Slightly Lucid

Jackie Nickerson - Faith

— Posted by aislinn, December 22, 2008 | Documentary

I’ve been an admirer of Jackie Nickerson’s Faith series for a while now. Her subjects are consumed in their life and unaltered by Nikerson’s pressence -  It’s as if she was a Mary statue with a camera. There’s a sense of politeness and a delibrete absence on the photographers part. As a photographer should, she captures her subjects and their environment in essence and truth. The portraits of this series are as equally captivating.

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Peter Baker’s After Hours

— Posted by aislinn, December 21, 2008 | Landscapes

Peter Baker’s series After Hours takes familar and mundane places and awakens its ghosts and makes them eerie and desolate.

This image is also quite fitting for today’s official first day of winter and for today’s huge dump of snow on Montreal. Get your snowshoes out!

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Beauty is a Tactic - The War Photographs of Norfolk and Nachtwey

— Posted by aislinn, December 18, 2008 | Documentary, Guest Post

This is a guest post by Ottawa photographer Tony Fouhse. I featured Tony’s impressive series USER a while back and since then, I’ve been following his work. I also enjoy following his blog and I’m happy he’s agreed to contribute to Slightly Lucid.

James Nachtwey and Simon Norfolk take their cameras to war, not exclusively, but a lot. Both have an “eye” (though I prefer the word “brain”) that can, and usually does, turn the horror they witness into beautiful photographs. Both turn these beautiful images into objects (prints) that are also beautiful. They both show their work in private and public galleries (as well as in the traditional press, on the internet and in books.)

Both have been criticized for this…..turning horror into beauty and hanging it on walls.

(Of course, these aren’t the only two photographers/artists whose war work is beautiful and exhibited. I use them here as a case in point.)

At last year’s New York Photo Festival, in answer to a question about how war and beauty go together, Norfolk used the phrase “beauty is a tactic”.

The idea of turning war photos (or any photos of human suffering) into beautiful commodities raises all kinds of issues.  But this one phrase, “beauty is a tactic”, neatly tips the discussion into more positive territory.

I believe that beauty reaches farther into the human psyche than almost anything else. I also believe that these photographers photographs have a certain quality that elevates them, that makes them worth, somehow, more than standard press photos of carnage, mayhem and horror; press photos that get consumed in one sitting and are thrown out with the garbage the next day.

In order to get people to look and to react to the state of the world these days new tactics must be employed. Beauty is one of them.

About Tony Fouhse:

Tony Fouhse is an Ottawa based photographer. USER, his series of portraits of crack addicts has been been criticized for being beautiful. He will be exhibiting the latest USER images in Ottawa, at Gallery La Petite Mort, in May, 2009  and at IPS Gallery in Montreal in June, 2009.

You can take a look at Tony’s work on his website and you can keep up todate with his news and views at his blog.

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Peter Beste - True Norwegian Black Metal

— Posted by aislinn, December 17, 2008 | Documentary

Peter Beste’s series on Norwegian heavy metal music is ironically very poetic. Heavy metal is not a genre of music that I’m inclined to listen to and would possibly leave me to have stereotypical judgments towards the scene. However Beste’s extensive work on Norwegian black metal extends to express very creative and artistic subjects. There are some clichés but for the most part Beste takes the heavy metal scene beyond it’s typicalities. Check out True Norwegian Black Metal over at Peter Beste’s website.

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Rich-Joseph Facun - Sonoran Desert

— Posted by aislinn, December 16, 2008 | Documentary

Rich-Joseph Facun is a captivating documentary photographer. He has an impressive list of portofolios on his website, a wide range of subjects and all equally stimulating. I had a hard time picking a single image, there are many stunning ones to choose from.  This shot is from his series Sonoran Desert.

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