Photography is on my mind a lot this week. From seeing the Annie Leibovitz exhibit on Saturday night, to my own pictures, to the Sundance Channel's week-long series of documentaries on photographers, these frozen moments in time are all around me.
Leibovitz is a photographer who excels in portraits, mostly of famous people. She has a way of getting inside, and showing that person to us in a way that is both intimate, and removed. She finds the juxtaposition of the ordinary and the extraordinary in a celebrity, and balances it perfectly. You know her photographs well: Demi in her nude pregnant glory, Nicole in a brocaded & chiffon dress swirling around her, John and Yoko in a visceral, intimate pose. I loved looking at these familiar pictures, larger than life, beautiful in their detail. The one of the White Stripes, above, was stunning. But what I really responded to were the personal photographs of her parents, sisters, and later herself and her children, as well as the many pictures of her lover and friend, Susan Sontag. They were full of life, and towards the end, hollowed by death, nothing filtering the viewers eye from the subject.
Tina Barney is also a photographer who specializes in portraits. But rather than stylize them, she lets the subjects' homes take on as important a role in the photograph as the subject. In the documentary, her life of privilege is revealed, and rather than idealizing the wealthy class of America and Europe, she is showing us what is familiar to her. Perhaps because of her connection to this carefully protected world, she is able to capture true expressions and natural gestures, again merging the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Tierney Gearon is a different type of photographer than Leibovitz and Tina Barney. Her subjects are nothing but personal: herself, her children, and her mother. "The Mother Project" documents her relationship with her schizophrenic mother, which she explores through her photography. The moments are telling and filled with emotion, as well as raw truth. The camera is always there, for the laughs, the tantrums, the spontaneity, and the stillness of everyday life. And rather than exploiting her mother's illness, you have the sense that she is looking for the goodness and beauty that lie beneath, both in her mother and in herself. Her children are a wonderful and joyous expression of a world without boundaries, which caused controversy at her London show at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Tierney Gearon's life seems to be a constantly moving work in progress, of moment after moment as diverse as her mood and the world that surrounds her.
There are 3 common denominators in all of these works: the subjects, the photographer, and the photographers' relationship to those subjects. That is the magic connection that occurs in the one moment that the shutter clicks, and what gives us the ability to "see", and more deeply, "feel", what is there, right in front of us. What is added is what the viewer brings to the mix, what resonates inside - whether it is a spark of recognition, or an emotional pull - and in that way each of us is a participant as well as a guest.
Near the end of the Gearon documentary, her mother apologizes to the camera. "I'm sorry I am so emotional today. But that's how women are - emotional". When in comes through in creative expression, it is what creates a wonderful, human connection.
