on Monday. Till then have a good weekend and please, if you have anything to share like new work, interesting articles, news, books or exhibits let me know, send me an email or even a post card if you’d like!

Searching for the wrong-eyed jesus

Louis Perreault — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:18:39 +0000

Representing a place may certainly be more than simply showing physical space. How does one goes about representing a specific area of the world has been the challenge of countless artists, including photographers and in the case that interests me today, film makers.

Searching for the wrong-eyed jesus sets out to create a portrait of the American South, one colored by religion, music, history, stories, folk tales and characters of various sorts. Director Andrew Douglas presents a documentary film about “the soul of the south”, a provocative journey through small towns and rural southern villages, following musician and songwriter Jim White in a musical (and very photographic) return to the roots of a place that has influenced a whole cultural mythology.

In the midst of this somewhat bizarre and destabilising journey, one can be sure to encounter music and images, both so convincing that one may just end up buying the soundtrack and start to think more serioulsly about the task of the artist in representing places of this kind. Searching for the wrong-eyed jesus is a very aestheticizing essay on the south and while being incredibely convincing and seducing, one can wonder if it relies more on myths than on the real… How does one go about to do such a thing ? When does one’s subjectivity become an obstacle of fair representation? Photography has certainly faced this problem once or twice, don’t you think ?

Searching for the wrong-eyed jesus certainly succeeded in multiplying and layering how we can read the south, making it complex and incomplete at the same time. But in its very incompleteness, I think, the film allows the viewer to understand the intrinsic subjective nature of reprensenting places and the inevitable inadequacy of any medium when it comes to really, really, translating a place into its reprensentation.

Zhao Renhui – Facings

Aislinn Leggett — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:39:30 +0000

I found Zhao Renhui‘s work through the Magenta Flash Forward winners. This series Facings on hyper-reality, is an ongoing series and there’s no statement, so I’m speculating, but I believe that all the images were taken in a zoo of some sort in Spain. This work is quite intriguing to me because typical zoo images show the animals within the caged space, with Renhui’s work he simply shows empty or animal-less environments. They become seemingly odd where they feel like they are half lived in or have some sort of presence but they still look very fake and uninviting.

Celia Perrin Sidarous – The Book of Things

Aislinn Leggett — Thu, 20 May 2010 16:30:04 +0000

This is Celia Perrin Sidarous‘ series The Book of Things. Sidarous is a Montreal photographer, who I have met only once or twice. From the Magenta Flash Forward winners list, announced yesterday, I saw that she was one of the many Montrealers that had been selected. I visited her site and was happy to discover some of her new work. Sidarous creates beautiful and sensitive imagery, be sure to check out more of her work.

Amélie Desjardins – Murs et Murmures

Aislinn Leggett — Tue, 18 May 2010 01:47:40 +0000

I came across Amelie Dejardins‘ work while she was exhibiting at SAS Gallery in Montreal a couple years back. I tried to find her website then but at the time she didn’t have one. Recently I came across her work again. I tried to find a website and this time there was one. So I thought I would share her series Murs et Murmures with you today.

From reading Desjardins’ artist statement, she explains that her work is initiated through photography. The images she chooses to work with are put on to wood and/or plaster and then works with mixed media to produce her pieces. The final works reveal beautiful colour palettes and textures. Her work is really interesting to see up close.

Vidisha Saini – Pratibimb

Aislinn Leggett — Tue, 11 May 2010 16:05:28 +0000

There is something really interesting about Vidisha Saini‘s series Pratibimb. Saini explained her series through an email to me and I’m happy that I had this background information to properly grasp and appreciate her project. Here is an excerpt of Saini’s statement : ”‘Behrupiyas’ are costumed performers changing looks every forty-two days; and transforming their mannerism according to the garb and character they adorn. They are a cluster of lower caste communities in India who are nomadic in nature. Under the patronage of monarch they provided their services as messengers to another kingdom; today, they perform on streets, and collect alms door to door.”

I really enjoy how the people seem to be preforming for the camera and in turn lets us be the spectators.

Maury Gortemiller – All-Time Lotion

Aislinn Leggett — Fri, 07 May 2010 18:14:58 +0000

I recently received some work from Maury Gortemiller from his series All-Time Lotion. And as he writes in his statement, he is “interested in reinterpreting and altering the intentionality of spaces and found items”.

Gortemiller is based in North Carolina and with this series he captures the everyday, focuses on details and also conveys through this work a sort of organized randomness where the images really play off of one another. His images make me wonder what was happening right before the photograph was taken, what was happening in the rest of the space and what happened immediately after. I think one of the reasons why Gortemiller’s series intrigued me, was because of this questioning and how the images evoke the aspect of duration and time within the space photographed.