Ok...Ok...I know that most of those reading this blog are totally un-interested in the details of an advertising photo shoot, as detailed below. Correct? To you, I apologize. But...I do think it's important to be honest about how I make a living: book and print sales from Sex Machines and my current project Weird Photographs of My Kid really do not pay the bills.
Earlier in the week I asked some of the blog readers to share with us photographers who were working with children in an interesting way. The one who has really taken my breath away is Wendy McMurdo. I found this analysis of her work on the web that I thought was right on:
Wendy McMurdo works with traditional photography and computer technology to produce pictures of children who seem slightly 'out of this world'. Her images exist somewhere between fact and fiction. Like the work of American documentary photographer, Helen Levitt, these photographs represent moments of play or reverie where the children are isolated from the world of grown-ups. But they are not simply the documentation of a child's world. Many have the formal look of a dramatic set piece and hark back to historical portrait painting conventions. In addition, McMurdo uses digital techniques to manipulate the image, deliberately removing or emphasising certain elements to undermine the apparent objectivity of the photographic image and to highlight the subject.
I couldn't say it better myself. Dig into her projects HERE.
all photographs by Wendy McMurdo
9 comments:
Great work thank you for the link.
Oh, her work is phenomenal. I love the experience of discovering the work of someone new that just seems to hit the right spot at the right time...it redeems my faith in this whole process.
And I'm into the idea of seeing kids in a parrallel universe and the idea of escape. This work by McMurdo seems to work with all of these ideas, and lot of other things I haven't figured out yet.
Oh! I'm so happy you liked this work. I think there is something oddly "respectful" about these images. I don't really know how to say that more articulately, just that the children in her images are people with complex inner lives--that seems rare to me in images of children.
another artist doing interesting work with children (but completely different and a little fucked up) is Gilllian Wearing. Her videos of children and adults lip-syncing to each others monologues are pretty incredible.
I love the Weird Photographs of [Your} Kid, by the way, and think the scans really work well with the photos.
Hi Jennifer-
Yah, I totally appreciate you turning me on to Wendy's work. Killer stuff and all that you said was on target. I think I saw a video by Gillian Wearing a few years back at Chicago Art Insty and thought it was just odd...just couldn't get into it or get anything rewarding from it, but it was just one piece, alone, so I don't want to really label it.
Thanks for saying nice things about my project. I think its hinting at something but not fully realized. I want to depict emotional chaos in my photographs of my son. Any idea how I photograph that?
isn't this project relatively young? wouldn't it be weird if it were fully realized already?
I think it's amazing (and so generous) that you open yourself up to the completely random critique of the blogosphere while you are in the middle of something new. I also think the "clinical" scans contrast against the collaborative images in a way that does make them seem more emotionally raw. the emotions i sense when looking at the images are yours though, not your sons, and i think that is pretty great. it's like you are trying to figure out what it means to be a parent and an adult and to let your son become his own person in ways that are puzzling sometimes, but always fascinating.
but i don't have kids, so i'm just projecting here...
(and wishing i'd known your work when i lived in sf myself!)
Wow, Jennifer, that is super perceptive...I couldn't have said it better. Thanks for clarifying it all and sharing your thoughts.
Perhaps I should hire you now to write the foreword to the book? It'll be out in the year 3000 if I'm lucky....
oh thanks. but it's all in your work. just keep making more.
Oh wow, the thought of entering a parallel universe of the young youth of these days excites me in more ways than one!
Archy I feel absolutely refreshed and exhilerated at the thoughts you are portraying here. good god. Keep it coming.
And Jenny, I'm with you on this one doll.
Oh wow, the thought of entering a parallel universe of the young youth of these days excites me in more ways than one!
Archy I feel absolutely refreshed and exhilerated at the thoughts you are portraying here. good god. Keep it coming.
And Jenny, I'm with you on this one doll.
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