Fluid Legacies

CYNTHIA FREELAND

Galveston Arts Center

In The Mikvah Project, photographer Janice Rubin and writer Leah Lax have collaborated to depict women's experi­ences and interpretations of the Jewish ritual of women's immersion or mikvah. For observant Jewish women the mikvah ritual must occur exactly seven days after their menses have ceased to flow; it is also practiced by brides before a wed­ding.

Rubin and Lax traveled widely and conducted interviews to explore many women's views of this ancient ritual. For some women, the mikvah represents important ties to their heritage and they observe it with prayerful respect. Others have reinvented it as an individual ceremony of psychological healing and spiritual renewal. The exhibit, accompanied by a beautifully designed catalog by Charles Wiese, is divided into two sections, an "immersion" series and a "portrait" series. The immersion prints are 16" x 24" pigmented giclee prints; they are black-and-white images, except for a few with digitally added color ton­ing. The portraits, accompanied by text, are exhibited in 24" x 36" panels designed by Charles Wiese.

The portraits do not depict recogniz­able faces and figures but portray each person's unique situation and story. The images resonate with brief texts of quotes culled from the interviews. For the immersion series, Rubin worked with models to evoke the experience itself. Here there is no text, just women's bodies dappled with reflections in water, most taken in a specially built and approved tiled mikvah, a few done outdoors in a river. I will begin by dis­cussing the immersion pictures, because these raise especially interesting issues.

An image of a woman in a bath, especially a mikvah, makes a daunting subject for many reasons. There is the technical challenge of shooting under­water (the petite Rubin had to have a friend hold her down while she was shooting). Furthermore, mikvah is a rit­ual loaded with taboos. Referring both to menstruation and to sexuality within marriage, it is a very private affair and easily misunderstood. The subject might be unsavory for today's liberal audiences, even those used to tackling issues of sex­uality and blood in contemporary art. For feminists and/or non-Jewish viewers like myself, the picture of woman's nature behind the mikvah ritual appears outmoded and even repellent, suggesting that women's natural processes make them "unclean," as the relevant passages in Leviticus are usually translated. Ancient Jewish law regulated behavior in relation to a multitude of phenomena of bodily emissions and discharges. The regulations were (and still are, in certain Orthodox communities today) interpret­ed as strictly prohibiting not just inter­course but all physical contact during menstruation and seven days afterward: passing dishes, touching hands, sleeping in the same bed. Thus the mikvah ritual seems to reflect sexist and patriarchal values — hardly something for modern women to explore and celebrate!
 

However, Rubin and Lax explain that they became fascinated with revisiting this obscured part of their heritage so as to improve their own understanding and clarify it for others. They found in mik­vah a way both of reclaiming a tradition and connecting with other women. Through one-on-one discussions they gradually uncovered a kind of grass­roots movement among Jewish women, including some Orthodox women, femi­nists, single and divorced women, bat­tered and abused women, lesbians, all attempting to forge a respectful revision of this ancient ritual. Instead of inter­preting the relevant term ("tameh") from Leviticus as signifying that women on their periods are "unclean," Rubin argues in her artist's statement that it can indicate a time when one is "spiritu­ally vulnerable" — something worth periodic acknowledgment. This brings me to the deepest difficulty of such material, the challenge of using either photographs or writings to convey something as elusive as a spiritual expe­rience. Again, while modern viewers are comfortable with many images of sex in art, when we encounter religion it is more common for artists to be taking potshots rather than celebrating or affirming it. The focus here on spirituali­ty combined with the subject matter of menstruation might make some viewers squirm.
 

They need not worry, however, because the work itself is delicate and subtle. One clear aim of the immersion series is to 'subjectify' the female body in the context of a private and intimate experience. I found this better done in some of the photographs than others. To depict a woman bathing or reborn in water has been a passion of artists for centuries. Everyone has seen paintings of Susannah and the Elders or Aphrodite emerging from the waves. A woman being immersed in water and emerging fresh is an ancient theme in art that has its own tradition — one these photos work against, which is to their credit. Historically, male artists injected a strong erotic element into such scenes that is problematic for its voyeurism and the way it objectifies women's bodies. For example, in the Susannah paintings by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Tintoretto, Ludovico Carracci, Guercino and many others, we see a beautiful naked maiden exposed before spying old lechers. Though they gaze at her from the side or back of the frame, the woman's body is turned front and center, toward us, the viewers. This scene stems from a story in the Biblical apocrypha (Susannah 15-24) of a modest and chaste married woman spied upon by lustful neighbors. After rejecting their advances, Susannah was put on trial for adultery when they retal­iated with false accusations; she was saved by the young prophet Daniel. The Susannah theme was undoubtedly popu­lar because it gave male painters the chance to show off a tasty female nude while at the same time assuming a moralistic stance that condemned lustful gazing.
 

Going against this weighty art-histor­ical tradition, Rubin has sought to show naked women in a way that blocks voyeurism and inspires respect. Religious restrictions and respect for modesty led the artist not to include any shots show­ing women's breasts or genitals. These women turn away from us with eyes closed; resisting a relation to the watcher, they interact only with their own reflections on the water surface above. Although we are observers at their inti­mate moments of immersing, we are not spying like the lewd elders upon Susan­nah. In some images we witness moments of beauty and grace. One large side view of a woman with gently relaxed limbs recalls familiar images of fetuses floating silently in the womb. The tinting here that shades from ultramarine in the depths of water to sepia from a glowing light above is unusual and effective. I like several images that show a woman in an indeterminate spatial position, apparent­ly resting her feet against the side of the mikvah, hair adrift. With her body ori­ented along the horizontal, or even tilted upside-down, this woman is at home in her weightless, immaculate environment. Several photographs convey vibrant energy and dynamism as the woman dives or erupts from the water — this is particularly true of one image shot from above that shows a woman emerging amid bright ripples. Some of the best images capitalize on the unusual lighting effects created by water. One shows a woman radiating waves of light off the top of her head (which is rather star-tlingly shaved). The reflected light in these pictures connotes a divine pres­ence, or at least a more-than-material one. A few other images are less effective because they are either too literal or slightly clicked; the former is true of some renderings of the physical interior of the mikvah, the latter of a close-up of hands trailing through bubbles of water. Given that the immersion series was done with models simulating the ritual and not with actual participants, I am tempted to wish that Rubin had been more daring in her depictions of nudity. After all, naked women do typically have female body parts in all the usual places, and it becomes noticeable and even dis­tracting that one is not seeing those parts here. This choice may reflect a too rigid self-imposed editing restriction. When breasts and genitalia are deleted, I worry that women's reproductive parts are still somehow taboo. To be sure, it would be a challenge to include full nudity — remember my point about all those Susannah paintings—and to do so would have made the material problem­atic for some of the anticipated exhibi­tion venues. But the photographs could venture more to explore the eroticism that some interviewees referred to in speaking of the mikvah experience. As these women expose their naked physical selves before God, they are also prepar-ing to resume the intimacy of sexual relations after a period of enforced separation that has intensified desire.

Historically, much spiritual experience has been tinged with erotic intensity (think of Bernini's famous sculpture of the mystical ecstasies of St. Teresa). Because the women's awareness of their bodies in mikvah includes the feeling of being specially potent, the images could strive to depict the state that French feminists have called jouissance, a woman's joyous pleasure in her own physicality. It might seem offensive to call an experience associated with rever­ence and prayer "erotic," but Rubin and Lax emphasize that Judaism does not assume the standard Christian dualism of soul and body. Instead, it revels in the spirituality of everyday physical activi­ties, including marital intercourse as well the eating of the Seder meal. Perhaps more evidently than the immersion series, the portraits convey a reconceptualization of the mikvah ritual that clearly rejects the view that men­struation and sexuality in general "pol­lute" a woman. Some of the women quoted here speak as if the mikvah enables them to feel God's presence within themselves — a feeling that extends to the men around them, as when one husband commented to his wife upon her return from mikvah "you are so, so holy." The deep significance of retaining tradition is especially moving in cases where older women recount their struggles to observe the ritual despite fierce state persecution:
 

The text from interviews has been culled here to a haiku-like brevity, both poignant and matter-of-fact, effectively capturing spoken rhythms to reveal a diversity of women's experiences. We see, for example, the image of a woman out­doors in sunshine and breezes, holding a prayer shawl, conveying exhilaration as she tells how the mikvah helped her real­ize she was now free after the end of a marriage:
 

Another eloquent shot of a woman doing her toenails describes her surprisingly complex self-scrutiny as she seeks to inventory the moral acts and omissions of each bodily part since her last immersion:

The Mikvah Project is definitely "serious issue" photography with a "theme" attached. Because many of the women fit into an agenda of cele­brating this unique ritual, the work runs the risk of being annoyingly affirming. And some of the photos edge toward sentimentality (particularly ones featuring women with children or infants). But the sweetness and serious­ness of some image-text pairs is more than balanced out by the buoyancy and humor of some other images, like the photo of a 76-year-old woman excited about the mikvah party before her wed­ding. In Rubin's deliberately out-of-focus shot, this lady's eyes glow as she exuberantly squeezes her elderly hus­band's face (incidentally flashing a huge diamond ring in the foreground). It is also bracing to hear from women who seem more cynical, like the one who says, "At this point, my emotional con­nection to mikvah is that it's a chore. I look forward to menopause;" or another who bluntly states that although she hoped mikvah would confirm her as a new woman before marriage, it didn't. The mikvah attendant punctured her fantasies by commenting tartly, "You're not such a young bride, are you?"

In the end, a clear enticement to the pleasures of mikvah is strongly conveyed in both the images and text. One woman uses mikvah to heal from a sense of loss about infertility, another to celebrate psychic release from a history of abuse, a third to confirm her coming out as a lesbian to her family. Attracted by such creative and revisionist conceptions of mikvah, my students who heard the artists lecture at the University of Hous­ton began to wonder whether they too could join in this ritual and gain its alleged benefits — even the non-Jewish women and some men. I didn't know enough to answer their question, but I wanted to tell them that mikvah should not be regarded as just an exotic variant on the "rejuvenating" day-spa experi­ence. We live in troubled times: the art world has undergone vicious attacks, gender issues remain controversial in many societies, religion is blamed for wars and violence around the world, and sexuality is still commodified in advertisements for numerous products. Given all this, it is risky but commend­able to tackle deep issues about religious heritage, sexuality, and spiritual commit­ment in the serious way that Leah Lax and Janice Rubin have done in this work.

CYNTHIA FREELAND IS PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND FORMER DIRECTOR OF WOMEN'S STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON. HER LATEST BOOK, BUT Is IT ART?, WAS PUBLISHED BY OXFORD IN 2001.

The Superpositional Schemata of Georges Rousse

Memory of Spaces and History
Allen's Landing,
Sunset Coffee Building
Houston, Texas
March 1 - April 1, 2002

Barbara Davis Gallery

Houston, Texas

February 23-March 23, 2002
 

Things and spaces exist in three dimen­sions. Photographs of things and spaces exist in two dimensions, but imply three dimensions through visual cues. So strong are these visual cues that we can­not easily see photographic images of real things as two dimensional without isolating fragments and depriving them of their thinginess. But structures and spaces can be manipulated, and cues subverted with the result that objects become ambiguous, lose their discrete identity. Georges Rousse's images do just that.

To accomplish this transformation of things and spaces, Rousse uses a manipulation I call the superposition of schemata. In Gombrich's terminol­ogy, "schemata" are systems of images or symbols that are somehow logically complete and identifiable. Geometrical figures, maps, words, blueprints, newspa­pers - these are schemata. Combinations of such schemata can be used for various poetic purposes. The surrealists have long used disparate elements to subvert a comfortable sense of reality and in the process to tap into the subconscious lev­el where the disparate becomes coherent. Collagists, especially Kurt Schwitters, use the textural aspect of these schemata to assemble essentially abstract construc­tions while still retaining recognizable references. Rousse uses aspects of both approaches.

But first a dilemma. Rousse's works typically involve two creative stages with two independent, but related, products. First there is a construction of some sort with painted images or an image painted directly upon a preexisting architectural interior. And second is the photograph of the construction. The photograph becomes simultaneously a record of the construction and an independent work of art. The first is something like paint­ing or sculpture and is part of that tradi­tion. These structures are embedded in real spaces that we walk in, sampling the multiple views, perhaps even noting the smells. The photograph, on the other hand, is part of a very different tradition. In any case we must address the archi­tectural sites and photographs somewhat

separately. Problems concerned with where aesthetic value resides in the photography of art in general (that is, in the depicted art object or in the pho­tograph) seem not to apply here. Rousse's photographs are clearly inde­pendent works and are not simple or even complex representations of existing structures such as, for example, the architectural images of Frederick Evans or Alfred Stieglitz, artistic as these may be. The difference is, I think, that with Evans and Stieglitz the photography of architecture is used to evoke a mood presumably present in the architecture itself and is therefore in some sense representational in intent. In contrast Rousse's images tend to negate the space or at least attenuate its identity with superimposed meanings. The resultant amalgam expresses artistic ideas not present in the images or spaces them­selves, but rather in their combination. This kind of image manipulation is more willful. The formal expression of this negating will and its aesthetic potency derives from a number of technical devices.

The most important device, covering the images in the installation at Allen's Landing and the photographs of the installations exhibited in the Barbara Davis Gallery, is the superposition of schemata. By superposition I mean the literal projection of one kind of image upon another with the result that schemata are somewhat foreign to the spaces they inhabit.
 

Let us consider first the installations at Allen's Landing, Memory of Spaces and History. Downstairs we find two paint­ings of classical architectural elevation drawings (i.e., facades without perspec­tive) in black and white superimposed on the otherwise empty warehouse-like space. But what is seen depends upon where you view it. From a particular privileged site of viewing the image looks a seemingly black-and-white draw­ing in a rectilinear format. But as you move in the space, the image changes in startling ways. If you approach the base of the architectural drawing, the space diverges in an inverted perspective remi­niscent of classical Chinese painting. If you walk at the sides, the straight edges are seen to be wildly bent and even phys­ically interrupted as the image passes over steps and elevations. All this is a consequence of the literal projection of this image against the irregular back­ground of the space. Viewed from the privileged site, our line of sight has a perspective with a fixed convergence point. As soon as we move, this fixed perspective is violated: our new perspective is inconsistent with the painted image.

Pictorialism was a late 19^th and early 20^th century worldwide photographic style, which arrived in Russia in the late 1880s through European magazines and Russian photographers who traveled abroad. Curators Evgeny Berezner and Irina Tchemyreva (of the State Center for Museums and Exhibitions of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Fed­eration) write in the FotoFest catalog essay that in Russia the movement "blossomed like an amazing flower, quite dissimilar from its Western counterpart." Pictorialism took Russia by storm, bringing about a new way of seeing and recording in a vast land of diverse peo­ples. Its influence went beyond the scope of photography and it endured long after its popularity faded in other countries. Prior to World War I, it was the domi­nant trend in Russian photography.

The next generation of pictorialists who began photographing on the eve of World War I expanded the boundaries of pictorialism and created a mass culture for their works. Among them were Niko­lay Andreyev, who participated in 63 photo exhibitions in Russian and abroad and won numerous medals; Vasily Ulitin, co-founder of the All-Russian Society of Professional Photographers in 1915; Boris Eliseev and Aleksandr Grinberg.

The last group of pictorialists worked in the 19205 and included Leonid Shokin, who in less turbulent times might have been a splendid landscape photographer, and Sergey Ivanov-Alliluev, renown for his landscapes and portraits..

While it was the pictorialists who initially brought the art of revolutionary Russia to the world, the concept of what constituted Soviet art became increas­ingly rigid. The press began to refer to pictorialism as bourgeois, petty and harmful to new proletarian art. Never­theless, creativity peaked in the mid-19205 and several leading pictorialists, including Grinberg, worked at Moscow's film studios as photographers and cam­eramen. By the late 19208, pictorialist photographic societies were dissolved. The artists continued to meet informally for discussions on the future of photog­raphy until 1935, trying to adapt to the new social and cultural reality and applying their skills where they could.
 

In the 1935 Masters of Soviet Photogra­phy exhibition, the work of some pictori­alists were awarded certificates of merit, but this was the last occasion that photo­graphs in this style were seen in Russia for more than 50 years. A review in the magazine Soviet FOTO acknowledged the "unquestioned mastery and high professional skills" of the pictorialists. What followed this hard-won acclama­tion was a virtual death sentence for Russian pictorial photography. While no names were mentioned, works were criticized for: "admiration for pre-Revolutionary culture of the estates of the gentry and architecture of old Moscow," referring to photos of Ery-omin, Klepikov, Svishchyov-Paola and Grinberg; "depiction of useless scenes of rural life in the period of socialist restructuring of agriculture," focusing on works by Andreyev, Ulitin and Shokin; and "nude models the working class has no need for" pointing at photos by Grinberg and Eryomin. Soon after­ward, Grinberg was convicted of "propa­ganda of pornography" and Ulitin was tried for calumny of Society power. Both spent years of hard labor in exile.

Imagine, then, the challenge faced by Mikhail Golosovsky, a Russian optical engineer and photographer who searched out, collected and preserved many Russian pictorialist masterpieces at a time when the style was not only artistically unfashionable but out of favor politically. Golosovsky headed the well-known Moscow photo club "Krasnogorsk" where, in the 19708, he came in contact with Russian pictorialist masters and became interested in their aesthetic ideas, their practice of "art for art's sake" and their depiction of the Russian countryside. He began acquir­ing works of those masters, buying an archive from a disinterested widow, or finding individual prints in out of the way places. Today, Golosovsky's private collection is at the center of the revival of Russian pictorialism.

The work of by photographers, Sergey Lobovikov (1870-1941) and Leonid Shokin (1896-1962) shown together at the Williams Tower Gallery, point out how differences of style existed between generations of photographers. Lobovikov as of the first generation ae presents an intimate, tender view of pre-Revolutionary Russian life. His portrait of Akulina, the Sweet, captures the essence of a peasant beauty whose big, lovely smile is as enduring as the day it was photographed in 1940.

Shokin shows a vision more attuned to line and shape in the way workers and environment intertwines. In Flax Strew­ing (1940) gelatin silver-toned bromide print, a curved line of women in a field bend at the waist, gathering strands of flax that they lay to dry in shimmering rows that resemble pale waves lapping a shore. In his photograph, The Meeting of the Collective Farm (1931), a work-worn woman addresses the men who oversee her collective. As she raises her hands to plead her case, Shokin captures her frus­tration, anger, helplessness and grief. The gesture could serve as a metaphor for the decades-long ban of pictorialism and censure of its adherents.

MARY STARK LOVE IS A FREELANCE WRITER AND PHOTOGRAPHER LIVING IN HOUSTON, TEXAS.

Editor's Note: The exhibition Russian Pictorialism, by ROSIZO State Centre for Museums and Exhibitions of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation with FotoFest, presented works by 16 artists. It covered the history of pictorialism in Russia from the 1890s to the present day. Included are works from: the Kirov Regional Art Museum, Mikhail Golosovsky's large private collection in Krasnogorsk, near Moscow, the family collection of Sergey Andreyev, son of the pictorial photographer Nikolay Andreyev, from Pushchino; and works loaned by George Kolosov.

The Processes of (De) Composition

FERNANDO R. CASTRO

The Ends of Process
Oscar Munoz
Sicardi Gallery
Houston, Texas
March 2-20, 2002
 

LAURA LARK

Ponti Sister by Vanessa Beecroft
Lawing Gallery
Houston, Texas
March 9-April 13, 2002

SALLY GILCHRIST

LEN KOWITZ
 

The Lupe Murcheson Curator of Contemporary Art

Dallas, Texas

May 12-August 18, 2002

Stephen Dirado

Houston Center for Photography

Houston, Texas

September 13-October 26, 2002

JACINDA RUSSELL
 

Vik Muniz's Model Pictures
Menil Collection, Houston, Texas
February 21-June 9, 2002
 

ANITA DOUTHAT

Taken By Design: Photographs From The Institute Of Design, 1937-1971
Edited By David Travis And Elizabeth Siegel

In the foreword to the catalogue for the exhibition Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937-1971, James N. Wood, director and president of The Art Institute of Chicago, states: "Ask nearly any American photographer today whom he or she trained with, and you will likely be able to trace his or her education back to the Institute of Design." In all fairness, I must begin this review by admitting that this statement includes me. I received an undergraduate degree in design with an emphasis on photography from the Institute of Design (ID), studied art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later pursued an M.F.A. at the Uni­versity of New Mexico. Seeking a warmer climate and a different photographic point of view in Albuquerque, I found myself studying with Thomas Barrow, an ID graduate, and Betty Hahn who trained with Henry Holmes Smith at Indiana University. Smith, in turn, taught at the New Bauhaus with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

The reach of the Institute of Design is broad indeed, leaving generations of its photographic progeny with a firm foun­dation to work from and, in some cases, a set of principles to rebel against. In the world of academic photographic train­ing, you can leave Chicago, but you can never get away!

The Art Institute of Chicago present­ed its extraordinarily elegant version of the exhibition Taken by Design from March 2 through May 12, 2002. It trav­eled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (July 20-October 20, 2002) and The Philadelphia Museum of Art (December 7, 2002-March 2, 2003).

Even if you are familiar with the work of key figures such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Gyorgy Kepes, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind and their numerous well-known students, startling surprises abound. The project includes 200 images by 75 photographers. One of the highlights of Taken by Design is its highly egalitarian nature. Each section of the exhibition and accompanying cata­logue includes photographers who have never received the attention they deserve along-side the most established figures. For instance, Arthur Siegel, whose on-again, off-again relationship with the ID spanned 40 years and whose work was never easy to categorize, is featured prominently. Due to this breadth, the viewer gets a more complex picture of an extremely fertile program.

Because the exhibition is not travel­ing to the Houston area, this article emphasizes the accompanying catalogue. Just as the exhibition is visually stun­ning, the publication, edited by David Travis and Elizabeth Siegel, respectively curator and assistant curator of photog­raphy at The Art Institute of Chicago, is a major contribution to the field of pho­tographic scholarship. It marks the cul­mination of five years of research and serves at least three very important func-tions.First, it beautifully reproduces the photographs found in the exhibition, bringing together the most extensive col­lection of ID-related imagery published to date.

Second, it traces the development of the country's first institution to offer a graduate degree in photography, a phe­nomenon we now take for granted. The New Bauhaus founded by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in 1937 became the School of Design (1944-1946) and then the Institute of Design, which became asso­ciated with the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1955. In encyclopedic detail, essays by Lloyd C. Englebrecht, Keith F. Davis and John Grimes recount the vari­ous stages of the school's founding, the rise to prominence of its photography department, and the department's inevitable decline. Further perspective is added by Hattula Moholy-Nagy's affectionate tribute to her father, Larry Viskochil's essay on the larger photo­graphic scene in Chicago during the years 1937-1971, and Elizabeth Siegel's article on the interrelationship between film and photography at the ID.

Third, the project may act as a cata­lyst for further exploration. The exhibi­tion and catalogue cover a tremendous amount of ground, but they suggest many avenues for more detailed research.

Visually, the catalogue is quite hand­some. The exhibition's images, chosen by David Travis, are beautifully sequenced and reproduced. They are nicely inter­spersed, in roughly chronological order, between the essays and other visual ephemera such as reproductions of school catalogue covers, illustrations of ID assignments and photographs of people involved in the institution.

The publication's frontispiece boldly quotes Laszlo Moholy-Nagy from Vision in Motion: "The enemy of photography is the convention ... the salvation of photography is the experiment." The ini­tial section of the catalogue covers the years 1936-1946, from the founding of the New Bauhaus through the untimely death of Moholy-Nagy. It commences with a rich selection of experimental images such as photograms and pho­tomontages, techniques linked to the European and Russian avant-gardes of the early 20TH century including the original Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany. Transplanting of these ideas and tech­niques occurred because Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes fled from Germany to the United States via Lon­don just before the outbreak of World War II. They brought with them their Utopian idealism, their fascination with light and their multi-disciplinary approaches. They found American pho­tographic allies in Arthur Siegel, Nathan Lerner and Henry Holmes Smith at a time when photography in this country was dominated by more traditional approaches.

Kepes' portraits of his wife, such as Unfitted (Juliet with Peacock Feather and Red Leaf), provide the biggest surprise in this section. Such sophisticated layering of hand-painting on a photographic sur­face seems strikingly contemporary. These exquisite portraits date from 1937-1938! Kepes later founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT.
 

Phil Harris is a Portland, Oregon-based photographer. He actually had a darned good time at FotoFest, where he donated a few prints. Having learned a thing or two about shameless self-promotion at the feet of the masters, his work can now be viewed at www.pictureheadpress.com.

These photos by Frank Armstrong represent informal discussions and reviews that took place in the lobby at meeting place during FotoFest 2002.

The hype typically generated by FotoFest tends to focus on video installation, interactive computer enhanced works and the latest, greatest digital technique used to fabricate images that can only beg to hold interest. The vast offering of exhibits from the 2002 edition was not different, with the exception of the buzz about a clever installation in the sub-space at Diverseworks.
 

Upon entering the exhibition 20,000 Spools of Thread, the viewer became immediately aware of the tight space in which the work was displayed. The drape of 20,000 multi-colored spools of thread (exhibition partially funded by Coats & Clark) instantly rendered a sense of being overwhelmed. With a silent nod to Jan van Eyck, (The Marriage of the Arnolfini) as one turns his or her back to the spools, a discovery of a series of small convex mirrors on the reverse wall is made and the image, Virtual Environment 1, is revealed.

COMPILED BY DANIELA LOZANO

Barthelme, Frederick. Trip. New York: Powerhouse Books, 1999.

Photographs by Susan Lipper taken throughout the United States accompanied by text by Frederick Barthelme provide a visual essay docu­menting life on the road.
 

Birringer, Johannes. Performance on the Edge: Transformations of Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: The Athlone Press, 2000, 285 pages.
This book seeks to map out the new territory of contemporary theatre, dance, media arts and activism. It addresses the politics of community-oriented and reconstructive artmaking in an era marked by, among other things, the AIDS crisis, warfare and xenophobia.
 

Breakey, Kate. Small Deaths. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press, 2001,167 pages.
Oversized, hand-colored images of found animal remains from photographer Kate Breakey's ongo­ing Small Deaths series. Breakey's work has been linked to the larger traditions of still-life painting and the postmortem photography of the 19"¹ cen­tury.
 

Brodwick, Marilyn Spievak. Faces of Aging. Galveston, TX: The University of Texas Medical Branch, 2001, 97 pages.

Marilyn Spievak Brodwick, a geriatric researcher and free-lance photographer, takes black-and-white portraits of elderly people that portray a positive image of aging.

Carver, Antonia. Blink: 100 Photographers, 010 Curators, 010 Writers. New York: Phaidon Press, Inc., 2002, 440 pages.
This book provides an up-to-the-minute, global overview of con­temporary photog­raphy from art to photojournalism, fashion to digital photography. Ten curators chose 10 photographers each who they consider to have emerged and broken new ground in the last five years. Ten writers were also chosen by the curators based on their ability to illustrate the cultural context surrounding the pho­tography.
 

Eklund, Douglas; Goldstein, Ann; Hambourg, Maria Morris & Wylie, Charles.Tftomos Struth 1977-2002. Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002, 189 pages.

Catalogue encompassing Struth's entire body of work dating from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. Engaging essays by well-known photogra­phy and art experts chronicle Struth's career.
 

Greenough, Sarah. Alfred Stieglitz: the Key Set: the Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002,1012 pages.
The definitive two-volume catalogue of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Donated to the National Gallery by Stieglitz's wife, the painter Georgia O'Keeffe, the set consists of more than 1,600 works. The catalogue includes complete in-depth notes on each photograph and establishes a chronology of Stieglitz's art.
 

Junior, Christiano. Un Pais en Transicion: Fotografias de Buenos Aires, Cuyo y el Noroeste. Chile: Fundacion Antorchas, 2002,119 pages. Photographs of Argentina from 1867 to 1883 by photographer Christiano Junior with text by Beatriz Bragoni, Abel Alexander and Luis Priamo. Includes an English translation.
 

Kellner, Thomas. Monumente. Germany: Burkhard Arnold, 2002, 63 pages.

Kellner offers unconventional architectural photo­graphs of famous buildings. Includes text in German and English by Gerhard Gliiher.
 

Madigan, Martha. Vernal Equinox. New York: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, 2001, 55 pages.
Madigan uses her version of a nineteenth-century process originally called "sun-printing" or "heliog-raphy" to create photograms of human figures and plant forms.
 

Manchester, Kate. The Perfect Wedding Cake. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2001.
A guide for bride and groom on how to choose a wedding cake. Featuring full-color photographs of beautiful wedding cakes by Zeva Oelbaum.
 

McDaris, Wendy. Visualizing the Blues. Memphis, TN: The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, 2000,159 pages.

This book brings together photographs by world-renowned photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Margaret Bourke-White and Walker Evans, as well as work by emerging artists to cre­ate a portrait of the culture of the American South and its rich roots and experiences.

Merritt, Raymond; Earth, Miles. A Thousand Hounds. New York: Taschen, 2000, 600 pages.
An unusual history of photography told exclusively with images of dogs. Spanning over 150 years, this book chronicles the life and times of man and dog and includes the work of famous photographers and artists such as Picasso, Man Ray, David Salle, Elliot Erwitt and William Wegman.
 

Renner, Eric. Pinhole Photography. Boston: Focal Press, 2000,189 pages.

An illustrated history and practical how-to guide to pinhole photography.
 

Sheikh, Fazal. A Camel for the Son. Germany: Sheikh, Fazal, 2001,110 pages.
This book is the first in a series of projects intend­ed to further awareness of international human rights issues. Text and photographs of Somali refugees in Kenya by Sheikh.
 

Sheikh, Fazal. Ramadan Moon. Germany: Sheikh, Fazal, 2001, 59 pages.

The second in a series of projects intended to fur­ther awareness of international human rights issues, this book features portraits of a Somali woman refugee in the Netherlands and her story.
 

Siegfried, Elizabeth. Life Lines. Toronto, Ontario: Hathaway Press, 2000.

Elizabeth Siegfried's self-portraits and images of nature provide a visual narrative that is both per­sonal and psychological in nature.
 

Westmoreland Museum of American Art. Spirit of a Community: The Photographs of Charles 'Teenie' Harris. Greensburg, PA: Westmoreland Museum of American Art, 2001, 48 pages.
Catalogue for an exhibition of Charles Teenie' Harris's photographs. This is a sampling of materi­al from his vast body of work documenting the daily life of African American communities of Pittsburgh.
 

Zarate, Ernest J. At the Beach. Petaluma, CA: Tomelet Press, 1999, 27 pages.
Photographs of the renowned California beach culture by California photographer Ernest J. Zarate.