These two photographs, part of a rotating display of works from the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, speak to my recent images which include mirrors and paired images.
General Idea (AA Bronson) - Mirror Sequences (1969)
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| General Idea (AA Bronson), Mirror Sequences (1969) Art Institute Chicago, Photography and Media, Gallery 10 |
Discussion by AA Bronson:
In 1968, when I began taking self-portraits, I was concerned with the body: more specifically, with my body, and with my body in relation to my friends' bodies. I had no other way to measure the world. Lacking an identity, or any way to judge my separation from others, I began with my physical self. This would later prove inadequate, but it was a beginning.
http://users.rcn.com/aamark/mirrormirror/lookingglass/mirror1.htm
Mirror Sequences wall text in Gallery 10:
In 1968, when I began taking self-portraits, I was concerned with the body: more specifically, with my body, and with my body in relation to my friends' bodies. I had no other way to measure the world. Lacking an identity, or any way to judge my separation from others, I began with my physical self...
-AA Bronson, 2002
Mirror Sequences is a self-portrait in which a convex mirror reflects and multiplies a fragmented body. The photograph was taken by AA Bronson and is credited to General Idea, an artist collective founded in 1969 by Bronson, Felix Partz (Canadian, 1945-1994), and Jorge Zontal (Italian, 1944-1994). General Idea would go on to create parodies of the art world and consumer culture and respond forcefully to the AIDS epidemic.
Eve Sonneman, Dusk (1979)
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| Eve Sonneman, Dusk (1976) Art Institute of Chicago, Photography and Media, Gallery 10 |
Dusk wall text in Gallery 10:
To create this diptych, Eve Sonneman paired two images, taken moments apart, of tourists on an observation deck.
Their shadows, as well as the photographer's, loom large and draw attention to the darkening of the sky in the moment between the frames. By displaying images shot in rapid succession, Sonneman challenged the notion of the "decisive moment," a reigning idea in mid-century photography according to which the best picture is the one that entirely sums up a scene in a single instant. Instead, Sonneman suggests that photography can reveal time to be arbitrary and mutable, never fully frozen by the camera.
