Now Again

120 Pages·2005·1.27 MB·English

LAURA LETINSKY
Now Again
Text/Tekst
Karen Irvine
Galerie Kusseneers
© 2005 Galerie Kusseneers, Laura Letinsky
Text: Karen Irvine
Dutch translation: Jef Panken
Printed in Belgium
D/2005/8761/3 - ISBN 90-7673209-4
© All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means
without the prior written permission of
Galerie Kusseneers.
Galerie Kusseneers
De Burburestraat 11, B - 2000 Antwerp
Ph. + 32 (0)3 257 24 00
[email protected]
www.kusseneers.com
Alone, Somewhere and abundance, and continue a long
tradition of translating objects with
verisimilitude. Like the painters Clara
Of her photographic series from the 1990s, Peeters (1594 – c. 1657) and Jacob van Es
Venus Inferred, which depicts couples in (1590-1666) from Antwerp, Letinsky’s
their private, tensely psychological and tabletop arrangements are positioned
erotic spaces, Laura Letinsky has said that against a neutral background, accentuating
she wanted to photograph what love looks the colors, volumes, and surface textures of
like.1 To that end, she explored the pitfalls the objects on display. Exquisitely detailed,
of day to day familiarity and captured the the pictures present a cornucopia of objects
uneasiness of men and women enduring that evoke sensory impressions such as
the collapse of infatuation that is inherent melon rinds, sticky candy wrappers,
to idealized romance. This book presents and polished silverware. There is an
two series she has made since Venus aesthetic leveling that occurs between
Inferred: pictures of tabletop still lifes luxury items and regular everyday objects as
(Hardly More than Ever, 1996-2004), they are placed side by side and carefully
and unfurnished rooms and formal gardens rendered – a bottle twist top, for example,
(Somewhere, Somewhere, 2003-present). looks as beautiful as the silver bowl beside
These photographs are all un-peopled, it. As the Flemish masters did before her,
thoughtful compositions in which Letinsky Letinsky records sensuous, short-lived
extends her investigation of qualified effects such as wilting flowers or fruit at
intimacy by recognizing that certain spaces various stages of ripeness. Like stains,
and domestic details are psychologically her photographs are permanent, however,
charged. and at odds with the decaying nature of
the scenes.
Letinsky’s photographs from the series
Hardly More Than Ever record the The morning light in these pictures signals
aftermath of human consumption in that this is the day after; there is only the
domestic spaces. Like Flemish still-life residual evidence of social clatter. Whereas
paintings of the seventeenth century, the Flemish masters typically depicted food
Letinsky’s photographs emphasize daily life and fineries before or during consumption
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in order to serve as a memento mori Often shot from a high vantage point to
– a reminder of the fleeting nature of life minimize the overlapping of objects and to
and the transience of earthly pleasures – enhance the overall tension in the
Letinsky’s pictures record the aftermath of composition, objects appear to be at
experience, scenes in which the pleasure oblique and disparate angles. Letinsky
has presumably been exhausted. exploits the flattening mechanisms of
Photography’s seeming ability to seize a photography and undermines the
moment from the flow of time has long propensity for the camera lens, and our
been held as a register of mortality and brains, to correct. Just as Cézanne
proof of the inevitability of death – an idea understood that paintings are not faithful
perhaps most notably discussed by writers representations of reality, by making her
Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes. photographs feel not-quite-right, Letinsky
By focusing on what is decaying and reminds us that all photographs are
discarded over what holds promise and abstractions – and constructions.
allure, Letinsky endows her work with a
finality that amplifies the idea of Letinksy’s most recent photographs from
photography as memento mori. As our Somewhere, Somewhere, of empty rooms
imagination is invited to reconstruct actions in just-vacated houses and formal flower
instead of anticipating them, her pictures gardens extend the ambiguous narratives of
operate as melancholy analogies for her still lifes. Also un-peopled, these
memory. pictures of human intervention and exodus
in defined spaces are psychologically and
Letinsky is also clearly interested in spatial culturally weighty. In many ways these
ambiguities. Like Van Es or Cézanne who pictures are the antithesis of the still lifes –
famously ignored the rules of scientific they provide views of spaces but with only
perspective, Letinsky creates complex and minor evidence of human occupation.
awkward compositions in which objects We must contemplate shady pathways and
seem precariously balanced. Tabletops vacated architectural shells alone – as we
appear to tilt at us with glasses and plates always do as imaginative decipherers of
hanging off their edges, endowing the photographic space.
pictures with a sense of anticipation.
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In her interior photographs Letinsky helps of being there – a space that only our
to animate the empty rooms for us. Like the imaginations are able to roam.
architect who builds the right angles, To experience it is therefore to daydream.
plans vantage points, and predicts the In this regard the photograph is like
effects of light in the room, Letinsky adds Bachelard’s house – when experienced it is
details such as tape rolls standing on edge no longer an empty vessel; it cannot be an
or forgotten house plants that encourage inert box.3
our interaction with the surface of the
picture and draw us into its imaginary The melancholy of an emptied house is
space. We soon realize, however, that these perhaps a cultural construct, but if we
forgotten items are not the only things follow Bachelard’s line of thinking and
occupying the room. The non-object of consider that we transform spaces as much
space and the weightiness of memory also as they transform us, then the shell of a
exist there, a point British artist Rachel house is indeed resonant.
Whiteread (b. 1963) eloquently makes by Through association and similitude
casting interior domestic spaces in concrete. Letinksy’s generic spaces can remind us of
Furthermore, like photographs, rooms are our own past or present dwellings and thus
inherently empty, and require ideas, from evoke emotional content.
both producer and receiver, to be complete. Where imagination collides with memory is
always unclear territory but the two
French philosopher Gaston Bachelard points phenomena are certainly interdependent.
out that the imagination is predisposed to As our minds walk down Letinksy’s empty
responding to domestic space. The house, corridors and produce narrative content,
our first frame of reference, shelters the we perhaps find ourselves in the intimate
imagination, and is therefore fertile territory space where memory, fantasy,
for daydreaming.2 A photograph, of course, and imagination meet. It may also prompt
is a different kind of threshold – to stand in us to wonder, as we associate our own
front of its flat surface and read it as memories with someone else’s home, if we
inhabitable space requires an unanchored fundamentally voyeurs of our own
mind. A photograph of a room provides a memories?
complicated abstraction of the experience
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The serene formal garden is yet another another, like a photograph, spans both
space of contemplation and fantasy. reality and illusion, and is, excitingly,
The image of the leafy garden is lodged ungraspable. By photographing the
firmly in the annals of Western culture, remnants of meals shared around tables,
typically serving as the setting for romance houses that have been recently lived in,
and fairy tales. Letinsky’s garden and tranquil garden spaces that invite
photographs hint at this history of contemplation, it could be said that
enchantment in the soft flares of light that Letinsky has been busy exploring what love
emanate from corners or hover in the looks like in a more solitary sense.
foreground of the images, as if indicating a However, photographic evidence,
supernatural presence. Like her still life and by marking departure, speaks more strongly
house pictures, there are always resonant of absence than presence – destabilizing
details – a lemon that hangs precariously the sense of well-being that these places
from a scrawny branch, a section of bright can provide.
green garden hose resting on a gravel
walkway – that grab our attention and Karen Irvine, Curator
makes us conscious of the process of Museum of Contemporary Photography
looking. They also remind us that even Columbia College Chicago
within these seemingly ordered places,
anomalies and chaos reign – taming nature
is a futile pursuit.
And within that nature, and all of its
unpredictability and wildness, humans build
shelters and relationships that over the
course of a lifetime come and go. Like the
space of a room that we can only imagine
1 Laura Letinsky, e-mail correspondence with the
when contained in its shell, we depend on
author, 6/25/05.
the people and places around us to help
2 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, (Boston:
define, limit, and protect ourselves.
Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 3-6.
But self-knowledge or the knowledge of 3 Ibid., p. 47.
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