Mom's Gonna Snap

I bought this shirt for Wendy a couple of weeks ago after seeing it mentioned on Twitter.  Shipping was expensive ($15 to Canada) but she loves it.  According to the site, Super-soft organic cotton, relaxed fit tee with a slightly longer body than most t-shirts.  It had me at the double entendre.

Domestic Landscapes: Bert Teunissen

I recently came across the work of Dutch photographer Bert Teunissen and his project Domestic Landscapes. I have been tiring lately of Martha Stewart-esque domestic photos, perfectly lit showing teal mugs of coffee composed next to a piece of toast and a pot of jam that just so happens to come from the perfectly matching complimentary side of the color wheel. Teunissen's photographs have been a welcome antidote. The images come from across Europe and Japan. I needed time with these photos - they provided an opportunity to think about many of the thing Teunissen mentions on his web site: 

For the last thirteen years I have been working on a photography project called Domestic Landscapes. This project is about light - natural daylight. The photos show how daylight illuminates the domestic interior, and how it dictated the way the interior was build, used and decorated. This specific light and the atmosphere it creates have their origins in the architecture of the pre-electricity era, when daylight was the main source of light. This kind of light started to disappear from European homes after World War II when the old way of building was abandoned. At this moment few of these homes remain.

Domestic Landscapes is also about identity and diversity. Every country, every region has its own distinctive culture that can be recognized in its homes, customs, cuisine and traditions.

The inhabitants of the houses where I take photographs still know how something ought to taste and how it should be made; they understand the importance of time and ripening, and the value of daily and seasonal repetition. I found that when local traditions disappear, most of their visible aspects are also lost. When a small farmer stops slaughtering, the open fireplace becomes redundant. Sausages and hams will be dried artificially and smoked in a factory losing their original flavour and appearance. And when a small farmer stops farming, the stables are converted into storage or living spaces, the stable doors are replaced by windows, the cement floor by parquet, the hayloft is altered into bedrooms, the kitchen is moved to the former parlour, and slowly all rooms and spaces will have lost their original meaning and significance.

France

Romania

Spain

Bosnia i Hercegovina

Many more images at Bert Teunissen's website.

The Julie Project

Art is powerful when it imitates life - or stands witness to it, like documentary photographer Darcy Padilla does with her art/life projects.

In The Julie Project, Padilla followed her subject, Julie, off and on from 1993 (when Julie was 18) to Julie’s death in 2010 from AIDS. Padilla says,

I first met Julie on February 28, 1993. Julie, 18, stood
in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel, barefoot, pants
unzipped, and an 8 day-old infant in her arms. She lived
in San Francisco’s SRO district, a neighborhood of soup
kitchens and cheap rooms. Her room was piled with clothes,
overfull ashtrays and trash. She lived with Jack, father
of her first baby Rachael, and who had given her AIDS.
She left him months later to stop using drugs.
…
For the last 18 years I have photographed Julie Baird’s
complex story of multiple homes, AIDS, drug abuse,
abusive relationships, poverty, births, deaths, loss
and reunion. Following Julie from the backstreets of
San Francisco to the backwoods of Alaska.

When you look at the photos of someone’s life and death over 18 years, it’s compelling and powerful and voyeuristic all at once - in this case, like watching a train wreck and being deeply disturbed and finding yourself unable to look away. Is it exploitative? Do I think it’s exploitative because it’s disturbing, and disturbing things in life should be kept private? Why did Julie say yes to being photographed in the first place?

Julie at the age of 18, in 1993: (photo by Darcy Padilla)

Julie, nearing the end of her life at the age of 36, in 2010 - the photos get a lot worse shortly after: (photo by Darcy Padilla)

In the end, The Julie Project is art that stays with you and challenges you, which is the old version of what art was supposed to do. At the same time, talking about Julie’s life and death as an art project also feels wrong somehow, like this person who lived a tragic life of poverty, drugs, abuse, and AIDS has been reduced to something we can put up on the wall (or the web) and point at. And I did it too.

And yet, if we didn’t capture it and know about it, it would be easier for us to take comfort in the idea that that kind of life doesn’t exist. I’m not sure what to think.

UPDATE: The Julie Project is sparking lots of thoughts - here's what over 80 people had to say about it on Metafilter.



The Lost and Found Photos of Vivian Maier

I came across this story by clicking through a bunch of links on Twitter, and now can’t remember the tweet source, but what I found stuck with me. From the 1950s through the 1990s, Chicago nanny Vivian Maier took over 100,000 photos of Chicago streetlife.

Her negatives were auctioned off to Jeff Goldstein at a furniture and antique auction. Goldstein says, “From what I know, the auction house acquired her belongings from her storage locker that was sold off due to delinquent payments. I didn’t know what ‘street photography’ was when I purchased them.”

Goldstein kept returning to her work as his own interest in photography started to grow, and he eventually tried to look for Maier - only to find an obituary notice that said she had passed away just a few days earlier.

Maier’s photos, many of people, are so evocative of a lost world. Plus I think it’s brave to figure out how to secretly or not-so-secretly take a photo that shows people as they really are. That’s when faces look most interesting. (All photos from http://vivianmaier.blogspot.com).