A Guided Tour

Victoria Sambunaris Untitled, Wendover, UT, 2007 Courtesy of Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York A Guided Tour With the rise of digital photography, one ed to this, these studios specializing in fam- stylized fact that reverberates around pho- ily photography have a lot of preschools, tography circles is that the traditional com- kindergartens, high schools and college mercial studio is dying. While it may be true graduations to visit. Commercially speaking, that there are fewer around and our need to the family is imperative to its success. There visit them less regular, there is still an impor- are also times when this kind of vernacular tant place for them. However many snaps commercial photography can have an inter- you take of your family (and by this I mean esting place in the art gallery and is used to children specifically) there is still an urge to arresting effect in the hands of artists. get “a proper photograph” done and proud- Artistically, the home, domesticity, the ly place it on the mantel piece. For this to family and the familial everyday are a rich- happen, a visit to a studio is necessary. Add- ly mined seam for artists and photogra- Essay By Susan Bright in conjunction with the exhibition Housed curated by Joseph Maida & Katie Murray phers. It’s easy to reel off a long would downgrade it to a “lowbrow the role that technology now has The work they have chosen does list of great bodies of work that art” and love the illicit opportuni- in the home. not simply validate their own prac- have made an important impact in ties it can offer. But it is exactly photography’s tice (as can so often be seen when the history of photography. Ap- And you can’t get much more technology and inherent lowliness artists or photographers turn their proaches and intentions differ, but lowbrow than the wonderful chat- that is part of its charm and on- hand at curating) but challenges it. the need to consider the idea of roulette.com. This site enables you going attraction for many artists. Thankfully, they also avoided the the family and home, and, in turn, to flick through people sitting in References to “applied” photog- egotistic trap of putting their own your place in it, is irresistible to front of their computers and en- raphy such as still life (Kathryn work in, which is an absolute no- many. Worth mentioning are the gage (or not) for however long Parker Almanas), fashion (Peter no for any artist/curator (artist/ British photographer, Richard Bill- you want. It’s a place for extro- Stanglmayr) and surveillance (Da- book editors also take note). ingham, and his controversial Rays verts and introverts alike. A space vid Deutsch) can be seen in the Their decision to hold the exhi- A Laugh (2002) and autobiograph- for the curious and bored and for exhibition Housed curated by art- bition at the Alice Austen House ical journeys by Mexican artist, one to masturbate it would seem ists Joseph Maida and Katie Mur- Museum carries through the con- Ana Casas Broda, in her brilliant- (depending on what time you go ray. Before we take a tour of some cept of the domestic to a conclud- ly complex Album (2000), which on). It is evidence, indeed, that the of the work in the show, there are ing point. In a nice matryoshka of combines family snapshots, studio computer has an integral place in two things that are worth men- ideas, the spectator can experience photographs and her own artwork the home now and how embed- tioning here. One is the role of the work around the theme of a house to suggest signs and symptoms ded a certain kind of photography curators and the fact that they are while in a house. The beauty of the of traumas long repressed. Mitch (and video) is – one that was un- artists, and the second is the inau- Alice Austen House Museum is Epstein’s Family Business (2003) imaginable when Bourdieu’s book gural venue for the exhibition - the that it is no ordinary museum, nor saw him return to photograph his was released. Alice Austen House Museum on an ordinary house, but one that father. The resulting series works It is interesting to note that at Staten Island. housed an extraordinary woman. metaphorically to suggest larger the time Photography: A Middle-brow Both Maida and Murray’s work The echoes and traces of Austen’s universal overtures, and then there Art was reprinted in 1990, two explores primal aspects of human- life and work ricochet throughout is the funny and empathetic Subur- large and important exhibitions ity and a need to connect (most the work on show, and, by remov- bia by Bill Owens, which enjoyed about the family and the home obviously in two new videos: girls ing the traditional gallery context, a recent revival (first published in were in production. These were in 4/4 by Murray and amailstrip- the photographs resonate across a 1973 and again in 1999). Who’s Looking at the Family, curated per4u: 4mike, 4gerald, 4dwight by different register. Peter Stanglmayr Calder from Born a Wicked Child, 2007 Theorists, critics and psycho- by Val Williams and shown at the Maida). Both also deal with ideas Alice Austen delighted in mas- Courtesy of the artist analysts (needless to say) have Barbican Art Gallery, London, in of domesticity, albeit in an oblique querade, confused people with her also been drawn to similar subject 1994, and Pleasures and Terrors of way. Maida and Murray came to sexuality and worked as a photog- The work of Peter Stanglmayr, culine is at its most acute, and the matter. In the case of French so- Domestic Comfort, curated by Peter the work in the show through a rapher in a way that was not befit- Born a Wicked Child (2007), is a tensions of awkwardness/grace ciologist, anthropologist and phi- Galassi for MoMA, New York, in frustration in their working pro- ting for a woman of her time. The contemporary nod to Alice Aus- and vulnerability/composure are losopher, Pierre Bourdieu, and his 1991. Although drastically differ- cess and, during their research, use of twinning and mirroring in ten and traditions of gender. The apparent in the photographs and collaborators, it was not the sub- ent in approach and intent - where stumbled upon a good idea and some of her work (most obviously series was originally commissioned give them their strange and slightly ject matter per se but the family’s Galassi focused on high art with the rush that curating a tight group in her most well-known self-por- for a small women’s knitwear com- unsettling charge. The work hints use of the camera which made it a prevalence for narrative and the show can provide. Their role is far trait Trude and I Masked, Short Skirts, pany called Spring & Clifton. In at the secret space of the home, a a “middle-brow art” and, as such, dramatic, Williams had a more ex- from the “curator as failed artist” 11pm, Thursday, August 6th, 1891) an attempt to make their twin sets place where young boys can dress a definition for photography. They panded view of photography deal- cliché, and, instead, Housed shows suggests a sophisticated knowledge raunchier, he decided to shoot up in their mother’s clothes while based their theories not on some ing with the surrealistic everyday a generosity of spirit to work with of the graphic qualities of photog- boys instead of girls. At the time she is at work and be liberated by intrinsic photographic DNA but and included a selection of vernac- artists around a theme, which cuts raphy and also could be read as a of the shoot, the boy pictured was such an experience. It is such ordi- on the fact that it had become a ular photographs including foren- to the core of their own prac- pre-postmodern understanding of fifteen - an edgy, and some would nary suburban boys experimenting mass social practice. One wonders sic photography, studio portraits tice and challenges their working the slippery qualities of the self say controversial, move to photo- with the feel of nylon, when they what he would make of the use of and family snapshots - neither methodology. This show is empiri- and identity at once performed and graph a model officially “under- pull on a pair of tights, or relish- photography now – and, in partic- could have ever predicted how cal research made into something learned in order to fit in (far from a age” in the fashion business. It is, ing the electric shock of desire ular, its applications on social net- much domestic photography has creative, and their affinity with humanist belief in a stable and uni- however, an age when the dichot- as they run their hands through working sites. I feel certain that he changed in the last fifteen years or the subject matter shines through. versal sense of being). omy between feminine and mas- beautiful fabrics and enjoy the qui- out of the inhospitable land. Fu- tures of mirrors from mail order by historical, faux simulacra within tility is apparent in Untitled, Wendo- catalogues and enlarges them to these objects of desire with the ver, UT as the landscape swallows highlight other reflected home wider implications of not just the up the houses showing that man decorating features for sale. As self-trying to escape, but also a na- is far from ever conquering nature such, they become signifiers for tion – but to what? And where is – an American pioneering dream, empty consumerist desire, reflect- the authenticity? as so eagerly illustrated by other ing back at the viewer an “ideal A very real American history early topographical photographers home.” She has said of these im- and tradition is, by contrast, the Abby Robinson from the AutoWork Series, 1973-2010 Courtesy of the artist such as William Henry Jackson, has ages stuffed into our mailboxes, main subject matter for Thanks- turned into something altogether “These catalogs are obviously giving.

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