Memorialization book

Comment

Comment by James MacMahon on May 21, 2012 at 5:06pm

Makes me think of Anne Frank

Comment by Linda Soberman on March 21, 2012 at 1:11am

Dear Kristen,

I was pleased and honored by your decision to review Memorialization Book and The Ruler from my recent body of work, Memory Lingers. Your comments were both insightful and well stated. The images are both from a presentation book I created for museum and gallery curators. I can see why you made the comment that they appeared graphic and formal. How right you were to notice that! I made the decision to include the pages on my site, instead of just the photographs of the work, to better define the work.

I did choose to eliminate the eyes to create anonymity as well as make her the surrogate for all women lost in the Holocaust and other contemporary genocides. It was meant to be an act of erasure, as I wrote "wiped out..gone."

As artists, we often work alone in our studios, without the opportunity to hear intelligent and meaningful dialogue about our art work. It is with great appreciation that I thank you for your comments.

Comment by Resident Curator on March 20, 2012 at 7:21pm

Curator’s Comment:  

 

Memorialization Book looks to be a haunting chain of sequential images- the inherent narrative structure of a traditional bound book captures the passage of time and history.  But the blurring of the figure’s eyes suggests an act of erasure rather than of commemoration or remembrance.  I’m reminded of anonymous portraits of crime victims or medical patients; their eyes masked out as if there is an intrinsic shame in the revelation of their personal identities.  The actual “erased” sections of the faces seem slightly aggressive in the handling, but the crossing gestures also denote a cruciform, which could hold other imbedded connotations.  I believe the text below the book piece adds another voice to the viewing experience, but I’m not fully decided if I like this graphic format in your other works.  The individual artworks generally appear confidential or intimate in nature, while the graphic arrangements temporarily pull me out of the interior space of the images, so that I focus on the exterior edges of the shapes.  They seem to be about documenting the work more than experiencing it directly.  That being said, I also really like School Photo.  There is an immediate understanding of the straight line of the ruler, negating the faces of the young individuals.  Time passes for each class, frozen in by the rigidity of structure and numbers.  There is a sort of sweet nostalgia to this image, too.  It speaks of a time of innocence, when rules and rulers were simpler, and meant what they said.