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From the movie One Hour Photo: stalker/artist Robin Williams contemplates his family snapshots. Ten years of the Yorkin family, all palmed at the photomat where he works:

One Hour Photo

As I recall, Joe Bob Briggs called Tom Noonan in Manhunter "the only psycho with a full time art director." Move over, Tom.

This comes up because we've been discussing the "Mapping Sitting" show at the Grey Art Gallery. Two contemporary artists, Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari, working solidly in the Western post-colonial/conceptualist mode, present hundreds of photos made by a Lebanese commercial photography studio from roughly 1950-1990. This is supposed to repair Western ignorance of the real Middle East*--presumably all at one gulp. Bill says the grid reminds him of the freshman class pictures in the National Lampoon high school yearbook, which were reproduced so small no one could see them. I thought of Robin Williams' masterpiece in One Hour Photo. The grid at the Grey sure looks arty from the installation shot--the artists (one based in Beirut and one in NY/Beirut) appear to have captured, appropriated, and neutralized all this historical commercial (i.e. non art) work with their eye-boggling grid. Also colonized it in the sense of taking it over and presenting it as their own (nothing wrong with that but let's get it on the table), and exoticized it in the sense of why are we having this show if it isn't about consuming "non-Western" experience. I realize I'm critiquing an installation shot--maybe the actual work is more meaningful.**

Mapping Sitting

*From the website: "Collectively, the images convey the pluralistic and multifaceted communities captured by indigenous photographers—images far different from photos of the region circulating widely in the popular press today. In Mapping Sitting, Raad and Zaatari reveal how Arab portrait photography not only pictured individuals and groups, but also functioned as commodity, luxury item, and adornment. Concentrating on commercial images, the exhibition not only raises questions about portrait photography in the Middle East, but also about portraiture, photography, and visual culture in general."

**Update: toc says in the comments: "with his work as 'the atlas group' raad often works with 'historical' documents that he creates himself, rather than true objets trouvés. an installation of automobile motors left over from car bombings in beirut is really just a collection of whatever motors raad can find in the city hosting the exhibition. i haven't seen 'mapping sitting', but i suspect there's something more going on than the worthy politics/august sander ethnography that is presented in the marketing materials." It would certainly be more interesting if the Lebanese portrait studio turned out to be fiction but somehow I don't see NYU (Grey) participating in a hoax. If anyone knows the real story I'll be happy to post it.

- tom moody 3-21-2005 9:57 pm [link] [9 comments]