Tina Barney talk/interview, sponsored by BOMB Magazine: JohnZ. Post

For those of you who were interested in the TIna Barney “Sunday New York Times” photo at the MoMA photography show. Or for those of you who were engaged in our discussion about her work last Friday, you may want to go to this event. It requires an advance RSVP, but I believe it is free.

Facebook Link:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?email_confirmed=1#!/event.php?eid=194673070562868

A magazine of interviews with artists, and others.

 

Time	Tuesday, February 22 · 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Location	192 Books 192 Tenth Avenue New York, NY
Created By	BOMB Magazine
More Info	***Seating is limited, please call 212.255.4022 to make reservations.*** In “The Players”, Tina Barney expands her subject matter to include fashion, performers, and actors, as well as her own circle of friends. In her two previous books, Barney chose to look at families in America and their milieu and then carried on this examination of families in Europe. Now she combines commercial assignments dating back as far as 1988, with …editorial, fashion, and portraiture. Whether performing publicly or privately, they are all “players”. “The Players” is edited and designed by Chipp Kidd with text by Michael Stipe, and published by Steidl. Michèle Gerber Klein is a trustee of BOMB Magazine, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum, and the Alliance Francaise. She writes frequently about art and fashion and is currently researching a book project on the last tapes of legendary designer Charles James. Please contact Paul Morris with questions at 718.636.9100×104.

Tina Barney, “Sunday New York Times,” 1982

A Shared East Coast Ritual.

Questions:

Who are these people and what are they doing?

What is the photographer’s relationship to her subjects?

Is this picture “posed”?

What is this picture “telling us”?

Cindy Sherman, “Untitled, No. 92,” 1981

The Protagonist is Always Herself.

From an ongoing series of self-portraits from an artist who transforms herself as a model.

Comments?

Rineke Dijkstra, “Odessa, Ukraine,” 1993

A Bather by the Sea.

This photograph has been compared with Matisse’s famous “bather” paintings.

Comments?

Selections of Photographs by Nan Goldin, 1980

A Life Story Told in Individual Moments with Multiple Players.

Works in this (larger) grouping of ten include:

“Rose and Monty Kissing”

“Nan and Brian in Bed”

“The Parents Wedding Photo”

“Nan one Month After Being Battered”

Questions:

How does the photographer choose to “tell” the story of her own life?

Who are the “characters” in this theatrical “play”?

What is your reaction as a viewer?

Is this exhibitionism?

Barbara Kruger, “You Invest in the Divinity of the Masterpiece,” 1982

To Invest is Divine.

Questions:

How was this photograph created?

What is the original source of the image?

Has Kruger written this text herself? What does it mean?

What does “invest” mean here?

What does “divinity” mean here?

Hannah WIlke, “Gestures,” 1974, Video

The Body as Sculptural Form of Expression.

Questions:

Should the medium of video be considered as “photography”?

What are some differences between still photography and video?

Is this a self-portrait?

If so, what is the artist doing — and why?

Laurie Simmons, “Walking House” 1989

A Domestic House as Burlesque Character.

This is the first large-scale print in the show.

Questions:

Is this print in black-and-white or color?

How was this image achieved?

Are those the legs of a real woman?

What is the “allegory” being suggested here? About the role of women in society, etc.?

Bernd & Hilla Becher: “Winding Towers,” 1966-1997, A Study in “Typology” of Shared Form

A Study in "Form-Follows-Function" by a Husband-and-Wife German Photography Team.

Questions:

What are these structures? What is their shared function?

Where are they?

Why are they grouped together into a grid on the wall? Is this one piece? Or several individual ones grouped together?

What is the shared methodology of the photographic method? (i.e, despite the disparate time period of their creation)?

The Bechers called their works a studies in “typology.” What could this term mean?

Are these images “beautiful”? How so? Are the forms themselves inherently “beautiful”? How so?

Helen Levitt: New York City Streetscapes, 1977-1980

A gritty New York serves up unexpected juxtapositions.

These are the first color works to be included in the exhibition.

Questions:

What is the difference, in terms of viewer-response, between color and black-and-white photography?

Is this photojournalism? Or art? What’s the difference?

Is Levitt sympathetic to the human condition? Or is she exploiting the human condition toward her own “narrative” ends?

What “point” is she trying to make with this series of photographs?