Stefan Abrams, Auto Show series
Philadelphia Introductions:
Stefan Abrams
by
Andrea Kirsh
|
|
Philadelphia Introductions:
by
|
|
November 21, 2006 Stefan Abrams is interested in the spaces of desire and the personal and social activities which manipulate desire. Abrams was trained as a painter, and in his initial foray into photography he was highly conscious of its mediated qualities and its potential for voyeurism. He confronted both of these issues in the series Untitled (After Cinema) (2001)*. Each of the small (4.5"x 7") black and white images depicts the same view of a spare room: a lamp at center casts a cone of light upon a pleated window shade, the corner of a table, and the television set that is the focus of interest. Each photograph is distinguished (and titled) by the image on the television screen. They are stills from films by Eisentein, Bresson, Lang, Fellini, Godard. These, then, are the selection of a film buff, a historical collection by masters of the medium. But they are not films; they have been transposed to video. So these photographs are not only still images taken from movies, but are of video transcriptions of films. In one case, in which we see a close-up of Maria Falconetti in Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, we have yet another remove. The title informs us that the image is from Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie; a character in that movie is watching the classic, silent film. And these multiple translations of medium imply not only a film buff’s inside knowledge, but a shift of reception. Films, like theater, are public events and whatever emotional or intellectual catharsis they offer is communal; whereas video is primarily screened in private, and the atmosphere of Untitled (After...) is distinctly private; the television is relatively modest in scale and has rabbit ears. So the implied viewer of Untitled (After...) is indulging a private passion. And the series implies an unseen viewer; the video, after all, is on. Yet the viewer, sitting just beyond the camera’s reach, is unseen. So Abrams’ photographs mine subject matter that includes film, a medium associated with spectacle and mass desire, as well as the history of film, its self-referentiality and its fetishization, or private desire. The photographs were taken with the video recording on pause, allowing Abrams to record a complete and focused image on the TV screen. This mimics the “snapshot” that we think of, metaphorically, as memory, rather than recording an instantaneous trace of the videcon’s moving scan, a movement too fast for our brains to retain. Abrams has created a series, a narrative, if you will, in which the protagonist, like Godot, is always central and never present; a series about the power and seduction of the visual that withholds its own central image. The series bears an interesting comparison with Hiroshi Sugimoto’s series of Theaters (1975-2001). Sugimoto set his camera, lens wide-open, in empty cinemas for the duration of each film; the results produced intense white on the movie screens, within darkened but lushly-detailed interiors. Sugimoto’s images address the movie palace as the locus of public fantasy and longing, whereas Abrams focuses on the film as a projection of individual desire. With the series Auto Show (2006), Abrams turned to desire in the public sphere. In repeated visits to the Philadelphia Auto Show Abrams found a situation in which no one minded being photographed; visitors to the show acknowledged him, but became so involved with the cars that they forgot his presence. He photographed them through the cars’ windshields, alone or with a friend or family member beside them. Their faces bear unfocused gazes of introspection. The paired ceiling lights of the exhibition hall reflect off the glass, creating a pattern of white circles across the images which emphasizes the demarcation between the public space of the auto show and the sealed-off intimacy of the car’s front seat. The photographs of Auto Show are large (24"x 36") and dark; it takes work to distinguish the people behind the pattern of lights. Autos are the great American obsession. Americans so identify with their cars that a large percentage give their vehicles names. Auto shows encourage this personalized interest and champion the industry’s ability to meet the public’s fantasies. They also represent consumerism in its most celebratory form. Yet Abrams’ subjects are lost in private (even if shared) reverie. Abrams mentioned that he thought of the series in relation to Walker Evans’ surreptitious subway photographs (shot in the 1930s, and published in 1966 as Many are Called). Yet Abrams had specifically asked for, and received permission to photograph, each person. They are unaware of the camera not because of his stealth but because of their own distraction -- the distraction of the cars. The individuals, lost in thought, are unaware (or unconcerned) of the extent that these thoughts are public and commercialized. The series’ darkness reads as a commentary on contemporary American society, trapped within the spaces of private vehicles and the personalized sound tracks of I-Pods, deluded-ly independent as it moves in unison, at a corporately-driven pace. * The series was published as Untitled (After Cinema); work by Stefan Abrams and Edward R. O’Neill, Aaron Levy, ed. (Slought Networks, Philadelphia, 2001). Stefan Abrams’ work can be seen at www.stefanabrams.com
© 2006 Andrea Kirsh and InLiquid.com; images copyright © Stefan Abrams |