A Beautiful Ending
It’s the End of This Beautiful World as We Know It
Ecotopia: The Second I.C.P. Triennial of Photography and Video
Ecotopia, the current show at the International Center of Photography, explores the current state of the environment and ecology. In a cultural moment that often reminds us of the pressures we are putting on our environment and the negative effects created, this show seems to bring about positive feelings even as it focuses on the devastations in our world.
Mitch Epstein’s “Biloxi, Mississippi”, one of the first photographs you come across in this exhibition demonstrates this beauty of devastation well. The spectrum, as Roland Barthes would put it, of this large-scale color print is a large tree, mostly bare, with its branches spread tall and wide. As you take in the beauty of the tree you begin to notice things in the branches that at first appear to be nests but are in reality debris, including a mattress, from hurricane Katrina. The scene is of devastation, but a beauty takes control of the photo.
Noriko Furunishi’s two untitled pieces are both at once lovely and disorienting. Both pieces are composites of multiple photographs that allow dry dessert landscapes to fill the compositions with no room left for the sky. You will find yourself lost in their textures and attempting find the moment one photo ends and the next begins.
Another image that seems to be an attempt of beauty in contrast to its subject matter is Mitch Epstein’s “Amos Coal Power Plant, Raymond, West Virginia”. Again we have Epstein’s great compositional skills with a spectrum of neighborhood homes and a power plant in the background. I’m sure Epstein was hoping we would find beauty in the homes and be frightened by the power plant, but I found myself distracted by the punctum (Barthes’ word for the details that wound or personally touch us) of the homes. The houses actually seemed a little rundown with a need for new siding and roofing. The yards had dry spots that gave me the same feelings of unhealthiness that the reactors of the background gave. Perhaps some of my own photos from my grocery store series has this same problem with their punctum. Though I hope the colors and compositions lift your emotions, you may find yourself lost in the objects that fill the grocery store.
Though you may find the many objects of my grocery store photos actually fit the more interesting and engaging idea of punctum that Doug Aitken’s “Plateau” contains. “Plateau” is a large Fugitrans print in a lightbox. The backlighting brings brightness to the contrast of whites and reds that fill the spectrum of this photograph. We are shown a panoramic of a city built of FedEX boxes that is inhabited by birds that have been collaged in. The incredible details of this homemade cardboard city are incredible and fascinating.
Mark Dion’s “Department of Remote Wildlife Surveillance” installation is another piece that is full of detail you may allow yourself to be lost in. Dion has installed an office for this bogus group that appears to be a division of a governmental department. The office is cramped and overcrowded with office supplies and photography equipment that we are to believe is used for surveillance of wildlife. Around the outside walls of this office are enclosed corkboard cases that disply the resulting photographs of “heat sensitive ‘trap cameras’” setup in the woods where the “remote wildlife” live. The exhibition says this installation “alludes to the organizations so obsessed with surveillance that the enemy could be anywhere,” but I find that these sometimes time stamped snapshots, mostly of deer (but including bears, fox, rabbits, groundhogs, turkeys and a dog) remind me of the pictures many hunters take of the game they kill and are often shown in small town newspapers. The office then becomes to me the kind of agricultural department that hunters must report their hunting results to. This installation doesn’t offer me the beauty that most of the other photos and videos of this exhibition do, though I do find the nighttime photographs of the animals intriguing and the spotlight often used exciting. Perhaps it is the cheap and stripped down feeling these photographs offer that allows me to stop thinking about the art and to start thinking about the environment.
While the most of the photographs in this show are lovely (though I do find Harri Kallio’s depictions of Dodo birds creepy), I’m not sure how successful the work is at making me consider the current state of our environment. Maybe that’s not the intent of the show though. Afterall, it's titled Ecotopia, not Ecotastrophe.
Ecotopia: The Second I.C.P. Triennial of Photography and Video
Ecotopia, the current show at the International Center of Photography, explores the current state of the environment and ecology. In a cultural moment that often reminds us of the pressures we are putting on our environment and the negative effects created, this show seems to bring about positive feelings even as it focuses on the devastations in our world.
Mitch Epstein’s “Biloxi, Mississippi”, one of the first photographs you come across in this exhibition demonstrates this beauty of devastation well. The spectrum, as Roland Barthes would put it, of this large-scale color print is a large tree, mostly bare, with its branches spread tall and wide. As you take in the beauty of the tree you begin to notice things in the branches that at first appear to be nests but are in reality debris, including a mattress, from hurricane Katrina. The scene is of devastation, but a beauty takes control of the photo.
Noriko Furunishi’s two untitled pieces are both at once lovely and disorienting. Both pieces are composites of multiple photographs that allow dry dessert landscapes to fill the compositions with no room left for the sky. You will find yourself lost in their textures and attempting find the moment one photo ends and the next begins.
Another image that seems to be an attempt of beauty in contrast to its subject matter is Mitch Epstein’s “Amos Coal Power Plant, Raymond, West Virginia”. Again we have Epstein’s great compositional skills with a spectrum of neighborhood homes and a power plant in the background. I’m sure Epstein was hoping we would find beauty in the homes and be frightened by the power plant, but I found myself distracted by the punctum (Barthes’ word for the details that wound or personally touch us) of the homes. The houses actually seemed a little rundown with a need for new siding and roofing. The yards had dry spots that gave me the same feelings of unhealthiness that the reactors of the background gave. Perhaps some of my own photos from my grocery store series has this same problem with their punctum. Though I hope the colors and compositions lift your emotions, you may find yourself lost in the objects that fill the grocery store.
Though you may find the many objects of my grocery store photos actually fit the more interesting and engaging idea of punctum that Doug Aitken’s “Plateau” contains. “Plateau” is a large Fugitrans print in a lightbox. The backlighting brings brightness to the contrast of whites and reds that fill the spectrum of this photograph. We are shown a panoramic of a city built of FedEX boxes that is inhabited by birds that have been collaged in. The incredible details of this homemade cardboard city are incredible and fascinating.
Mark Dion’s “Department of Remote Wildlife Surveillance” installation is another piece that is full of detail you may allow yourself to be lost in. Dion has installed an office for this bogus group that appears to be a division of a governmental department. The office is cramped and overcrowded with office supplies and photography equipment that we are to believe is used for surveillance of wildlife. Around the outside walls of this office are enclosed corkboard cases that disply the resulting photographs of “heat sensitive ‘trap cameras’” setup in the woods where the “remote wildlife” live. The exhibition says this installation “alludes to the organizations so obsessed with surveillance that the enemy could be anywhere,” but I find that these sometimes time stamped snapshots, mostly of deer (but including bears, fox, rabbits, groundhogs, turkeys and a dog) remind me of the pictures many hunters take of the game they kill and are often shown in small town newspapers. The office then becomes to me the kind of agricultural department that hunters must report their hunting results to. This installation doesn’t offer me the beauty that most of the other photos and videos of this exhibition do, though I do find the nighttime photographs of the animals intriguing and the spotlight often used exciting. Perhaps it is the cheap and stripped down feeling these photographs offer that allows me to stop thinking about the art and to start thinking about the environment.
While the most of the photographs in this show are lovely (though I do find Harri Kallio’s depictions of Dodo birds creepy), I’m not sure how successful the work is at making me consider the current state of our environment. Maybe that’s not the intent of the show though. Afterall, it's titled Ecotopia, not Ecotastrophe.
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