The Dark Room: Saturday, 7 March 2015
Crime Scenes by Sarah-Marie Land, The Dark Room’s next photography
exhibition is on display from March 7th through April 30th, and will
celebrate its opening on Saturday, March 7th, 2015 with a reception held by
Sarah Marie, the International Photography Hall of Fame & Museum, and
curator Jason Gray from 6-9pm.
“Beginning with a collection of news articles, crimes specific to
the city of St. Louis, I commenced the creation of a series of fragmented
images and text. After having researched the selected crimes, articles, I
traveled to each exact location and investigated the visual environment. I am
extremely drawn to the manner in which objects, spaces and environments are organized
– the way in which visual elements are connected (i.e. – natural and man-made).
I also seek to better understand our psychological associations and experiences
with physical spaces, structures.
I explored this project in an investigative manner similar to that
of Sophie Calle, Thomas Demand, Weegee, Frances Glessener Lee and Corinne May
Botz (The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death), and Anglea
Strassheim. In particular, Calle assumes the role of a detective in her
project titled, “The Hotel”, where she documents the objects and belongings of
hotel guests in a voyeuristic manner. Assuming the role of detective, I also
approached and explored each crime scene in a voyeuristic, detective-like
manner. In addition, I was fascinated with her project “The Blind”, as she
incorporates images and texts, actual events and reimagined visualizations. I
believe the photographs by Corinne May Botz (The Nutshell Studies of
Unexplained Death) are also a great influence concerning the reconstruction
of a crime scene. In my work, I deconstruct an environment while constructing
an image.
The asymmetrical landscapes are visual and
psychological dissections of a crime in a particular environment. By
creating diptychs, I seek to challenge and extend understandings of the actual
and imagined.”
- Sarah-Marie Land
“Photography is easily one of the most elusive mediums in
art. This is because responses to the photographic are so varied; one can
be enthralled by the subject depicted or the compositional design, just as
easily as they can be struck with a sense of familiarity, even solidarity, or
conversely, dismay. An image made by a camera imparts all sorts of
wisdom, about a person, place or thing, at the same moment as it conceals the
full truth about that object.
When one approaches Sarah-Marie Land's Crime Scenes for
the first time, the possibilities are endless. What are these places so
curiously juxtaposed? Does it matter that I recognize some of the
locations, but not others? What is the connection between all of
these? As I stood, staring into one of the diptychs, a memory linked to
the location that I was viewing came to me. Then I read the small caption
beneath the photographs, and the experience that I was having vaporized in an
instant. The mystery was revealed, and suddenly all of the possibilities
that had just existed became one. This is not a trap, nor is it an
accident.
That the artist should cite Sophie Calle and Thomas Demand as
influences is not surprising. For, like those artists, Land's work
constructs an interplay between the artist, photograph and viewer that invites
a dialogue between photographic truth and obfuscation.”
- Curator, Jason Gray
615 N. Grand Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63013
posted by Bill Barrett at 3:54 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home