Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

internetworkers - [internetworkers] Invitation: Photo Exhibit at the Open Eye in Carrboro

internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Michael Czeiszperger <michael AT czeiszperger.org>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [internetworkers] Invitation: Photo Exhibit at the Open Eye in Carrboro
  • Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 11:15:50 -0400

If you will excuse a little self-promotion, the Open Eye in Carrboro will be featuring some of my photographs through the month of April. Due to scheduling conflicts the "opening" will be on Sunday, April 15th from 3-5PM. If you saw the photos in Market Street Books last year, only about half of these photos are new, but I figured the Open Eye would have a different clientele than last year's venue, so it wouldn't matter that much.

I hope you can make it! (And forward this email to anyone who might be interested.)

Thanks,

--Michael


Artist's Bio:

Stephen King wrote that “Most of what writers write about their work is ill-informed bullshit”, and despite my lack of qualifications in the world of photography, I will offer the opinion that the same goes for photographers. For example, go to a photography exhibit in any museum in the country, read the descriptions, and try to figure out what exactly what the words mean. For example, a giant close up of a hand holding a slab of raw pork might be described as “exploring the relationship between structure and tactile sensation.”

We learn that what looks to be a poorly-lit picture of a nude woman in a doorway should be “viewed intertexturally as contained by the boundaries of genre formation.” Perhaps it is a layman’s conceit , but I believe there is a line that is crossed when the photograph fails to be of interest by itself, and is only made relevant through pages of explanation.

This skepticism towards fine-art photography has its roots in my experiences as an avant-garde music composer as a young man. In college, despite being an engineering major, I actively composed and performed music at Music School events, and was even chosen by the school to receive a composition commission. There was a piano in the lobby of the school of music, and one afternoon a interesting-looking man was performing what appeared to be a new avant-garde composition, and he had attracted a crowd of listeners. After talking with the man, however, it was apparent he wasn’t part of the new music scene at all, but rather was simply a homeless person who was trying to pass the time somewhere warm. The only difference between his music and the music of any number of avant-garde composers was the accompanying text.

My main interest in photography is portraiture, a popular theme since the invention of the medium. Photography stands out among visual art forms in its sheer popularity; the number of people taking pictures of each other is a large percentage of the population, dwarfing the number of individuals who paint or sculpt or create anything else you’d see on exhibit. It is strange to me that pictures of ordinary people, one of the most common things in the world, should be considered a worthy subject to look at outside of one’s own family, and yet somehow people are exorably drawn to look at each other.

The most common description of a good portrait is it reveals something unique about the subject, and although I love portraiture, in my opinion the ability of a picture to reveal anything unique about a subject is quite limited. People are simply too complex to be reduced to a single capture of light. My approach is the opposite in that I specifically look for those elements of the subject which are not unique, but rather are iconic and universal, and it is this quality which enables the viewer to more easily relate to the subject.

For example, when I take a picture of a boy picking out a worm for fishing, the intent is not to just capture the propensity of this particular boy to get his hands dirty, but rather to remind adults of their carefree summers spent fishing with friends and brothers and parents, so that the viewer can relate to the subject through their own experiences. Of course, this approach can easily lead to cliche, but cliche is all too easy with any approach to photography given the sheer millions of people taking pictures with almost the same equipment.

You'll notice that few of my pictures have titles. The main reason for that is I want each viewer to have the opportunity to react in their own way without being told how to feel. Adding a title becomes a game where the viewer glances at an image, reads the title, and then tries to "get it", as if the picture is a test question with only one answer.

For example, if you look at a picture of a bawling child, imagine the changes in your emotional response if the title was "Dropped Candy" vs. "Grandparent Died". In both cases the image is exactly the same, but our reactions and emotions are not. The logical extension of having a title is adding a narrative, which is the purview of photojournalism, and while there is an art to telling a story with pictures, that is the opposite of what I do. My goal is to have each picture survive on its own visual merits without having to rely on any one context.

________________________________________________________________________ _________
Michael Czeiszperger Photography
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
http://learningtosee.org | 919-619-0607







Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page