Blog

Eventual Geography of Home

May 13, 2009

Yay for me! I’m a nominee for the New York Photo Awards 2009 Fine Art Single Image category. I like the part where they say about the nominees, “It is clear that they represent the Future of Contemporary Photography, and we wish them continued success.”

So, for the past week or so I have been reading a bit about artists who use geography, movement and mapping in their art practice. It has been just bits and pieces so far, the introduction to the catalog for a show called GNS that was at Palais de Tokyo in 2003, blog postings that have turned up in my google alert for “Francis Alÿs” (whose work I love), and then things here and there I have looked up from what I have read. Something about this work really sparks my imagination and gets me dreaming up projects. I have always had an interest in making art beyond the two dimensions of a photograph, but who knows if I ever will…

I’m not sure at this point I could sum up this sort of art practice or even describe it very well. My interest in it has something to do with actions and setting out a plan for them or documenting them in some way and the use of space and documenting that… Sorta… It also has to do with the everyday and how people are in the world… Interestingly these things really do connect to the interests I have identified previously in my work.

One artist who I came across is Richard Long. He makes art by walking. For example, he walked the same path of a circle over and over again which resulted in the marking of that path on the ground. He documents his work with photographs, writing or maps.

This work and others got me thinking about how much time I spend in my own house and how interesting/funny it would be to see the path I walk into my apartment floor (if it was made of dirt or something). There would probably be a deep path between my desk, the bathroom and the kitchen . Thinking about it further and wondering how these ideas might relate to my photographs and videos, I thought how fun and interesting it would be to do this sort of action with a crawling baby or a toddler just beginning to walk. To see their path in the space of their home would be really interesting because I don’t think it would have the expected pattern like I describe that my movements at home would have. In my imagination of it the baby would be in footy pajamas and like covered in finger paint or something that could get thicker as the path was repeated. I wonder if you can hire a baby model to do that sort of thing?

I am really interested in how these movements and mapping of space activities could be applied to the home and specifically to a kid’s experience. I have lots of ideas floating around and a stack of books I’m working my way through.. I am also playing around with an idea of making a map to find my way “home”… I have had an ongoing theme of not quite feeling at home/trying to decide where I want to live for as long as I can remember it seems. I was reading and came across the sentence, “You need a map when your lost” and thought how that could be fun to try to create a map of some sort to get un-lost or find “home”. At the very least it gives me lots to think about, we’ll see if anything comes of it…

Stuff I have been looking at: Francis Alÿs, Psychogeography, Theory of the Dérive which, (at least on first looking over) makes me think of what it can be like going on a walk with a toddler, “In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.”, Experimental Geography exhibit, someone named Amy who works with maps, and lots more.

Discussion Leave a comment Category Creativity, Inspiration

Loopy and Absorbed in Detail

May 5, 2009

The past week I have been working on remaking my video clips that I have had up on my site for a long while now. It was all originally done as flash files and was meant to be interactive (and still is on the site www.christykarpinski.com/videos/video2.html). The limiting thing about that is they will only play off my website. So, I have made them into regular video files. This way I can begin to figure out a way to create and installation with them.

Working on these again has got me thinking about how they fit in with my photographs. I think in some ways they are similarly focused in on a specific moment or feeling/sense and in some ways they are about the space kids occupy. The ones I have been calling “clickers” were originally created to be about getting into the kids point of view or the space they inhabit in relation to something like a play saucer or swinging on a swing. On my site you click the image to change to the next clip. I like the interactive aspect of these and that they sort of imply a narrative.

The other videos, the ones with one clip that loops endlessly, are not so much about the space and maybe more about the kind of funny and entertaining moments I have always loved about hanging out with little kids.

They all make me laugh and are fun to make. I hope to figure out some interesting installation for them out in the world. There is a video wall at the Oakland airport that looks like a pretty cool place… click here for one photographer’s use of it.

Discussion Leave a comment Category video Tags clips, loops, video

Comfort Zone: visual exploration and the organization of my brain

April 29, 2009

I was talking to a student today as he was finished making a print in the darkroom. He was standing back and looking at the line of test strips he had just laid out in order on the board next to the final print. He said he liked seeing all the different time and color changes together and that he really enjoys “progressions”. What he means is things like sweeping, dusting, sanding something, or in this case all the steps leading to a color corrected final print. That mostly makes sense to me; I know that feeling of satisfaction as you see something gradually become clean. But I don’t have quite the pleasure in it that would lead me to want to keep all my test strips or make a video of sanding away a piece of wood (something he mentioned as a project idea). I am, however, interested in how our creative impulse relates to how our brains work or how we think, and how there are ways of thinking or doing or being that are just simply enjoyable. How funny to enjoy brain function.

What I have noticed about myself is that I am very spatially oriented. This in a lot of ways just means I like to organize things but it also has to do with objects in space. For example, when I was a little kid and would go grocery shopping with my mom, I would fit every item perfectly into a spot in the cart so that twice as many groceries would fit in the cart. (I have memories of overflowing shopping carts, I’m not sure if maybe we only went grocery shopping every few weeks or what). I also loved and still do love, playing with matchbox cars and making structures just the right size for them to park in, or backing up the miniature boat trailer into the gutter full of water. I notice when I’m hanging out playing with kids nowadays and toy cars are involved I start parking them in a little imaginary parking lot. At times, there may be a bit of not being able to help myself to this, like when I find myself cleaning up friends houses or moving a shampoo bottle back where I wanted it after a housemate moved it. But it usually is useful; my house stays pretty clean and organized and I’m useful to my unorganized friends

Ultimately what I find interesting about all of this is that it seems to be visual. The motivation seems to be to satisfy my eyes; to put things in the world in a way that is pleasing to my eyes. This has got me thinking about how it might then relate to the photographs I make. The most obvious correlation is that making a photograph is about organizing the world in the frame of the camera – what you include or exclude and how it all fits together. In a way, it is a sort of documentation of this mental impulse about things in space and in their place that I have. I don’t know, maybe that is the only connection - that I am composing the world with or without the camera and that I can use the camera to explore my enjoyment of spaces. There may be more to it but for now that is as far as I have gotten with me and my brain. I am curious if other photographers or artist’s see this sort of thing in their work or their creative process.

ada_legs_blurry5x5

Discussion Leave a comment Category Creativity, Origins

The Space/Place of My (Re)Inhabited Childhood

April 22, 2009

There are a few things I have found to be important for making my pictures with children. First of all there is an age range that really is ideal. This seems to be a little before 2 till just beyond 3. I think it’s at the point where the child really starts to move around and interact independently with their surroundings that things start to happen for me visually.

Another important factor is that the child at some point doesn’t pay attention to what I’m doing while taking pictures. We are hanging out together and interacting but the presence of my camera doesn’t interfere. She continues to play and be engaged or she is doing her own thing and me taking pictures goes completely unnoticed … while another child may just stop, get quiet and watch me.

I have also found I am most interested when kids are in a space that isn’t visually defined as a child’s space but there is still a clear sense that it is in fact their space. So like, not too many bright colorful plastic toys, or not a playground, but a regular space at home or outside that has been created and defined by the child’s presence there or their interaction there. It is interesting too because I think there is a space created and defined by the child being there in that place, and experiencing there in that place, but there is also this larger container space that is created by parents/caregivers that allows the child’s defined space to exist in this way that interests me…

This kid space seems to be created by them exploring or following their curiosity with focus, not concerned with the “bigger picture” of life that an adult would be… a sort of exploring without constraints or worries or a to do list… I think they can do this because the adult world of their parents/caretakers has created this “safe” space/place for them to be in. And, it is interesting because it’s seemingly invisible to them, but if it were gone they would be immediately aware of it. This space is created by their adult people’s attention on them and awareness of them and care for them and it allows the child to focus on the unknown, explore and expand into the world around them knowing they will be contained… it’s boundaries for them basically, invisible limits that are set for them.

Discussion 1 Comment Category ideas of childhood, Origins

Thinking About My Photographs

April 20, 2009

I’ve been thinking lately about my photography, my life, my interests and what ties it all together…what leads to me making the pictures that I do? … and is this really interesting to anyone?

I started babysitting when I was 9 (curiously and coincidentally the same age I first remember making photographs with intent). My first real nanny position was when I just turned 18, I moved in with my best friend’s sister to help out with her new born daughter. She gave me a stack of book to read and that was it, I was totally engaged. I was reading about parenting techniques, theories and ideas but I immediately saw how it all related to people of any age and found all my time spent with kids to be an ongoing opportunity to learn about people, how we become who we are, how are brains work and how we make sense of ourselves and the world. I continued to watch kids for years and still do on and off.

My fascination with people and how we become who we are continued, and when I was an undergraduate at the University of Arizona I got interested in the Women’s Studies program. I spent a lot of time reading and thinking about how we identify ourselves and the people around us, specifically in terms of gender – this being one of the first, if not the first thing decided about who we are. I was also working as a nanny for a number of families over those years. I wasn’t making many photographs at the time, a few of the kids I knew but nothing that explored the ideas I was thinking about directly.

A few years after I completed my degree, I spent a summer in Maine at the Photographic Workshops. It was a pretty dramatic change, going from the desert in Tucson to the strange landscape of Maine. The area looked to me like the pictures you find on jigsaw puzzles of quiet green landscapes, a world I had never seen before.

For six weeks of the summer I lived with a group of fellow work-study students, sharing a tiny room in a house full of people. We were around each other 24 hours a day, which was a huge change for me who was used to living and working alone. Every day we looked at pictures, talked about pictures and made pictures. It was great. It was also a lot to get used to. As the weeks went on, I found myself making pictures in an attempt to ground myself. Often the pictures were of myself; other times they were quiet spaces I had found. It was like the click of the shutter could root me to the ground or something. I think this is a thread that runs through the photographs I made that summer – grounding and taking a look at myself, literally.

A year later, when I arrived in Chicago for graduate school I had no idea what I was going to photograph. I started out occasionally taking pictures of myself and I was finding myself drawn to any open space I came across in the city, empty lots, abandoned parking lots, etc. I’m sure this was a result of finding myself in a much more crowded and noisy city than I was used to and perhaps another attempt at using the camera to ground myself. The pictures I made were all right but not yet engaging my curiosity or interest.

Around this same time, I was driving to Minneapolis every other month to visit my niece, Stella. She was about 2 years old at this point and I had been photographing her since I met her at 2 months old. So far the pictures had mostly been to share with family with a few odd ones here and there that piqued my interest. But by that spring, with my brand new Hasselblad I began to find my pictures. Sitting on the floor playing and hanging out with Stella, a familiar and fun activity, I began photographing her and the space of our hanging out.

I think the first series of images that came out of this are a combination of just being present in the moment and of engaging with a sense of space/place of childhood. Sitting on the floor and playing, talking, and taking in the world in a very basic way was something I had been doing for years. Taking these pictures had the same feeling of grounding myself or finding a quiet empty space as the other pictures I had been making up to this point had, only now they included this other part of my life, the activity and time spent with kids.

As the project continued on, I was being “encouraged” to shoot in color. For me, color had always seemed like “too much information” and I hadn’t really found a working visual relationship to it yet. In black and white the world becomes shapes and tones to compose, something that made sense to my brain. Beginning to use color film, I found myself moving in closer and exaggerating the depth of focus (a result of extension tubes not so much the aperture). In this way I was able to make the world of color into abstract shapes and tones to compose. Being able to get in closer also allowed me to focus on the sense of tiny details that I experience when with very young kids – the ones who are crawling around noticing every dropped crumb on the floor and exploring things close up that are usually at our feet level. This is where the second series of images emerged:

And so now I am here, continuing to explore these spaces and experiences with the kids, making pictures, and attempting to articulate what it is I am doing. More thoughts next time….