Photography Archives - Page 3 of 3

Yola Monakhov, “Photography After Dante” (2010)

March 1, 2010 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“For this body of work, Monakhov used Dante’s Divine Comedy as a source and framework for creating photographs in contemporary Italy. Her approach intended to bring together a canonical text and contemporary life, using the poem to investigate conventions of the photographic medium.
Monakhov’s method involved establishing an active relationship with her Italian subjects, who were well versed in their native Dante. She noted their reactions to moments in the poem, and linked these with her own reading and photographic vision. Photographing in Italy, she discovered that when she explained her project to her subjects, they not only intuitively grasped her premise, they also reacted to and enacted it. One subject, Paola, implored the photographer: ‘Please do not put me in the Inferno,’ as though this first stage of the pilgrim’s journey were a real place, rather than a poet’s construct.
Monakhov does not stage illustrations. Rather, she uses photography to start and record a very real conversation about Dante with the people who read him and for whom the poem is still very much alive. She uses a range of approaches, from formal portrait sessions to verite’ photography. Just as the text draws on numerous literary registers to evoke the atmosphere and context relevant for each occasion, Monakhov deploys a variety of photographic methods. She uses large format, medium format, and 35mm black-and-white film.” —Sasha Wolf Gallery

Elisabeth Tonnard, “In This Dark Wood” (2008)

November 16, 2009 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“This book is a modern gothic. It pairs images of people walking alone in nighttime city streets with 90 different English translations I collected of the first lines of Dante’s Inferno. The images, showing a crowd of solitary figures, are selected from the same archive as used for Two of Us (the extraordinary Joseph Selle collection at the Visual Studies Workshop which contains over a million negatives from a company of street photographers working in San Francisco from the 40’s to the 70’s).
The book is set up in a repetitious way, to stress a sense of similarity, endlessness and interchangeability. The images are re-expressions of each other, and so are the texts.” —Elisabeth Tonnard

Contributed by Guy Raffa (University of Texas – Austin)

Yinka Shonibare, Photographer

June 22, 2009 By Gretchen Williams '14

“In his Victorian house in the East End here Yinka Shonibare, the British-Nigerian conceptual artist, perched on an exercise ball at the wooden table in his book-crammed study, sipping peppermint tea and examining a shipment of faux oysters on the half shell.
A stationary hand cycle sat beside him, an electric wheelchair across from him. One of Bob and Roberta Smith’s slogan paintings, ‘Duchamp stinks like a homeless person,’ hung above him, and a tuna on toast prepared by his housekeeper was sandwiched between a vase of yellow tulips and a stack of Dante volumes: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. . .
On that gray May day in the East End, Mr. Shonibare was trying to decompress after directing a weeklong photo shoot that involved 25 live snakes, 14 nude models, 6 pigs and 2 lamb’s heads. Inspired by Dante, Arthur Miller, Gustav Dore’ and the financial crisis, the shoot was a work in progress, ‘Willy Loman: The Rise and Fall,’ which seeks to depict what happens after the death of the salesman. (Hint: It’s hellish.)” [. . .] –Deborah Sontag, The New York Times, June 17, 2009

The Gluttony Cake

January 21, 2007 By Professor Arielle Saiber

Found on Flickr

Contributed by Dien Ho

“Inferno & Paradiso” a photojournalistic exhibit in South Africa (2001)

December 21, 2006 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“. . .World renowned artist/photographer Alfredo Jaar curated this show which is presented as a collaboration between the SANG, the BildMuseet in Umea, Sweden, and Riksutstallningar, the Swedish Travelling Exhibitions Organisation. His curatorial method was this: ‘I invited 18 photojournalists from around the world to contribute two images to the exhibition (inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy). For ‘Inferno’ I asked them to select the single image that was the most difficult to produce, the one that caused the most pain and anguish. And for ‘Paradiso’, the most joyful one, the one that has given them the most happiness in the world.’ ”
–Sue Williamson, Art Throb

Contributed by Charlie Russell (Bowdoin, ’08)

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