Jennifer Blessing on her exhibition Photo-Poetics

ArtMag online Issue 89
“Artists can make images speak in different ways”,
Jennifer Blessing on her exhibition Photo-Poetics
Jennifer Blessing knows how to tell the story of contemporary photography. As the
Guggenheim Museum’s Senior Curator of Photography, she has organized
important exhibitions of artists such as Catherine Opie, Rineke Dijkstra, and Jeff
Wall. Now Blessing presents a new international generation in a show entitled
Photo-Poetics: An Anthology at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle – as cool as Richard
Prince and Cindy Sherman, as allegorical as the Baroque masters
In the late 1970s the artists of the Pictures generation, like Richard Prince or Sherrie
Levine, already worked with appropriated images. What distinguishes this new
generation of artists represented in your exhibition from their forerunners?
JB: There
are both contiguities and differences in the ways that the younger
generation of artists approach images. The work of Pictures generation artists
doesn’t always acknowledge the specific source of the image, whereas the artists
included in Photo-Poetics often present image-bearing objects like record covers,
postcards, or books in their entirety, with typography that identifies the source and
context of the images, like the pages from Ebony magazine in Leslie Hewitt’s
photographs.
All these artists share a conceptual approach to photography, an underlying logic
that transcends the medium in which the work is realized and, in fact, many of them
weren’t trained as photographers, per se.
Photo-Poetics is dedicated to Sarah Charlesworth (1947–2013), an influential artist
of the Pictures generation whose work is both rigorously conceptual and deeply
invested in the craft of photography.
We are living in a time that is characterized by increasing digitalization. Why are the
artists you selected for Photo-Poetics so interested in analogue photography and
traditional media like record covers, old paperbacks, or printed magazines?
JB: The
artists in Photo-Poetics are interested in the nature of photographic
reproduction itself, in images that are specifically photographic, and in work that is
readable as a photograph at a moment when photography in our daily lives is
increasingly ephemeral, appearing fleetingly on our phones, for example.
These artists are interested in the photographic object, and in its material contexts,
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Paul Achleitner
Vorstand: John Cryan (Co-Vorsitzender), Jürgen Fitschen (Co-Vorsitzender), Stefan Krause, Stephan Leithner, Stuart Lewis, Henry Ritchotte, Marcus Schenck, Christian Sewing
Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft mit Sitz in Frankfurt am Main, Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main, HRB Nr. 30 000, Umsatzsteuer-Id.-Nr. DE114103379; www.deutsche-bank.de
but this doesn’t mean they are twenty-first-century Luddites, hostile to the digital. As
film formats disappear, it’s virtually impossible for an artist working with photography
today to entirely eschew digital processes. In a way, it is only by comparison with
certain obvious digital effects that the handmade quality of some of this work is
brought to the foreground.
Anne Collier rephotographs images of female stars like Faye Dunaway, Marilyn
Monroe, or Madonna; Erica Baum directs her camera into the pages of pulp
paperbacks that feature portraits of actors and public figures, while Elad Lassry
frequently works with images of Anthony Perkins. Why is popular culture, mostly of
the pre-digital era, so interesting for the artists in the show?
JB: These
examples all refer to celebrity actors, and as such reference the legacy of
Andy Warhol, specifically the way that celebrities have become our most important
cultural icons, how our notions of gender and sexuality are expressed through their
performances, and the contemporary publicity of private life.
The artists in Photo-Poetics are collectors and archivists of images, whether from
“high” or pop culture (there really isn’t a distinction anymore). Like the Pictures
generation artists, they repurpose materials in which they are personally invested.
The initial reception of Pop artists focused on the banality of their sources; Pictures
generation artists were seen as critics of our image-world. Artists in Photo-Poetics
cull from the material culture of their youth, showing us the multivalent power of even
the most banal images. I don’t think their motivation is at all nostalgic, but rather
spurs reflection on the role of images in our contemporary landscape, and how
artists can make them speak in different ways.
How would you define the “poetic” sensibility of these artists?
term “photo-poetics” is intended to bring to mind the self-reflexive nature of a
lot of the work in the exhibition. It extends the field of poetics––of understanding the
nature and craft of literature––to photography. In varying degrees, the artists in the
show are interested in the medium of photography, its histories, and the unique ways
in which it is an instrument of memory.
That said, some of the work in the exhibition is literally poetic. For example, Erica
Baum directly engages poetry and Sara VanDerBeek juxtaposes individual images
suggesting linguistic syntaxes. Many of the artists incorporate or reference books,
magazines, and film––texts that add another dimension with which to read their
images.
Both the Photo-Poetics exhibition and its catalogue are conceived as anthologies––
in other words, as separate introductions to the practices of artists whose work
JB: The
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Paul Achleitner
Vorstand: John Cryan (Co-Vorsitzender), Jürgen Fitschen (Co-Vorsitzender), Stefan Krause, Stephan Leithner, Stuart Lewis, Henry Ritchotte, Marcus Schenck, Christian Sewing
Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft mit Sitz in Frankfurt am Main, Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main, HRB Nr. 30 000, Umsatzsteuer-Id.-Nr. DE114103379; www.deutsche-bank.de
shares some contemporary interests and themes and yet each remains distinct. In
my essays dedicated to each artist, I’ve attempted to model a way to contemplate
each artist’s work, to read it in a sustained way, based on the belief that while we
enjoy speaking with images through social media, as well as some of the new digital
ways of experiencing them, this in no way diminishes our appetite for sustained
engagement with works of art.
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Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Paul Achleitner
Vorstand: John Cryan (Co-Vorsitzender), Jürgen Fitschen (Co-Vorsitzender), Stefan Krause, Stephan Leithner, Stuart Lewis, Henry Ritchotte, Marcus Schenck, Christian Sewing
Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft mit Sitz in Frankfurt am Main, Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main, HRB Nr. 30 000, Umsatzsteuer-Id.-Nr. DE114103379; www.deutsche-bank.de