tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805355919179357022024-03-13T05:05:07.040-07:00Richard AnsettRichard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.comBlogger192125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-14786902739476744882023-03-15T02:59:00.001-07:002023-03-15T03:08:59.273-07:00Hilary Mantel - The Graveyard of Convention<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKrjRrQJdzCq1Js_pxQ3-JsrBgvGSQRoPgjXjV-G5wiAVRJPTy8542XCffMMuYiP4gN9pYHK_Ql_f-664nkh4R2v6Wslw5mTdI0pcxGh21mR8kpylJUar8Aujt683vczuv7va24YVEMFywJgAdyWMor2-0BpzfsBR-4QVYYcrzk9Bm_BXI8y2j9bBzg/s2200/CF010403_hilarymantel_npg_print_blogger.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1722" data-original-width="2200" height="532" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKrjRrQJdzCq1Js_pxQ3-JsrBgvGSQRoPgjXjV-G5wiAVRJPTy8542XCffMMuYiP4gN9pYHK_Ql_f-664nkh4R2v6Wslw5mTdI0pcxGh21mR8kpylJUar8Aujt683vczuv7va24YVEMFywJgAdyWMor2-0BpzfsBR-4QVYYcrzk9Bm_BXI8y2j9bBzg/w681-h532/CF010403_hilarymantel_npg_print_blogger.jpg" width="681" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Photograph Hillary Mantel, The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, London, 2017 </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">C-type archival 20x24” 2/2 - mounted on dibond, dutch ripple frame, museum AR70 non-reflective glass.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Acquired by the National Portrait Gallery permanent collection (<i>purchased with support from the CHANEL Culture Fund for 'Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture’.</i>)</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We can learn so much from just brushing against greatness and I felt a rare affinity with Hilary Mantel in these brief moments. There was a synchronicity meeting her for the first time in the historical setting of Middle Temple Hall. Photography is inspired as well as in competition with art history, so I am overwhelmed by the responsibility to represent something of Mantel’s personality inextricably linked to British history. Being in her presence demands reflection of the invisible timelines linking present and past. The portraits on the walls are a reminder of the intimidating legacy of portraiture. The great artists that were judged on the pursuit of reality undermined by photography that brings it so effortlessly but photography’s power is also its weakness and mere facsimile is not enough now.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">To dare to attempt to capture the essence of another human being means risking everything in the moment and this pressure adrenalises the process in the pursuit of something that might dare to come close to being worthy of the subject. Its a form of possession, a complete commitment to the moment and to self that is absent in me without the camera but is a requirement if there is a chance of capturing anything valuable against the odds through this lump of glass, metal and pixels. Being possessed is something Mantel understands she carries the ghosts of the past with her, the grail exists in the hinterland between success and failure and only those that attempt to reach it can truly empathise with what it feels like to glimpse it. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">There are some processes that are consistent to my practice and whilst the subject is inevitably collaborating they cannot be entirely complicit, the portrait must feel exploratory, an examination of them caught covertly in their presence that betrays something of their nature behind the mask, especially of the famous. A subject’s entire complicity devalues a great moment demoting a portrait to the graveyard of convention. The intimidating setting of Middle Temple and Mantel herself is the inspiration that drives us towards the goal of something beyond mere representation. The dogmas that define my practice set the boundaries within which to observe her humanity and I pre-light and compose the scene in Mantel’s absence so that not a moment of her presence is wasted in front of the camera. She is well known, not only for her immense talent but for her fragile physical health and Mantel’s lack of a stereotypical physicality and ego belies the incredible charisma that is built on her humility.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I introduce Mantel to the prepared space, I don’t rescue her from the silence she steps into and in these early moments all the hope and risk exists. To understand photography one must understand its limitations first, it is merely the capture of what is transpiring before the instrument of capture and the photographer’s role is to facilitate the event, to alter the molecules in front of the lens through force of will and Machiavellian intent driven by the overwhelming need to create something of value at any cost in the moment. I have observed many a coup d’oeil of humanity in this created alternate reality and these glimpses of vulnerability that we work so hard to hide are easily missed in the conventional timeline uniquely interrupted by the photographic process. This image even with its failures is that rare glimpse of the grail and a success in my mind that represents the very best of my practice.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The search for humanity can be easily confused with iconoclasm in the representation of the famous who are possessive of their carefully constructed personas. This obsession with an intimate connection driven in part by my queerness transcends convention and is the key to the unspoken understanding I create between subject and photographer. In these brief moments with Mantel I am in hindsight empathising with her own process as a writer in unravelling the humanity of the distant giants of history in her own work. To stand even the slightest chance of capturing this authenticity, the ego must be subjugated and trust handed over to the chance of the present relationship unfolding in front of the camera. The pursuit of greatness can ironically be the obstacle in the path to its realisation and the ultimate trauma of the portrait photographic process is the awareness of the myriad of paths left untrodden in the decision making process that is defined by the potential for failure. The only solution to this crisis is to dare to trust in the moment and allow the camera to do its job objectively documenting the evolving relationship in front of its godless gaze.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">After the shoot Mantel explained to me that so often people had felt concerned for her health to the extent that her portraits were mostly sedentary and my lack of consideration for her comfort in the pursuit of a great portrait allowed for an expression of a rarely seen but undeniable joyful, playful side. The priority of authenticity can come at a cost and in this single capture I hope it outweighs its flaws. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">This picture is all the more precious because of Mantel’s appreciation of it, acquiring it for her personal archive at the Huntington Library, California. The further recognition by the National Portrait Gallery in acquiring it is an additional affirmation that means a great deal not only because of the irony that Mantel now joins a celebrated and historic collection of portraits of the great and good in her own right.</p>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-9555738181158203732021-11-18T11:46:00.005-08:002021-11-18T12:12:52.480-08:00Botticelli and Cat Shit<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I am having a rather dramatic wave of self doubt if that helps you believe I am human .. it’s part of the process as I move towards sharing the series of works from the very private and intimate creations from the series 'No Place Like Home' by slapping them on the wall for people to judge. The viewer inevitably brings a criteria and motivation to the work often in conflict with my own increasingly lost message, my voice drowned out even in my own space. Hence the statement if you can be arsed to read it.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Our shear unadulterated arrogance mostly masked by social convention occasionally shows itself. I often define what are called mental health issues especially those with depression as a consequence of being connected to the brutal reality, the realisation of a vast, cold, heartless universe, so vast in time and space that nothing matters. What a friend of mine calls my 'Godless gaze'. Fly too close to the sun again and again and it becomes all we know and what was a balanced existence is a fading memory.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">So desperate to find our way back from the agony of self-knowledge to the stable ground of denial that has long since departed, a craving nostalgia for a life less complicated and damaged, fuelling an increasing sense of isolation and existential loneliness no longer able to be hidden by an increasingly flimsy persona. The standards set by our ego become the enemy to self love. We can live too long perhaps as to pass through multiple identities of which mine has always been unstable from the start, giving me empathy for anyone less comfortable with this constant and unnerving dislocation. I'm drawn to it like a fly to cat shit, my sub-conscious antennae seeking a parity with the like-minded but the existential loss I carry, I am ashamed too say, always defined 'others' as more complete than myself regardless of their own suffering.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Silence is very important but it can be dangerous to, we can make assumptions of the unspoken and very often a different truth can only come out if the right question is asked. My impertinence that Sierra and I had that unspoken understanding during the capture of these images of their decapitated body both as the reclining muse and here in the twisting female stereotype inherited from the representations of the male gaze of art history. A conventional beauty interrupted by the scars as memories of a recent past too unbearable. A home, if you can call it that, has become an allegory for depression, filth accompanies despair; if you don't intend to live, why hoover. Nothing matters.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The unadulterated documentation is empathy, if I am invited to join my subject in the abyss I feel it is my responsibility to return with the evidence (if I make it back). It would be a great failure to sanitise such an extraordinary gift in the misguided presumption of dignity that only belongs in the mind of the privileged. I recall, deeply hallucinating from food poisoning in a small village in Kerala; I cling onto the edge of what I perceive to be an abyss, terrified to let go not knowing what awaited me. How disappointing and what an opportunity missed.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I am celebrating survival as beauty. I am celebrating Sierra's beauty because I feel less able to celebrate my own.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy-MZULd58fQcTHsnPeAGCkqp-R5rAFoayuSMCG9WiGEXG4lhjQ6KnBCpKwTZ749dwv_AKdjPuzUKbVPIxHljoR_XTnaqH4sxoVJf1zwe_QKJ0Bt9hoYGbcIvLkboqB9w0jTgAKIzhPowk/s2048/CF028729_swansea_NoPlaceLikeHome_botticelli_and_catshit_LR.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1534" data-original-width="2048" height="483" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy-MZULd58fQcTHsnPeAGCkqp-R5rAFoayuSMCG9WiGEXG4lhjQ6KnBCpKwTZ749dwv_AKdjPuzUKbVPIxHljoR_XTnaqH4sxoVJf1zwe_QKJ0Bt9hoYGbcIvLkboqB9w0jTgAKIzhPowk/w643-h483/CF028729_swansea_NoPlaceLikeHome_botticelli_and_catshit_LR.jpg" title="Botticelli and Cat Shit #28729" width="643" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Botticelli and Cat Shit #28729 © Richard Ansett 2020</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0Swansea, UK51.62144 -3.943645999999998924.342610616510004 -39.099896 78.90026938349 31.212604000000002tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-50194653761119958712021-07-28T09:39:00.001-07:002021-07-28T09:39:20.490-07:00You say risotto..<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">I was recently invited by a renowned London restaurant to consult on an ongoing 'discussion' between kitchen and management regarding the authenticity of their risotto dish.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Dear //////////</span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Please find below my full report.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Following the tasting last Friday I concur that indeed the rice itself whilst not reflecting the established expectation of ‘risotto’ rice is potentially subject to interpretation as a ‘regional’ variation. But whilst the word ‘risotto’ does literally translate to merely ‘rice’ there is a higher standard to which our expectations are of ‘risotto’ the dish. In the very few regions of Italy through which I have travelled, anecdotally only I must stress, I have not detected huge variations in grain and I feel risotto refers to the dish which is primarily represented by Carnaroli, Arborio and my personal preference, Vialone Nano.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">My instinct in testing your current risotto dish is that the rice used is possibly Orzo or close to, it has a relatively slimy texture structure and as you suggest may not be best suited to an even cooking resulting in variations of al dente. It does not quite meet my expectations of a traditional risotto.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">During one trip to the Veneto region, I was invited to La Fiera del Riso at Isola della Scala where I joined the traditional celebration of the harvest Garzega, tasting many great dishes made from the Vialone Nano grain traditional to the region, a highlight being the famous risotto all’isolana and a traditional local delicacy which includes veal, rosemary and cinnamon. (In Venice there is a tradition of sauté eel risotto but I don’t think this will travel well). </span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">During this visit I had the great privilege of attending a personal cooking lesson by the renowned chef Gabriele Ferron, which was very enlightening although he compares the level of attention required to the risotto as equal too that one needs to give a woman; can we forgive a little old school Italian misogyny in the pursuit of perfection?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px;">Further, I was invited to a late harvest with Giuseppe Melotti together with his children Luca, Gianmaria and Francesca. The image attached from my archive is of Giuseppe scything the crop by hand ahead of the modern machinery, which I was invited to do but unfortunately there is no photographic evidence and you will have to take my word. (</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Also, attached landscape I love of an original natural reservoir that has fed the fields with fresh water for centuries).</span></span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"></span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Cooking of the risotto: Rossini’s opera Tancredi has a ‘rice aria’ </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42zVcZEbsjI" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42zVcZEbsjI</a><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"> I suggest as an experiment playing this on constant repeat </span></span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px;">in</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"> the kitchen during the stirring of the risotto </span></span><span style="font-size: 14px;">which</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"> might ensure a perfect consistency.</span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Isola della Scala is the beginning and end of the La Strada del Riso Vialone Nano Veronese, or “Rice Road”, which takes in 22 villages including Buttapietra, Palu and Nogara so i suggest Paul and I embark on a research roadtrip to really gain a full and vital understanding of this vital dish.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">As an aside, during another visit to Predappio during an investigation of fascist architecture, admittedly a little further south, I stayed in a very special farm house with a restaurant that just served one dish; a simply perfect champagne risotto with truffle. It remains one of my best food memories.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Very best and kindest regards,</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Richard Ansett</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Artist</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif2eMORVLyPnJ_ENocZ6HTbqNImvKhGpy98kVHCe6R6-1WR0zC8SRXBTsSOdbkVuN72ysRnKKP6kwi7yJasc-_LB2NXzDze4EpI6Nvm5zTsftvOANewgEHKP3Wsm7B5AvWaUSaWSXAtinp/s1200/risotto002_w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="403" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif2eMORVLyPnJ_ENocZ6HTbqNImvKhGpy98kVHCe6R6-1WR0zC8SRXBTsSOdbkVuN72ysRnKKP6kwi7yJasc-_LB2NXzDze4EpI6Nvm5zTsftvOANewgEHKP3Wsm7B5AvWaUSaWSXAtinp/w606-h403/risotto002_w.jpg" width="606" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVB7ncJ8BUSfbQjk3nC0MFIAq8vLWd3pDi1mtO90-kfNNT-Vqwb92tYv4sXirSJ7GTIyaYn4MRJFcOFlbnKRKJJw01OJ4ZV3TtHVhyphenhyphen8lYEoSiDeqTIvDxN6iSBkftMUtZjNbTy5D_aPuaZ/s1200/risotto004_w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="403" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVB7ncJ8BUSfbQjk3nC0MFIAq8vLWd3pDi1mtO90-kfNNT-Vqwb92tYv4sXirSJ7GTIyaYn4MRJFcOFlbnKRKJJw01OJ4ZV3TtHVhyphenhyphen8lYEoSiDeqTIvDxN6iSBkftMUtZjNbTy5D_aPuaZ/w605-h403/risotto004_w.jpg" width="605" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></div>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-70457513351925572962021-07-07T05:28:00.005-07:002021-07-07T07:29:16.169-07:00Community Turn To 'Queer Icon' To Lift Lockdown Curse<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">A gallery in a small isolated community tucked away in the cliffs of North Devon, England has been host to some bizarre events. A huge light box of a portrait of the self-declared tranvestite potter and winner of the Turner Prize Grayson Perry has been shining a light from the gallery window during lockdown. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Gallery owner and expert in mid 20th century fine art pottery Tim Williams has held Grayson Perry in the highest esteem and saw the opportunity to show the lightbox by artist Richard Ansett as tribute to his contemporary hero not realising the remarkable turn of events that would transpire.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">“The pandemic has taken its toll on our collective mental health and as some of the lockdown restrictions lifted we noticed what we could only presume were ‘offerings’ left on the doorstep as tribute to our secular icon.” said Tim.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">“I turned up one morning to find a can of <a href="https://www.spam.com" target="_blank">SPAM</a> on the doorstep and then on another occasion a packet of McVities Rich Tea biscuits and I started to think something might be happening.” </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Since then the gallery has cautiously opened its doors and encouraged the pilgrimage to the alter. The local community have also responded bringing handmade objects, natural as well as supermarket bought offerings.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Retired couple Rene and Cathy came to the gallery with wild strawberries, <a href="https://www.bisto.co.uk" target="_blank">Bisto Gravy Granules</a> and Jacobs Cream Crackers. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">“Lockdown has been very hard on us and many of our friends and neighbours” says Cathy “we hope that our offering to the alter will lift the curse of Covid-19 on our little village.”</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Self-identifying non-binary teen and by coincidence Perry’s namesake Grayson admits he bought the first offering to the gallery steps.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">“Spam’s a big thing in Lynton” says Grayson “I wanted to leave a tribute and I just took some Spam from my mum’s house and left it outside the gallery. It doesn’t feel easy sometimes being young and different in a small village especially in lockdown and this amazing picture of a man in a wig holding a baby made me feel less alone and like everything was going to be alright.” </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The portrait consigned to <a href="https://timwilliamsfineart.com" target="_blank">Tim Williams Fine Art Gallery</a> in Lynton by artist/photographer Richard Ansett is an “inglorious pink extravaganza” of art historical and religious references. The national treasure Grayson Perry is captured in the traditional conceit of mother and child surrounded by the “shameless campery” of organza and fake flowers bathed in a halo of light. Not the traditional fair one might think for an area known for its predominantly conservative views. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Ansett’s appropriation of Perry into what he calls a "faux religious queer icon" came to Lynton from a world tour following its success at the Sony World Photography Awards, a residency at Fitzrovia Chapel, London where it was displayed alone on the alter and the Format and Arles Photo Festival. Whilst at Fitzrovia Chapel the artwork transformed from bombastic challenge to the status quo to a genuine icon in its own right and statement of the right to the sacred for all.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Tim Williams has big plans for Lynton, an art festival is high on his list to compete with Damien Hirst’s dominance of nearby Ilfracombe. “This is one of the most beautiful parts of England” says Tim “steeped in British art history. We feel the new normal could be something very special for everyone. We invite everyone to come, bring offerings to the alter in solidarity with all people that feel different and share in the beauty of nature and art.”</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>BIRTH: A Portrait of Grayson Perry by Richard Ansett will be on permanent display throughout 2021 at Tim Williams Fine Art, 1 Castle Hill, Lynton EX35 6JA.</i></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><br /></i></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxpXjgjKr0iH9yxEj8eHzl_aC32kbE3gyE1eAh-HtK5ZVSzm0diHbG0OjY74DrizA_WSK1kmKi8mxU-4M6AHb3YJ7IgqS9tBZKkz_28P-h3Q7gGTveswhHKNJQysarH7tXmocgWq4wLrv-/s1500/IMG_2148_Spam+offering_1.jpg" style="clear: left; 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text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiFzG0QWtZ2akpXZpu5TVr9Wvj_aGpg93FoeTvnPJwrikQhk9-RkjJMWLuZR-OoVDcinn6_g-n-MTMuvVIe1FhirumIzeZ6WnkltXmVxJkPjnNIUHMp3uZXurLY5Fe8ypZ1O-9rw9XOH1b/s1539/IMG_2151_offerings+left+overnight+outside+the+gallery_1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1255" data-original-width="1539" height="571" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiFzG0QWtZ2akpXZpu5TVr9Wvj_aGpg93FoeTvnPJwrikQhk9-RkjJMWLuZR-OoVDcinn6_g-n-MTMuvVIe1FhirumIzeZ6WnkltXmVxJkPjnNIUHMp3uZXurLY5Fe8ypZ1O-9rw9XOH1b/w700-h571/IMG_2151_offerings+left+overnight+outside+the+gallery_1.jpg" width="700" /></a></div><br /><br /><i><br /></i><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><br /><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><br /><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-61169643056000787822020-12-15T03:09:00.006-08:002021-11-18T11:55:01.189-08:00Remembering John Le Carré<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545;">I spent the day with David Cornwell, invited to his cottage retreat on the Cornish coast. He was very gracious and charming as one would expect. He presented as a typical middle class, white, Oxford educated elitist, the personification of the British exceptionalism cliche and a glimpse of a hidden world accessible to only a few who know the rules. Even as a white man (but clearly of a lower class) I am confronted by this passive aggressive stereotype that reminds one of one's place. Impenetrable superiority is engrained in the privileged like an inherited disease and irrespective of how delightfully eccentric, it carries the legacy of empire, the mythology of the benevolent white overseer as a right and the very thing that infected the British Intelligence Service to its core. I notice this in my father's generation, a tolerance of others, a politeness barely masking a sense of unshakable entitlement.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What separates Cornwell is the recognition of these traits in himself, he is self-observant and betrays not his country but his class. The ultimate betrayal to pull back the Wizard's curtain. His gift of self-awareness and an awareness of the world he inhabited exposed to public view the ease in which the British intelligence service could be infiltrated by those who recognised hubris and this elevates him from the pap espionage writer.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He is a character in his own novels in this respect, it felt to me that I was in the company of someone that had got away with something, exiled to a remote cliff top house arrest and he played on that. The less said the better in creating an air of mystery. As the photographer I sensed he had laid out a series of visual clues to a fictitious alter ego as he showed me round his gardens and I found myself looking for clues that might betray his true allegiance, maybe as a radical Marxist traitor and conveniently my fantasy is obliged with a large, prominent socialist realist statue of a boy struggling to hold a flag pole in a strong wind. There is no pattern on the flag but I assume it is red. The perfect spy hides in plain sight I thought.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is only fiction writers that are responsible for the romanticism that surrounds the security services. It is obstensively a bureaucratic organisation, the blandness of a civil service department where one daren't even wear colourful socks, re-invented as intrigue. The air of mystery and excitement relies on the silence, the true betrayal of the whistle blower is to expose this incredibly dull world behind the glamorous or intriguing facade of Bond and Smiley.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I don't think I am betraying any national security protocols when I share that I have had a MI5 officer sitting on my toilet patiently with his cheap briefcase on his lap as I fucked a member of her majesty's armed forces in the other room. "Don't try to leave" he said with unconvincing menace. I didn't share this anecdote with John.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cornwell personally knew the truly dangerous homosexual traitors that infiltrated the very top of the security services. One can empathise with those dazzling queers surrounded by a sea of mediocrity that is the heteronormative state. Homosexuals then would make excellent spies, it was expected and we were used to hiding our true nature.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Adam Sisman remarks, “only can he make the wildest nonsense about himself credible (reportedly he enjoyed “playing” on his first wife’s suspicion that he was homosexual), he has encouraged others to add to it. “I’m a liar.”, he says. “Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living.”</span></span></p>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-17664247116344188352020-11-29T06:02:00.001-08:002020-11-29T06:14:05.827-08:00Curtains Drawn in Daylight<div data-block="true" data-editor="daq5k" data-offset-key="2pbsb-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2pbsb-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Tell us more about what’s in your image, the story behind it and the reasons why you created it." </span></i></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2pbsb-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2pbsb-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="2pbsb-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I am so conscious of the limits of my intellect when writing about my work. Many words, phrases and even whole concepts can sit tantalisingly out of reach of my awareness. It's so depressing to be reminded of one's limitations and not accept them and in this moment I greatly envy those who have the natural capacity to access these areas with impunity.</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="daq5k" data-offset-key="r5mp-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="r5mp-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="r5mp-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="daq5k" data-offset-key="e13ir-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="e13ir-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span data-offset-key="e13ir-0-0">Sometimes my brain seems to click into gear and everything I need and want is before me like found treasure but its so hard to seek out that easier path when I am so far off it and the more I look the less I can find it. In a pathetic attempt to shake off the dementia I attempt to stimulate the</span> limited and increasingly diminishing brain cells the universe has bequeathed me.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="daq5k" data-offset-key="ajflo-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ajflo-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="ajflo-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="daq5k" data-offset-key="dmfbv-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dmfbv-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="dmfbv-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Today began with a cold shower, then coffee and fasting but the path I want to be on still feels blocked, the next stage is to write about it and post it hopelessly into the ether. Next I will immerse myself in a protective bubble of white noise, something rhythmic and incessant on repeat then when that fails I will go for a run and then inevitably withdraw into banal stimulation and ultimately bed, blocking out the daylight.</span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dmfbv-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="dmfbv-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dmfbv-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="dmfbv-0-0"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrhsqk6A1n7vI0J9DFkeT6xZ-Ow8meguyfx1Wr0KxuIhRNgrFD8TL-rsVDYmMqlvMDzH3F7sCmQpNwi10dTQr_wkcDynAT7Mr34vqZsrJw7ioeyjDwCeBLz5UhQvkkqw2TDfVBs4CCCBgV/s2048/355Z7017_curtainsdrawnindaylight_LR.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrhsqk6A1n7vI0J9DFkeT6xZ-Ow8meguyfx1Wr0KxuIhRNgrFD8TL-rsVDYmMqlvMDzH3F7sCmQpNwi10dTQr_wkcDynAT7Mr34vqZsrJw7ioeyjDwCeBLz5UhQvkkqw2TDfVBs4CCCBgV/w640-h426/355Z7017_curtainsdrawnindaylight_LR.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Red Curtain, from Curtains Drawn in Daylight © Richard Ansett 2013 C-type 20x26"</i></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dmfbv-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="dmfbv-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The series '</span><a href="http://richardansett.com/gallery/new-work/nothing-matters-george/" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">Nothing Matters George'</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is the personification of the danger of embracing the hopelessness of existence, we find ourselves slipping into the swirling pit of existential loneliness which requires many times the energy to emerge from, if at all. The washing line stretches hopelessly across the frame like the crack in my psyche. </span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="daq5k" data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjJpRIqo0N5Qf7h5TQBa-_rmOULQvBg5vfwJNMiKL2skHltXR3Lu3s5qCPug_3OmJAC56-s4BzfIrhJ2w6mYBnsg8Xzbc6xUW5L9wgR7OICU96Dm4jsP0laoJySHdsOVZ-G2_Abg9cRwzY/s900/_T7A1842_George_washingline_w.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjJpRIqo0N5Qf7h5TQBa-_rmOULQvBg5vfwJNMiKL2skHltXR3Lu3s5qCPug_3OmJAC56-s4BzfIrhJ2w6mYBnsg8Xzbc6xUW5L9wgR7OICU96Dm4jsP0laoJySHdsOVZ-G2_Abg9cRwzY/w640-h426/_T7A1842_George_washingline_w.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Nothing Matters George © Richard Ansett 2018 </td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We cannot find our way back without help.</span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span data-offset-key="bmjo0-0-0">The artist must dance along the edge of the pit to glimpse the treasure but we must have fallen at least once to appreciate the danger and i</span>n the presence of George I see myself in extremis.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="daq5k" data-offset-key="6v853-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6v853-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="6v853-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="daq5k" data-offset-key="1narv-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1narv-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="1narv-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"Do not fly too low nor too high, so the sea's dampness would not clog your wings nor the sun's heat melt them."</i> - Daedalus</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="daq5k" data-offset-key="54fri-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="54fri-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="54fri-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="daq5k" data-offset-key="25j7n-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="25j7n-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="25j7n-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">The artist feels they are communicating a clear message</span><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> in their chosen medium and it is deeply frustrating and confusing when that message is missed, rejected or misunderstood even in a successful work. It is a cruelty in the expectation of visual artists to explain our work in anything other than the medium we feel comfortable in and inevitably we very often fail at it; I am embarrassed by the artist interview, the clumsy self-justifications and faux-humility to satisfy normative expectations in the hope of success outside of </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">the</span> </span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">enormous </span></span><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">value </span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">the work is to ourselves.</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="25j7n-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="25j7n-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">I feel it is true of me and therefore inevitably of others that a sense of failure in communicating conventionally has driven us into the arms of other mediums and this ironically is the very catalyst for 'the hand print in the cave'.</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="25j7n-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></div>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-11727576913426225572020-11-26T11:49:00.003-08:002020-11-26T12:51:28.146-08:00In The Room<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOtAkCFVPyi3crErpp2uk6lLR_XVsAGikgQXO-pkhM24e0ifjV-O-0HBsc5xIDbTZM5NZXNah5AHqhDv-eh_wGvtu4IJJv935MaINPD-KhpD7Vf9GcuSjE3vUHi0YmlpYGhJUcf3WEJSYn/s1700/CF034078_aylesbury_Catalina_Ruan_blog.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1274" data-original-width="1700" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOtAkCFVPyi3crErpp2uk6lLR_XVsAGikgQXO-pkhM24e0ifjV-O-0HBsc5xIDbTZM5NZXNah5AHqhDv-eh_wGvtu4IJJv935MaINPD-KhpD7Vf9GcuSjE3vUHi0YmlpYGhJUcf3WEJSYn/w640-h480/CF034078_aylesbury_Catalina_Ruan_blog.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ruan and Catalina, Tavistock Block, Aylesbury Estate, London (from Behind The Brutal Facade) © Richard Ansett 2020</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>This image is of Ruan with his mother Catalina in the Taplow block of the Aylesbury Estate overlooking the notorious Wendover Tower for my latest series Beyond The Brutal Facade capturing the lives of the last tenants of the estate once labelled the most notorious in Britain.</div><p>There are many examples in art history of this trope <i>"in which a figure stares out from an otherwise self-contained canvas drawing the viewer in".</i>* 'Freedom From Want' captures Norman Rockwell's neighbour in the bottom right of the composition cheekily breaking the spell of the otherwise perfectly observed and terrifyingly heteronormative scene.</p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUvvLMe6ZkF4rkcIHP0a6oNvKUWNl2wpO4WrxtpJKNhLCEooODFagitvJv0wZmFy3LBBUds53OIagoxqxFxOxx60RPqqAFxqh0lt6IyB7ILkBm47DX14eJ3J-cA6r2pBz6aLTWWhDQh9oa/s565/rockwell-freedom-from-want_blog.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="537" data-original-width="565" height="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUvvLMe6ZkF4rkcIHP0a6oNvKUWNl2wpO4WrxtpJKNhLCEooODFagitvJv0wZmFy3LBBUds53OIagoxqxFxOxx60RPqqAFxqh0lt6IyB7ILkBm47DX14eJ3J-cA6r2pBz6aLTWWhDQh9oa/w400-h380/rockwell-freedom-from-want_blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Free From Want - Norman Rockwell, 1943</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Botticelli's conceit in inserting himself amongst the most important citizens of Florence in the Adoration of the Magi still has the desired effect of bringing a radical shift in perception literally and metaphorically whilst drawing us in to join the crowd to witness this monumental moment of history.</p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrd6ObBtYug8XneK2_2sz9ziyep2LqcS8bLXm4tIcgXrO_pKzq2grPsPb2h8-bKpi0534Bjpk9fu_pWdeRHKWQFttuICBM8eTNzQPCuaF2fXlTsuJXSrDVtebESALFhJaCWQnSowDBH10h/s419/botticelli_blog.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="419" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrd6ObBtYug8XneK2_2sz9ziyep2LqcS8bLXm4tIcgXrO_pKzq2grPsPb2h8-bKpi0534Bjpk9fu_pWdeRHKWQFttuICBM8eTNzQPCuaF2fXlTsuJXSrDVtebESALFhJaCWQnSowDBH10h/w400-h330/botticelli_blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Adoration of the Magi, Sandro Botticelli 1476</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>It creates a fascinating jolt to the psyche, often this device is explained away as more of an invitation to the viewer to cross the divide and enter into the work but its a two way street. The subject is equally joining us in our reality across the void of time and space. Its unsettling but further the use of this tactic has another profound affect on me. It is an interruption in the trusted narrative the artist has worked so hard to weave; to break the spell we are creating. It invites us to question the reality that is so convincingly on display and therefore challenges the security of our worldview . It is a device that stimulates open and existential questions about the nature of our reality beyond the everyday human experience.</p><p>One of my techniques in my relationship with a sitter is to ask them to look into the lens and 'connect' to an otherwise unknown future audience and attempt to communicate silently the message they might wish to deliver. This image however is a wonderful synergy of accident and design, a rare defining moment of a spontaneous glance when I had begun to think the defining moment was dead.</p><p><i>*ArtnetNews - Katie White 11.26.2020 - <a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/norman-rockwell-thanksgiving-freedom-from-want-three-facts-1926485" target="_blank">Here are 3 things you might not know about 'Freedom From Want.'</a></i></p><br />Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-37608291221517691182020-09-14T04:52:00.005-07:002020-09-14T05:12:42.580-07:00Empathy<div><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is easier to talk about what empathy is not, it is not ‘like mindedness’ or affinity. Empathy is non- judgmental. Pure empathy is to step into the shoes of another person irrespective of how different or even repugnant their actions or views might appear to be. Believing we are right is a barrier to empathy. Being open to the most implausible possibilities outside of our own </span>experience even that which is beyond our awareness is essential.</div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">To use a cliché, my empathy is a consequence of my disability and it is now my super-power; I can be overly empathic or ’confluent’, I take on attributes of another person’s experience as my own, it’s a bi-product of a great insecurity that led me to believe that everyone's life was more valuable, more complete than my own. It led to a life of </span>exploring other worlds<span style="font-family: inherit;"> with a camera. In the moment with the camera empathy enables an infected gaze; I subconsciously seek out ways to satiate this ‘posession’ in my read of the world through the lens.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Epoche is a form of bracketing of our own 'self', our views and prejudices that allow us to create a boundaried environment (let’s say a counselling/therapy session or a photographic shoot) allowing us to slip stream into another life and truly feel it whilst protecting our personal integrity.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Epoche comes with practice, awareness of the concept is enough initially and it is key to knowing what is ‘me’ and what is the infection. The camera is a tool that allows me to immerse myself in others lives, a protective barrier allowing moments of total confluence with another life. With the camera I can safely give myself over to an alternative universe in a way I would not now do otherwise, as it would be a </span>betrayal<span style="font-family: inherit;"> of my self esteem. Like my work with Samaritans I can offer complete care and support in the moment within the boundaries or rules that protect me and the person seeking support. Empathy without boundaries is a danger to self and </span>the<span style="font-family: inherit;"> pathway to empathy is also not fully possible without this clear demarcation. We can get lost in other worlds and there is a key to the understanding existentially of mental health issues here, some of us feel too much to safely manage and often ironically we may withdraw and shut down. Like a child becoming an adult. Artists are to some extent like children in so far as we have kept that door partly open to pure imagination and play.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">My greatest moment of empathy and photography was in Ukraine, the pinnacle of my journey of understanding. <a href="http://richardansett.com/gallery/project-series/izolyatsia-foundation/boys-in-a-city-park/" target="_blank">Boys in a City Park</a> explores the lives of 4 severely autistic boys, capturing their private, hidden worlds in the instant of a flash light. Their lives seemed chaotic when viewed through the spectrum of normality but a hyper-sensory world was revealed to me beyond my control and awareness only perceptible in the scrutiny of the images after the event. This was only possible through the high resolution capabilities of digital technology combined with almost instantaneous flash. It’s impossible to explain how important these images are and I feel they are as misunderstood outside of my universe as autism is itself. It is the greatest work of my life.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">A boy gently clutches a rose head, another is watched by a grasshopper on a leaf and another boy responds to the flash opening his mouth as if to trigger the light.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Although the temptation is to seek out an equivalent to that feeling of total success like the worst drug, I now exist in a new world seeking new ways to find meaning but still within the dogma of my practice. Many doors are now closed behind me and I can only go forward.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">See </span>series<span style="font-family: inherit;"> here and further statement and curators comment. <a href="http://richardansett.com/gallery/project-series/izolyatsia-foundation/boys-in-a-city-park/" target="_blank">Boys in a City Park</a></span></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF98Uu_8ym7CAqupwwUNSEGvk2BWZgEIHJTSntNwgxenW-jtV7IB5Xdffbx0Jo_PvvIfz-gHVDIF8gTsDK8pB5pivHNeqbtY4TgqdJ_BvmP8d3ZDSB7PNDhCI8x-As5xM5rZW-Hwp72vYB/s2048/355Z2547_Boysinacitypark_1_blog.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF98Uu_8ym7CAqupwwUNSEGvk2BWZgEIHJTSntNwgxenW-jtV7IB5Xdffbx0Jo_PvvIfz-gHVDIF8gTsDK8pB5pivHNeqbtY4TgqdJ_BvmP8d3ZDSB7PNDhCI8x-As5xM5rZW-Hwp72vYB/w625-h416/355Z2547_Boysinacitypark_1_blog.jpg" width="625" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Boy #1 from Boys in a City Park, Ukraine 2011 © Richard Ansett</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><br /></div>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-4592470815350706232020-04-28T07:56:00.008-07:002020-08-23T08:58:21.307-07:00The Anal Stage<div style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaAGq8jLXCYuE7R052MbDIAV0rMtA2Uu3IlmSqMStvv10yy7Qc5eu42Bneh7eza8GnzQesV8v1R0YYtNxHP_O5fe-kPDcOxE4QRZJ5gzWMap9yGPoVSGhqc4Y1eGzK65BOWNz1VUfN8YfT/d/toilet_roll_12_captions_b.jpg" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Typology of Toilet Rolls was shot at the height of panic buying during the first Covid-19 lockdown in the UK. As art is essential by proxy I am therefore an essential worker allowing me to join the panic buyers visiting supermarkets to purchase multiple brands photographing them in an improvised studio. Each image is accompanied by the factory specifications including roll length, average sheets per roll, sheet size and total area.</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the tradition of the pseudo-scientific typology and ambivalent cultural gaze this high resolution study of the similarity and difference of the once humble and ignored toilet roll was, until Corvid19, the perfect foil for the absurdity of consumerism; a long lost idea of industrialisation replaced by the human engine driving the economy; our emotions manipulated towards excessive, pathological and unchecked desire for variety.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But now Covid-19 has done what conventional politics could not; it has put at risk hard won structures of delicate persuasion that </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfBG0d5Oj3c" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">chasing of our own tail</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is the only </span>sensible<span style="font-family: inherit;"> solution to a successful society. The capitalist model has been briefly questioned, perhaps optimistically even checked by this alternative reality and a new shape emerges, the once taken for granted toilet roll elevated to the status of precious commodity and allegory for our ever-present but previously masked primal anxiety.</span></div>
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<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 2px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps we can broach </span>the<span style="font-family: inherit;"> sensitive subject of what Mr Sigmund Freud </span>considered<span style="font-family: inherit;"> stage two of our essential </span>psychosexual<span style="font-family: inherit;"> development, the anal stage or as I like to call it, the anal stage. I sense some reticence to read on but stay with it like, a stubborn number two, you've </span>committed<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>this<span style="font-family: inherit;"> far (there are some </span>hamsters<span style="font-family: inherit;"> on wheels at the end as a reward).</span></div>
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<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_stage" target="_blank">The Anal Stage</a> (2) is one of five stages through which we must all pass in order to have a functioning libido and healthy personality. Mr Freud posited that if a child's relationship to any of the 5 stages is frustrated it will lead to neurosis that will be carried forward to shape the adult personality. Threaten to takeaway an essential element (the toilet roll) in our relationship to our 'little precious' and there is potential for anxiety.</div>
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A downgrading of the relevance of Freud's theories has occurred due to the parts of his theories that reflect the inherent mysogyny of his times but the baby has been thrown out with the bath water. Have we lost touch with some still relevant explanations for our collective anxieties? What appears on the surface to be an irrational fear projected onto the innocent toilet roll, does indicate what is in fact an unspoken and perfectly rational anxiety. As the fear of societal breakdown rises our hard one privacy is threatened. Its akin to the fear of being run over and being found wearing dirty underwear. Our wealth has afforded us the luxury and disability of detaching us from what was once understood as community. Some other societies less touched by this great gift of western democratic capitalism must be confused and amused by the hysteria associated with the loss of this thin sheet between us and our erogenous dirt star.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As promised here are some<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1kcTdzKb_E" target="_blank"> </a></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1kcTdzKb_E" target="_blank">hamsters<span style="font-family: inherit;"> on wheels </span></a><br />
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<a href="https://urbanthesaurus.org/synonyms/anus?fbclid=IwAR0jHmbP-LXIRW09qMez2NsDtx4N8snCK6kFSUg3j04ULsSvMMu56I1mzjE" target="_blank">Anal Slang</a></div>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-15768830384663798132020-03-25T05:50:00.001-07:002020-03-27T03:00:51.924-07:00Vivian Maier's Garage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoaToQNY-St04lCRQENiNzoZRFQadNklVYCl460iktNqx-Rk3qLsx1iFZatdHFnDbiLUsiDOjr7oh5qi3TGRnIJsl-sBKsWvxZBpUjKn2CrYEOliFLQmyy1fvDTf-b-Xud8AB7rXsqkncB/s1600/355Z7250_granddaughter_grandfatherLR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1262" data-original-width="1600" height="504" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoaToQNY-St04lCRQENiNzoZRFQadNklVYCl460iktNqx-Rk3qLsx1iFZatdHFnDbiLUsiDOjr7oh5qi3TGRnIJsl-sBKsWvxZBpUjKn2CrYEOliFLQmyy1fvDTf-b-Xud8AB7rXsqkncB/s640/355Z7250_granddaughter_grandfatherLR.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Grandfather and Granddaughter, 2012 © Richard Ansett 2020</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I regret that I have discarded thousands of what I thought then were embarrassing original transparencies from my early career as a commercial photographer. My wonton destruction of what might now be a valuable resource was before the rise of the 'found photography' movement that evolved from the post-modern insecurities that 'photography was dead'. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">If only I had at least scattered these images anonymously to the winds to be discovered </span>or better still, had not thrown them away at all.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Digital allows me to explore the same concept but beyond the nostalgia for analogue and I can investigate themes just by entering references into the search bar, new threads appear</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> across multiple hard drives that respond to my current state of mind as I </span>disappear<span style="font-family: inherit;"> down the rabbit hole. As a consequence of such a large body of work, many images that relate to the same file number can appear in a sort of Jungian synchronistic curation, which has become part of the 'Film is Dead' process. Its a form of basic algorithm stripping away human influence and leaving the universe to evaluate content. This can be applied beyond the personal archive into the swirling mass of imagery on the web by entering the # and the 4 digit file number of your original work. I.e. the file number of this attached work (see below). Try it on Instagram.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Recycling and re-evaluating my surviving digitised and growing contemporary archive is an important part of my practice as a discussion of photography existentially now. A distance is required from the source of creation and much of my work feels more valuable having existed 'in a </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">draw' often for years to separate it from its original </span>purpose. But further, the more significant the work feels the greater my instinct is not share it, like precious jewels.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My ego (only equal to my insecurity) puts an onus on legacy. I can reassure myself that any failure of my work to make an impression on this </span>zeitgeist might <span style="font-family: inherit;">stand a better chance in another</span>.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> (A bit like Vivian Maier's garage). </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Images that have felt </span>valueless <span style="font-family: inherit;">or weak, can take on significant meaning in another reality; some new knowledge, a </span>fundamental<span style="font-family: inherit;"> change in society (cough) or a new artistic voice free of introjection and all of sudden</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> previously </span>irrelevant images are<span style="font-family: inherit;"> liberated through that new lens.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My re-evaluation of the archive is often relative to my own personal progress but the influence of Coronavirus is so powerful that it forces all of us to re-examine our relationship to everything created BV. This monumental perhaps temporary rift has forced a response in the 'way of seeing' and judging work created in a world that feels so different to our current present. Images of hugging and touching, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc49mvL0MBA&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR0f-KnW82u1IIK_Da3J16_ek3qrRTXISc37lQsh4rO_tJ7nu__cQ9AbeR8" target="_blank">footage of club nights, thousands of sweaty naked bodies writhing</a>, all feel like the curation of some post-virus (PV) exhibition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A friend has asked me to work with him to find an image from my archive for his new track ’</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Selbstisolation</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">’. As I scour the hard drives in an attempt to find the agreed file, I have come across this image I have </span>always<span style="font-family: inherit;"> loved but it feels more valuable now ‘Granddaughter and Grandfather, 2012 (File #7250).’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">All </span>limited<span style="font-family: inherit;"> edition enquiries DM me. Thanks and </span>Stay<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Safe.</span></div>
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Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-20814433799411636672020-03-02T08:46:00.000-08:002020-03-02T10:18:01.140-08:00Friend of Derek<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJMWXXvmols9gzn78PWF12r9-l55cAbZgsoHuOZG99kp04vu7Eat3qZP-8qBnEpXxdMUFHk80CYepFYTH-IOTL2c4RPGK6iu47adMaAwdXTyt7t24PwPR3rEWn6R0frVDbrxpcYgVxRdRD/s1600/dungerness_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJMWXXvmols9gzn78PWF12r9-l55cAbZgsoHuOZG99kp04vu7Eat3qZP-8qBnEpXxdMUFHk80CYepFYTH-IOTL2c4RPGK6iu47adMaAwdXTyt7t24PwPR3rEWn6R0frVDbrxpcYgVxRdRD/s1600/dungerness_1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Richard Ansett with Otto Dix at Prospect Cottage, 2015. Photo: Paul Robinson Webster</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Saving Derek Jarman’s </span><a href="https://www.gardenvisit.com/gardens/derek_jarman_garden_prospect_cottage_dungeness" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">Prospect Cottage</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> might be more of an esoteric campaign than many of us might wish but we who recognise this little humble building as representative of British art, culture and LGBTQ history also recognise how easily it could disappear rather than be preserved </span>as a treasure <span style="font-family: inherit;">for the nation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Attending the private view of <a href="https://www.lucy-bell.com/exhibition/friends-of-derek-fod" target="_blank">Friends of Derek at Lucy Bell Gallery</a> was a pilgrimage for me to reconnect to my own relationship to Jarman whose kind, handsome persona and passions defined an important part of homosexual cultural identity at a time when prejudice protected by law drove many of us into ghettos of fear and low self-esteem. Jarman's art represented by this house and landscape is a beautiful reminder of the power of art and creativity to change the world if we ever start to doubt it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The gallery walls are covered with photographic documentation of Jarman and his crew filming in the <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Dungeness,+Romney+Marsh+TN29+9NA/@50.9193231,0.9477704,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x47deeed7a851a7e1:0x260eae2ecb832b31!8m2!3d50.919325!4d0.96528?hl=en" target="_blank">Dungerness</a> landscape, most powerfully represented by color digital scans of the few surviving prints by the production designer of Jarman's The Garden, Derek Brown (the negatives are lost). These prints have a second generational feel and the details are blurred now like our memories, the fragility of their existence in parallel to the risk to the nation’s cultural history if we allow the cottage to slip away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I recognise the transformative nature of time to the meaning of a photograph and Brown's documentations are salvaged like the rusting beach ephemera in Jarman's extraordinary and celebrated garden. Everything has become so much more than its original intended purpose. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I shock a fellow guest by daring to imply that if it wasn't for the threat of loosing Prospect Cottage we would not have been stirred from our pragmatic and self-satisfied slumber to the reality that we must be vigilant in the protection of hard won rights. This fight for Prospect Cottage feels like a defining moment recognising a 'handing over' of the baton to a new form of post-modern activism ‘Wokeness’. For all its new empowerment of the young it has a radical Talibanistic relationship to the totems of the past and the new generation might easily forget that a lot of ground work on the path to change has been prepared by their brave exciting predecessors represented by this otherwise insignificant shack.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jarman's relationship to his sexuality identity and openness about his illness was courageous in the face of shameful laws that undermined the humanity of all of us and Jarman contributed to my own courage in accepting myself. It's hard to imagine it perhaps if you haven't had the privilege of living through it and surviving it. Perhaps my generation still suffers from a collective PTSD. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So this little house sits unchanged as the world changes around it and once again is at the centre of things; a line in the pebbles to remind us of art on the frontline but further, to the power of the eccentric British creative spirit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the existential poem by John Donne on the side of the cottage Dunne lays with his lover, free of the worries of the world, they are in that moment at the very centre of things too. A simple act of pleasure taken for granted by many is the more precious to those who have not been afforded that same right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>From The Sunne Rising</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>'To warme the world, that's done in warming us.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Prospect Cottage Needs You Art Fund: <a href="https://www.artfund.org/get-involved/art-happens/prospect-cottage/donate">https://www.artfund.org/get-involved/art-happens/prospect-cottage/donate</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Friends of Derek at Lucy Bell Gallery, St Leonard’s, Kent until 31st March <span style="color: #dca10d;"><a href="https://www.lucy-bell.com/exhibition/friends-of-derek-fod">https://www.lucy-bell.com/exhibition/friends-of-derek-fod</a></span></span></div>
Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-62465404714451856712020-01-04T07:32:00.002-08:002020-01-04T07:32:36.949-08:00The Colonial Gaze<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Camels, Tunisia © Richard Ansett 1992 - 2019</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #454545; font-family: uictfonttextstylebody; font-size: 17px;">'..the vast territory her gaze had discovered...on the dry earth of this measureless land scraped to the bone, a few men ceaselessly made their way, possessing nothing but serving no one, the destitute and free lords of a strange kingdom.'</span><br />
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Reading Albert Camus' The Adulterous Wife transports me back to the Tunisian desert as a younger version of me when photography was merely a gateway to seeing and understanding the world. Perhaps the sharpness of the light in North Africa encourages the focus on existential detail or perhaps there is something in the cultural meme that Camus personifies. I am seeing the camel train approaching, the slow effortlessness of the movement of the dromedaries belies the speed at which they approach. I had a youthful beauty then, as the camels approached I had to run at full speed in the fine desert sand to keep up just to capture a cliche silhouette. Eventually I stopped and watched this paradox slowly swiftly move away. A man, the owner I assumed, with a dark leather face gestured to me to come with them and in that moment I had to decide to leave the life I knew or stay on this side of the camera. I still feel the disappointment at my choice. I remain, observing the world relative to my own instead of participating in it; the cowardice in that moment and an opportunity lost. It was an early marker. my photographs are a constant arbiter and document of my courage and cowardice and risk is always rewarded.</div>
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I am now in Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges , I walk past a homeless beggar and safely past him I watch him. He is so weak that a dog growls and snarls at him sensing his weakness, it moves closer with each breath, the beggar can barely muster the strength to raise his stick to keep it at bay. I stayed and watched hopelessly as the delicate and terrifying balance was maintained and I did nothing, to photograph it felt like the worst betrayal, to capitalise on this suffering without any tangible concern for my subject. Even knowing that at some point the man would loose the battle I walked away. My hopelessness and guilt in that moment seemed to define my relationship to travelling the world and observing the daily terrors of my fellow humans played out for my colonial gaze. India is so all consuming in its beauty and ugliness one learns quickly to compartmentalise the daily normalised acts of depravity.<br />
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To feel helpless in the face of existential suffering has to be addressed, I feel that perhaps only I have seen these things because I have had to act to address the guilt in my life now. I seek to address my past failures through redemption (proof positive that there is no such things as a selfless act), I find it difficult to imagine life without this balance and to live life without this correction is ultimately self harming. There is a consequence to ignoring the suffering of others it is an infection of character each time we do it and it is part of the attrition that forms the adult personality for better or worse. We are not conscious of the monsters we are becoming, we only think the best of ourselves.</div>
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At the top of my list of many of the greatest photographs I never took was in a circus tent in Kerala, I recall the site as being beyond what was possible to capture in a mere photograph or perhaps not worthy of the medium. In truth and in hyndesight, the latter but it was and remains a perfect metaphor for my thoughts of India at the time. I had walked into the circus area in the early morning whilst the performers were waking, documenting their routines on a rare b/w positive 35mm (now discontinued). On entering the main tent as my eyes adjusted to the relative darkness I photographed a boy in charge of the elephants and glanced up at the old worn out canvas. It had become so rotten that thousands of holes allowed the light to break through creating a constellation, it was perfectly beautiful and taught me in that moment that great beauty and understanding can come from even the most impoverished landscapes. I did not even try to photograph it, I wanted it just for myself perhaps but also mere two dimensional documentation was not worthy. Somethings are only for the mind's eye.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqsDSoq2VCc-Us3lr5qW5F4BQ5w3RrfODXu7n6xndSPC_gtjplJkm_S7kHn4Apvgv5p6Ztg6Q9_o2UyRUN5te7a1IoBRWr2VNsH8WAEn2FM1sNnSOs_NYWqHpHxbySjpFGZ74JPfckFhBj/s1600/DNK0099K_27_India_boy_elephant_blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqsDSoq2VCc-Us3lr5qW5F4BQ5w3RrfODXu7n6xndSPC_gtjplJkm_S7kHn4Apvgv5p6Ztg6Q9_o2UyRUN5te7a1IoBRWr2VNsH8WAEn2FM1sNnSOs_NYWqHpHxbySjpFGZ74JPfckFhBj/s1600/DNK0099K_27_India_boy_elephant_blog.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boy in Circus Tent, Kerala © Richard Ansett 1992 - 2019</td></tr>
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There are often sections of literature that accidentally reflect my view of photography and Camus inevitably captures it's existential significance in 'The Adulterous Wife'.</div>
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'She only knew that this kingdom has been promised to her from time immemorial and that it would ever be hers, never again, except perhaps in that fleeting moment when she opened her eyes once more on the suddenly still sky and its streams of fixed light, as the voices rising from the Arab town fell suddenly quiet. It seemed to her that the turning earth had simply stopped and that from now on would ever grow old or die. Everywhere, henceforth, life was suspended, except in her, where at that very moment someone was weeping with pain and wonder.'</div>
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I rarely reminisce perhaps it's the inevitability of age, perhaps I am beginning to disassociate from the present. There is no excuse actually and I avoid this as much as possible but reading Camus again forces introspection and I have a talk approaching that demands retrospection. My concern is how to communicate to a younger me, the information that might be of value when we only seem to really learn from our own experience.</div>
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Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-54986456838582934582019-10-31T10:53:00.000-07:002019-10-31T10:53:14.660-07:00Extended Caption<div class="">
<span class="" style="font-family: Helvetica Neue; font-size: 12px;">I have been asked by the National Portrait Gallery London for an extended caption that might bring some insights in the creation of '</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw254480/Grayson-Perry?search=sp&sText=Grayson+perry&rNo=8" target="_blank">Grayson Perry, Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, 2013</a>' for the upcoming exhibition at <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/beyond/coming-home" target="_blank">Chelmsford Museum, Spring 2020.</a></span></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: Helvetica Neue; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">'It would not be original to describe the Starr Auditorium at Tate Modern as ‘womb-like’, the deep red envelopes you and like a foetus I was looking for the exit when I found this corner. It challenges reality just enough for it to lend a hand in examining this unique and complex subject. This portrait is a record of the first time I met Grayson Perry.</span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: Helvetica Neue; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">I consider my most successful portraits to be when I am able to document the literal first meeting with my subjects, they are invited in front of the lens without any conventional niceties and often in silence. In a portrait of the famous the resulting awkwardness and vulnerability can feel like iconoclasm but not in a negative sense, I am accidentally de-constructing the myths of celebrity because my main interest is in examining the human condition it masks. I enjoy photographing artists but there is a particular challenge in photographing Grayson Perry, who can present an alternative, equally valid persona ‘Claire’. Claire’s appearance is so radical as to parody the very notion of persona and in this first opportunity to represent her I was determined not to be seduced by the vivid character that protects him. Her otherwise infectious demeanour was met by a deliberate ambivalence that inspired this briefest glimpse that now represents the serious and powerful figure of the contemporary art world, influencer and commentator on the British national character…in a dress.</span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: Helvetica Neue; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">Perry has spoken to me since about the experience of being the subject of a photograph as ‘observing the photographer with equal fascination’ and this has remained with me since as the closest thing I can share about what he is like. It is the very definition of empathy, to step out of one’s ego in the true exploration of the reality of another person's life. Perry is the poster girl for an empathy with a more complex idea of what Britishness is, it is closer to a lot of people’s reality, not in any narrow definition of gender or sexuality, but existentially. This is his most generous aspect, like any artist the extremes of vulnerability and ego exist within him but he allows us to form our own relationship to him, projecting our own thoughts and feelings onto Claire and she loves the attention.'</span></div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-85952092616970304852019-09-17T05:14:00.000-07:002019-09-17T06:24:18.076-07:00Searching for Cindy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi32JutulaQza7BwB8ZJs6oA5IwsKu0GIHpWEMRqMUsar4fqHeQwnIKaQKrZyfka95f8vpP1sCHzjtFDzksU1WJIMSUp9gHdGxwrMURByNJEg8rPdCa6f__MU4rCYq1rcWL-Wbes9ZdUS5/s1600/Cindy_sherman_540.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="684" data-original-width="840" height="521" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi32JutulaQza7BwB8ZJs6oA5IwsKu0GIHpWEMRqMUsar4fqHeQwnIKaQKrZyfka95f8vpP1sCHzjtFDzksU1WJIMSUp9gHdGxwrMURByNJEg8rPdCa6f__MU4rCYq1rcWL-Wbes9ZdUS5/s640/Cindy_sherman_540.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Untitled #540, 2010/12. All rights Cindy Sherman</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In 1992 a 26 year old me came across a giant psychosexual masterpiece <a href="http://spruethmagers.com/exhibitions/322@@viewq4" target="_blank">Untitled, #257</a> by Cindy Sherman in the window of a Soho gallery. A dripping jewel of cum illuminated in the darkness; held in suspense by gravity and photography as it hovered above a gaping manaquin's mouth. It blew me away and infected me with one of my most treasured and complex memes. It was a £1000 then, a price that felt out of reach but also I was not brave enough even to own it. 'Owning' a Sherman in a feminist context is a fascinating prospect but it is a constant regret that I do not and now cannot possess even a bit of her.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The recent private view of an almost complete retrospective in London (the image described above is absent) gave me the opportunity to reconnect to the exquisite pain of that regret and brush up against her genius and courage in the hope that a little more might rub off.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The majority of the evening was spent searching for the actual Cindy Sherman in the multiple rooms of the National Portrait Gallery and although surrounded by monumental self portraits I was still not entirely sure whether I would recognise her. At one point all the women of a certain age could have been her. Eventually though I found a diminutive and humble human in a dress which could have been made from the same fabric as the wicked witch's ruby slippers.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sherman's early introvert documentation are iconic tropes for any contemporary adolescent obsessively seeking understanding through the selfie. Hers have evolved over decades of dogmatic repetition into a thorough examination of persona, from the 'protector' of the young through experiments in cultural stereotype to an eventual realisation that all persona is a barrier to progress towards any real understanding of self. This theme builds through the exhibition as the work becomes increasingly surreal and less defined by anything as tangible as gender. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The final rooms are potentially most baffling and I met two curators struggling with the enormity of defining Sherman's practice for upcoming presentations. My solution<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>is to surrender to the lack of understanding and in so doing be free from the conventions of narrative and rationalisation. Through this filter I can see that Sherman has handed over the contents of her dressing-up box to the randomness of the universe, inserting these new personas into the primordial landscapes that hint at the Jungian ooze that we are formed from and ultimately return.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1">The exhibition but especially the discussion chaired by Bonnie Greer 'Imitations of Life' re-inspires the quest for knowledge in the hope that somehow it will assist in the alchemy that is the successful synergy of 'self' and work. Sherman is the mistress and poster girl for us all in our attempts to be free of persona as glass ceiling and her intimate explorations are the canvas onto which we project the different stages of our own anxiety. Adoption is my unique USP, my disability and superpower. My own relationship to the existential lack of certainty</span><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;"> is my nature</span><span class="s1"> and allows for a confluence with other's, it is a useful skill in a photographer seeking understanding of self through the exploration of the lives of others. I am however less comfortable turning that objective gaze onto myself, that takes a different kind of courage. A self-portrait is like hearing my own voice played back, I do not recognise it and I struggle to like it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Greer disrespects photography by suggesting Sherman transcends the medium. This is often said of any artist who manages to work successfully with it. Photography is such a difficult tool to work with to create original work as it is the most present of mediums. Results are compared and defined by the aesthetic rules of contemporary capitalist culture</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Sherman like any artist has chosen her medium and is masterful in its use and she is undoubtedly a photographer. She is after all part of the generation that discovered photography as an art form in the 70's so eloquently defined by writers like Sontag. Each new generation since has re-discovered these lessons and possesses them as if they are new truths. Similarly with gender and sexual politics, Sherman reminds us that all we need to do is look back to recent history to find the same complex questions we are asking now. How amazing and courageous these artists were to feel the new power of the medium for the first time and dare to use it. I can only be in awe.</span></div>
Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-63067242553380254182019-07-23T13:24:00.002-07:002019-07-29T08:31:32.490-07:00Collective Alienation<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIvavRcK9yIK97w-F-k0we9T1IKCsr8qkjQjzzNMlPElk5ZUPaajO9LNSntbM4zukYbofQ1n6H2VYMoOgiBH2wSqZwSMF6Mk4oG0SfI8waPu76eVG9nywfDVTr9SlVpJxvw5Oi7OEg1NbX/s1600/_T7A2835_bruderhof_blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIvavRcK9yIK97w-F-k0we9T1IKCsr8qkjQjzzNMlPElk5ZUPaajO9LNSntbM4zukYbofQ1n6H2VYMoOgiBH2wSqZwSMF6Mk4oG0SfI8waPu76eVG9nywfDVTr9SlVpJxvw5Oi7OEg1NbX/s640/_T7A2835_bruderhof_blog.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Warren Family from series Darvell Bruderhof Community, UK © Richard Ansett 2019</td></tr>
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Happiness is not a relative concept; we should not rely on a perceived lack of contentment of others to reinforce our own sense of wellbeing. If this is a foundation, we are are not on safe ground.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am spending time with people who I may not immediately seem to have a natural affinity. On the contrary, firstly I always feel like an outsider and my adopted psychology seeks out anyone who shares my sense of dislocation regardless of any sense of otherness. Here I find an empathy with a need to withdraw to form a safe new universe in microcosm. This community, who has literally attempted to isolate itself, is representative of my view that we create worlds within worlds as a subconscious strategy to manage contemporary, complex reality. Of course the irony is that fear and contempt for Sodom are </span>feelings<span style="font-family: inherit;"> we all share.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Here the word of God forms the firm boundary within which to explore the human experience. The Bruderhof boundary, based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, feels much closer to the lived experience than the limits imposed by </span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">the secular state. Rules are an attractive alternative to chaos when we struggle to find our place in, what I define as, 'a relatively free society'. The modern state no longer offers nostalgic cultural norms that we can feel part of (or alienated from). Even punks feel the need to belong to a movement, a collective alienation and we are denied even this right to feel 'other' now. The state has found a way to attempt to manage our rage through a strategy of inclusion. If queer is a welcome section of society it is in its very nature no longer queer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We are not yet taught in schools to cope with the now inevitable associated existential anxiety that pervades society. Millennials must sometimes crave something less multi-dimensional that will quickly answer the open questions that have led to a 'mental health epidemic'. Cast adrift to form our own unique relationships to society we, instead of embracing the complexity and extraordinary gift of freedom of thought, withdraw to form more controllable worlds. We should however resist the desire for order and instead examine inwardly for solutions to why we </span>aren't<span style="font-family: inherit;"> coping.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To refer to a biblical allegory I am very much involved with; can we say with certainty that if we fall down we will be helped up again by another member of our society that is so huge in comparison to the 300 members of Bruderhof, we call each other stranger? I believe so actually. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Prayer seems an ineffective remedy for the suffering of others, I see it as an entirely delusional and self-serving act that subjugates </span>responsibility.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> It is at best a placebo defined as 'a measure designed to humour or placate', but there is an element of deceit in convincing the patient that what they are offered has any power to heal. There is huge value in being given some time and genuine care however it must be freely given to be most effective and not linked to a promise of heavenly timeshare.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Bruderhof community will say I am missing the point and I agree that all my rational, atheistic objections fail in the face of 'faith'. I am doomed to never benefit from the power of God ifI do not believe and continue to stubbornly deny his existence. I am doomed to a life without answers, a constant searching for truth through one painful life experience after another and then the risk of eternal purgatory. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">How wonderful it would be to subjugate responsibility and be held in the strong and comforting arms of the great patriarch.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Buderhof community in their isolation and </span>withdrawal<span style="font-family: inherit;"> are no different to us, they are inescapably part of our community too. None of us can exist in isolation, we are entirely reliant on each other for our existence whether we have realised it or not. Our society allows for those that chose not to recognise that they are part of it.</span>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-36585258103252323552019-06-03T09:52:00.001-07:002019-06-03T10:16:14.725-07:00The Kuenssberg Letter<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6aNJ0LI-CE8ez2JHjQ9sOn9bcde6I4HRMvsclT-UEdQFjaw1ZOPYpQbcsHOVY7KR8zwGCJ6OmJfDvGNP-iELKvi8DV2K9PA6Qgre5uEC1EGqJ8qDWRpvEunjIy_qPV4Gz5EveuRvQzSjA/s1600/_T7A7915_LKuenssberg_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1116" data-original-width="1534" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6aNJ0LI-CE8ez2JHjQ9sOn9bcde6I4HRMvsclT-UEdQFjaw1ZOPYpQbcsHOVY7KR8zwGCJ6OmJfDvGNP-iELKvi8DV2K9PA6Qgre5uEC1EGqJ8qDWRpvEunjIy_qPV4Gz5EveuRvQzSjA/s640/_T7A7915_LKuenssberg_b.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Laura Kuenssberg, House of Westminster, London © Richard Ansett 2019</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">The portrait of Laura Kuenssberg was called in for a curatorial meeting of the National Portrait Gallery and initially not accepted into the permanent collection. It was called in again unusually for a second view but with a request to see other frames from the shoot. See below my response*. The email was read to the committee.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;"><i>I am very grateful that the curatorial committee is considering my portrait of Laura Kuenssberg at Parliament. I am always honoured that my work is regarded worthy of even a conversation at such a level.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody";"><i style="font-size: 17px;">This portrait was taken at the height of the Brexit tensions and it was synchronistic that dark clouds moved across the sky as we shot her. The House of Westminster looms as a </i><span style="font-size: 17px;"><i>forbidding</i></span><i style="font-size: 17px;"> silhouette and nods to my own fascination with Monet’s representation from the other side of the river. The clouds are a classic pathetic fallacy of course and the flare from the additional flash light, hints at the scrutiny with which we observe and judge her as journalist and 'woman'. Whilst the setting is staged, she is caught slightly off guard as she adjusts her microphone revealing a glimpse of her guile.</i></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Not only is Kuennsberg a great journalist but she is also the first woman political editor of the BBC and inevitably worthy of a place in the archive irrespective of which facsimile is chosen. She has the job of unravelling the complexities of the political class and presents this back to us. She must play an artful game in negotiating with people skilled at sophistry and avoidance.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;"><i style="font-size: 17px;">What I might consider great </i><span style="font-size: 17px;"><i>portraiture</i></span><i style="font-size: 17px;"> possesses the emotional moment as priority stolen from an otherwise collaborative process inspired by the greats of portraiture, especially my own heroes Irvin Penn and Bill Brandt who I fear one lifetime is not enough for me to ever emulate.</i><i style="font-size: 17px;"> A portrait of any lasting value must represent something of the person beyond a flattering likeness and there is a line to be walked between the complicity of the subject and their collaboration in the portrait process. As 'subject' we are submitting to the risk of being exposed and scrutinised in a more exploratory way. In my work I seek to discover something in the moment that represents the subject beyond just flattering likeness and this I suggest may be at odds with tradition of objectification that </i><span style="font-size: 17px;"><i>accompanies the photography of women 'as beautiful' first</i></span><i style="font-size: 17px;">. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;"><i style="font-size: 17px;">This lone image for your consideration prioritises the </i><span style="font-size: 17px;"><i>examination</i></span><i style="font-size: 17px;"> of her as interpreter of the Machiavellian but I do consider </i><span style="font-size: 17px;"><i>it not to be unkind or unflattering but indeed beautiful</i></span><i style="font-size: 17px;">. There is a discussion to be had re. contemporary feminist representation and whether we should continue to interpret our modern, successful, powerful women figures primarily through the lens of aesthetic stereotypes that have defined portraits of women in the past.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;"><i style="font-size: 17px;">Very best and kindest regards,</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">*slightly re-worked from the original text for the purposes of the blog</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;"></span>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-75158312206226653802019-04-10T07:01:00.000-07:002019-04-10T09:13:00.894-07:00No Photography Allowed<div style="font-size: 13px;">
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<span class="" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">As part of a road trip through the southern states I visited La Grange, Georgia. In 2017 it attracted press attention as the first town to officially apologize for the circumstances that led to the lynching of a young African American man, Austin Callaway in 1940. As </span><span class="" style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">part of the <a href="https://eji.org/" target="_blank">Equal Justice Initiative</a>'s '<a href="https://eji.org/community-remembrance-project" target="_blank">Community Remembrance Project'</a>, soil from the sites of known lynchings was collected in special labelled memorial jars to be installed at the <a href="https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/" target="_blank">National Memorial for Peace and Justice</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">‘In <a href="https://eji.org/racial-justice/legacy-lynching" target="_blank"><i class="">Lynching in America: Confronting the legacy of Racial Terror</i>,</a> the EJI documented 4400 racial terror Lynchings in 12 Southern States – and more than 300 in eight states outside the South – between 1877 to 1950. Most critically, Lynching reinforced a legacy of racial inequality that has never been adequately addressed.’<o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lynching in America: Confronting the legacy of Racial Terror and hotel breakfast © Richard Ansett 2017</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">The soil collection for </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Austin_Callaway" style="font-family: uictfonttextstyletallbody, serif; font-size: 10pt;" target="_blank">Austin Callaway</a><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">'s memorial jar had not yet taken place and before leaving for the states I requested that any descendants might be found and asked if they would participate in the collection as a specific event for the camera.</span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">Arriving from the UK, racial politics feels very different in the US, in many ways more progress has been made and even the unresolved issues between black and white feel closer to the surface. In Britain we are culturally less used to airing </span><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">racial division so openly. We arguably avoided a US style civil war by massively compensating slave owners, funding the industrial revolution and we have unsuccessfully circumvented the conversation ever since. But even in the US there is a reticence to fully negotiate the minefield of racial tension and the EJI project recognises that contemporary generations are shaped by an emotional legacy associated with victim, perpetrator or bystander. The genius of the Community Remembrance Project recognises how these old wounds perpetuate continued prejudice and division, damaging everyone.</span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">When I visited the EJI offices in Montgomery, Alabama, the home of the civil rights movement, I was conscious of the monetary value of 'civil rights tourism' and in light of <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/477049/old-habits-die-hard-when-a-lynching-memorial-becomes-a-photo-opportunity/" target="_blank">William. C. Anderson's article 'When a lynching memorial becomes a photo oppertunity'</a> I can empathise with how behaviours more associated with tourism than commemoration are perceived as disrespectful. I photographed myself at the Rosa Parks bus stop, was photographed with the minister of Martin Luther King Jr's church and was even offered a haircut by his barber; At a time when tensions were rising in nearby Charlottesville, I sent a postcard of black prisoners to my partner in the UK with the standard sentiment and ironic 'Wish You Were Here'. There are many people on holiday visiting the sites on the civil rights trail offering opportunities for the virtue signalling selfie as valuable currency for our social media feeds. I can see that a form of 'Disneyfication' of the black struggle has occurred in making the suffering more palatable to the white visitor so as not to alienate and in that there is a danger of an empathic disconnect from the very demographic trying to be reached in any re-education process. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Selfie with Lynching Memorial Marker, La Grange, GA, USA</td></tr>
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<span class="" style="font-size: 10pt;">However the overall approach across all the sites is an attempt to be educational, there was a generous welcome at MLK's church and I felt I was a valued guest in someone else</span><span class="" style="font-family: ms 明朝; font-size: 10pt;">'</span><span class="" style="font-size: 10pt;">s history and the minister </span><span class="" style="font-size: 10pt;">pulled no punches in reminding our group tour that the oppression and inaction against black people was by 'white folks'. Surrounded</span><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif;"> by the safe space created by the love and forgiveness of the pastor there</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> was a palpable sense of shame I faced in that moment at odds with an otherwise glorious narrative of British colonialism and white history that had an early influence on my racial and cultural identity. A confidence built on these foundations is racist.</span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">There is an art to remembrance; in the UK we have our ostensibly conservative and austere permanent memorials to heroic sacrifice in 'victory' but we have no significant monuments to any collective guilt or moral failure defining our past as less than glorious. Germany, crushed and defeated twice and re-born, has embraced another form of national commemoration and Berlin especially has monumentalised the lessons of humanity born from defeat and hubris (my favourite is the <a href="http://www.raum-der-stille-im-brandenburger-tor.de/english/index_en.htm" target="_blank">Room of Silence</a> at the Brandenburg Gate). But in re-framing the evidence the UK can be considered as equally defeated; the bullet holes in the walls at <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/amritsar-massacre" target="_blank">Amritsar</a> are a more fitting testimony and potentially more valuable to the national character than any tribute to the glorious dead defending the empire.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: left;">Bullet Holes in the walls at Jallianwala Bagh</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: left;">, Amritsar, Punjab. Image subject to © .</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">The most successful memorial as visitor centre and museum I have seen is </span><a href="https://www.oradour.info/index.htm" style="font-family: uictfonttextstyletallbody, serif; font-size: 10pt;" target="_blank">Oradour-sur-Glane</a><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">, a village in France and the site of destruction and massacre of the population by the German army. On the instructions of Charles de Gaule it was sealed off to preserve the evidence of the atrocity as it had occurred. On arrival one is directed through an underground tunnel from the modern world into the heart of the deserted original village. Crucially the visitor is instructed on appropriate behavior including, no dogs, no photography or filming and no food or drink. With less distraction the silence encourages a presence to the terrors and increases the chance of empathy.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMdtdZHd1NDKqtuZu4pxKu6QcfL_O7K2Az7gRlCkVDrxcZOKDddULLlkdOax1H9oWcyh8hsL2jU6wi4Yo3dROEZ7WdRcREI9YBmBEE9MczRGU4E44KhLIGimDkgcd0e7i7XaxPtB7C1V_k/s1600/selfie_lynching_no-photography.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="260" data-original-width="380" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMdtdZHd1NDKqtuZu4pxKu6QcfL_O7K2Az7gRlCkVDrxcZOKDddULLlkdOax1H9oWcyh8hsL2jU6wi4Yo3dROEZ7WdRcREI9YBmBEE9MczRGU4E44KhLIGimDkgcd0e7i7XaxPtB7C1V_k/s320/selfie_lynching_no-photography.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">A white tourist's lack of empathy epitomised by the ubiquitous selfie at a memorial to black suffering directly as a consequence of white oppression is perceived as disrespectful in <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/477049/old-habits-die-hard-when-a-lynching-memorial-becomes-a-photo-opportunity/" target="_blank">William.C. Anderson's article</a>. The selfie defined arguably as only casual narcissism and photography's diminished</span><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif;"> power and importance by the vast numbers of digital images created can be argued as devaluing of any subject</span><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">. In the context of the US civil rights movement, the contemporary snaps at a memorial to the subjugation and murder by </span><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">a previous generation who thought so little of the victims that they photographed them as entertainment and were produced as postcards is darkly ironic. Mr Anderson's perfectly erudite description of the act as the ‘rigorous documentation of their own evil’ might be equivalent to the US army selfies with torture victims at Abu Graib.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje564wnsCD9odB_uil9XSFbXn5XH2P_Gdih9aBp5OB-xOrNUDlcKPMELblcYSChyI17QPsm3AOAEHRPzjZgcshInLiDKLZSTdQlt7Z4SJHkWOZ8Dq8rG84pKRuZY0VK9QQZ-5wNdo_356U/s1600/Abu_Ghraib_selfies_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="615" data-original-width="1024" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje564wnsCD9odB_uil9XSFbXn5XH2P_Gdih9aBp5OB-xOrNUDlcKPMELblcYSChyI17QPsm3AOAEHRPzjZgcshInLiDKLZSTdQlt7Z4SJHkWOZ8Dq8rG84pKRuZY0VK9QQZ-5wNdo_356U/s640/Abu_Ghraib_selfies_2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Abu Ghraib selfies © Unknown</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">As part of my photographic project '</span><a href="http://richardansett.com/gallery/project-series/lynching-in-america/" style="font-family: uictfonttextstyletallbody, serif; font-size: 10pt;" target="_blank">Lynching in America' </a><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">I have included some abstracts of the soils in the jars as a typology to emphasise the scale and geography but my main focus is in the documentation of the simple, intimate action by the direct descendants Frances and Walter of the murdered boy Austin Callaway. This documentation of the collection of soil at the site of his lynching whilst conventional in appearance is not intended as a conventional editorial, photojournalistic observation.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frances and Walter collecting soil for the EJI memorial jar © Richard Ansett 2017</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhObdrMweO9J1PC__aoZ17e3_PUWzXC7szenljpCCjfF2ux15z1eckstBCHDiO9ESGZnMoZRpaR_BTv8gwP6S-nm6c1HQZbZwVvhkYyjTBLenJy-pjl-d6a3xfElO_4Y6TAz24KpV4sFhW6/s1600/00183_frances_hand_with_soil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhObdrMweO9J1PC__aoZ17e3_PUWzXC7szenljpCCjfF2ux15z1eckstBCHDiO9ESGZnMoZRpaR_BTv8gwP6S-nm6c1HQZbZwVvhkYyjTBLenJy-pjl-d6a3xfElO_4Y6TAz24KpV4sFhW6/s640/00183_frances_hand_with_soil.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Soil from the site of the lynching of Austin Callaway © Richard Ansett 2017</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">Entering the unmarked woodland glade and recording the events at the site of the lynching of Austin Callaway with his descendants Frances and Walter, my actions as a white photographer could be compared to a continuation of the damaging legacy of recording mass murder as entertainment and in this re-enactment I am a valid participant in the action equal to the subjects in a process of reconciliation. Any act of reconciliation requires the presence of all parties and I am welcome and present behind the camera. </span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">This event whilst staged for the camera is a collaboration and a genuine act and is not just between myself Frances and Walter but the result of negotiations with a huge number of other invested people from the La Grange community, black and white, church, police and state. Understanding of p</span><span class="" style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">hotography is transformed from a conventional document of complicity to murder and oppression, to its </span><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif;">antithesis. It </span><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">is the catalyst for healing and a search for truth. As the subject, the experience of being seen and recorded can feel personally valuable and in this moment Frances and Walter's lives are recognised as valuable to this process, very different to how the mob must have viewed Austin Callaway in 1940.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">At the time of documenting our quiet act of truth and reconciliation, the riots of Charlottesville were in full swing and drawing the media gaze with the burning torches and chants of "Blood and Soil".</span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">*<i class="">The apology was not for the lynching but for the failure to protect Callaway from being taken from the police station cell by 6 white men and murdered in nearby woods. One indication perhaps of inherent racial bias and 'white saviours syndrome' is that the much-respected white Police chief who offered the original apology became the centre of the media story eclipsing the black community’s courage in its willingness to accept the apology and the hard work of the Equal Justice Initiative led by Bryon Stevenson for inspiring the entire process.</i></span></div>
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<i><span class="" lang="EN-US">**There is the matter of the colonial gaze as an accidental inherent bias of the white documentary photographer as an ‘invested observer’ and obstruction to the fair and objective representation of any event . There is a responsibility on a contemporary photographer seeking documentary truth to at least have an awareness of this legacy.</span><span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif;">.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstyletallbody" , serif; font-size: 13.333333015441895px;">This blog is developed from a response to <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/477049/old-habits-die-hard-when-a-lynching-memorial-becomes-a-photo-opportunity/" target="_blank">'When a Lynching Memorial Becomes a Photo Opportunity' - William. C. Anderson </a></span></div>
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Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-43555282687988129932019-03-23T18:01:00.001-07:002019-03-24T03:32:55.167-07:00More Than Documentation<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-X5yYhb0-XCjqRNvQL-bRySyfqH02O_uIDTx25-QHQZzErUso38Cb0foZ8FFvgJ4DeIGwXPLzc_7IuCumm4gMt8ikryxEkR4OoGF-60hHLHpc5UGSf-8khScKeW9yR5pIMdGmGoM52vBl/s1600/Photo+15-10-2018%252C+17+28+22+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-X5yYhb0-XCjqRNvQL-bRySyfqH02O_uIDTx25-QHQZzErUso38Cb0foZ8FFvgJ4DeIGwXPLzc_7IuCumm4gMt8ikryxEkR4OoGF-60hHLHpc5UGSf-8khScKeW9yR5pIMdGmGoM52vBl/s640/Photo+15-10-2018%252C+17+28+22+%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Danel and Erin, Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize Exhibition 2018/19, National Portrait Gallery, London</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The portrait of Danel, 9 years old, a survivor of the Grenfell Tower from the series ‘Children of Grenfell’ and the Portrait Erin, 12 years old, a survivor of the Manchester bombing was submitted to the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2018. Both images were successfully shortlisted guaranteeing the inclusion in the exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery, London.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">DANEL</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Danel portrait inclusion highlights the disconnect between ordinary people and the establishment graphically illustrated by the official response to the Grenfell </span>disaster<span style="font-family: inherit;"> and the circumstances that led to the fire itself whilst at the same time its presence in a national institution reminds all those affected by Grenfell that they are </span>infact<span style="font-family: inherit;"> valued. Further, the inclusion in such a prestigious international prize brings an increased level of exposure offering the visitor* an opportunity to engage with Danel’s portrait as a vessel for our empathy and sympathy for all affected.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the presence of children it is impossible to not consider their potential; this was pronounced as I faced Danel with my camera during the capture of his image, his future has been inevitably altered by his experience. Photography can be more than just documentation and the inclusion in a prize exhibition is more than celebration of craft and ego. The process of creation and the bringing of the work to the gallery space offers an opportunity for further understanding and potential for healing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Danel with his mother and brother were invited to return to visit his portrait for the first time in the elitist gallery environment. It is both a celebration and examination of the processes that are defining them. The gallery was specially closed to the public to allow them time with the work. A film crew was invited from ITV news to record the event.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">” I feel like a celebrity.” – Danel</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">*The portrait was voted as the favourite by the visiting public.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">ERIN</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The inclusion of Erin’s portrait emphasises the therapeutic possibilities of photography. Similarly to Danel and the other children survivors of Grenfell, the act of attention during the photographic act itself offers the possibility of healing and Erin as a print is the focus for empathy for all those affected.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Erin’s unique circumstances as a survivor of a terrorist attack have left her (as with other survivors) with diagnosed <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-image: url("http://richardansett.com/wp-content/themes/richardansett/images/pixel-light-grey.png"); background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat no-repeat; border: 0px none; color: black; font-weight: bold; outline: none 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">PTSD</a>. The inclusion of her portrait at the National Portrait Gallery exhibition offered an opportunity to invite the subject to consider attending the private view event that could have parallels to the <b><a href="https://www.arianagrande.com/" target="_blank">Ariana Grande</a> </b>concert. The National Portrait Gallery offered Erin and her family a special space available to her exclusively to recognise her value to them in attending and to help her manage the experience of being once again in a large crowd in a confined space.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Erin had trouble liking her own image but since has requested a print and the family have put it up in their home.</span></div>
Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-22986365171857002772019-03-23T17:11:00.002-07:002019-03-23T17:11:51.979-07:00Waffle House Index<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT83jnlTgPS1Y5ld7zd54XnBL_zxb8I7frruCwKF_HwgLxqsqPNySRQ3htJcIniXDIVNaeCQ56ff3JGhC70ujv3kJeNwM5bMEpFkeKVaBAZXi97yaxmVWM_ftOM_OIr1lZfItiMu_11AOJ/s1600/WAFFLEHOUSE_LR_w1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="678" data-original-width="900" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT83jnlTgPS1Y5ld7zd54XnBL_zxb8I7frruCwKF_HwgLxqsqPNySRQ3htJcIniXDIVNaeCQ56ff3JGhC70ujv3kJeNwM5bMEpFkeKVaBAZXi97yaxmVWM_ftOM_OIr1lZfItiMu_11AOJ/s640/WAFFLEHOUSE_LR_w1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">WAFFLE HOUSE INDEX TYPOLOGY from American Road Trip © Richard Ansett</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The typology is pastiche, tribute and critique of Ed Ruscha’s classic <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/transforming-artist-books/summaries/edward-ruscha-twentysix-gasoline-stations-1963" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-image: url("http://richardansett.com/wp-content/themes/richardansett/images/pixel-light-grey.png"); background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat no-repeat; border: 0px none; color: black; outline: none 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><b>Twenty-six Gasoline Stations, 1963</b></a>. No architecture better expressed American’s burgeoning love affair with the motor car and similarly I focus on a contemporary architecture of the road trip satiating a 21st century obsession with consumption. I reflect on Ruscha’s seeming casual, objective record as part of my exploration of ‘The American Roadtrip’ as an overworked and exhausted photographic genre.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Further I discuss whether historic art, literature and films have assisted in defining the prism through which we view the contemporary American landscape that obstructs a relationship to the now. There is an aesthetic recidivism that hides the uncomfortable truth that we are unable to perceive present reality as valuable or even beautiful without the crutch of established aesthetic convention. This snap shot and blunt cliché of the architecture of the open road undermines the genius of Ruscha’s original work and his once radical vision has become the sentimental yardstick and stalwart of any photographic right of passage. Perhaps this is the fate of any great artist whose work so completely influences the zeitgeist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This pastiche masks a contemporary narrative. ‘The <a href="https://www.wafflehouse.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-image: url("http://richardansett.com/wp-content/themes/richardansett/images/pixel-light-grey.png"); background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat no-repeat; border: 0px none; color: black; outline: none 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><b>Waffle House</b></a> Index’ is an informal metric used by <a href="https://www.fema.gov/blog/2011-07-07/news-day-what-do-waffle-houses-have-do-risk-management" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-image: url("http://richardansett.com/wp-content/themes/richardansett/images/pixel-light-grey.png"); background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat no-repeat; border: 0px none; color: black; outline: none 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><b>FEMA</b></a> the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine the effect of a major storm and the likely scale of assistance required for disaster recovery. The geographical concentration of Waffle Houses and their 24 hour, 7 day a week opening times combined with their fixed menus makes the Waffle House chain an invaluable resource for the evaluation of the effects of any major storm on communities, through the assessment of any change in opening times and menus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">These 9 Waffle Houses were photographed with 1 hour and are no more than 2 km apart. Each restaurant has its own unique number.</span></div>
Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-30993778071299133112019-02-11T12:42:00.000-08:002019-02-11T13:06:46.907-08:00Nothing Matters..<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzwwYoVNBP1L2xICZml9yS16iYNbY-H-siuz6Dhqyt5y8vrddrGJ0yDJNhTcOqRTN7LmKjgEaYDelp8aLmvbCAonhG3Eo_A0l5oHa3x-KImVQEvQJd1kc3wECpodts2nT03laW7i0A6mT5/s1600/_T7A1950_missing_3B.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzwwYoVNBP1L2xICZml9yS16iYNbY-H-siuz6Dhqyt5y8vrddrGJ0yDJNhTcOqRTN7LmKjgEaYDelp8aLmvbCAonhG3Eo_A0l5oHa3x-KImVQEvQJd1kc3wECpodts2nT03laW7i0A6mT5/s640/_T7A1950_missing_3B.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">File:_T7A1950 Nothing Matters George © Richard Ansett 2018</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5l-qAb494VUD23iq0TCiUkBrdFIQGRWXdUopp8ZiVu2FaO-8oudxbUcTFzbxp-HeNOrOIE4r8a1_IdbZeQGY1n-2jpdaskXTffkVWXjeaU7XNd0tTQlJa-kfNkbQQktA4-tkatYiisbEi/s1600/_T7A1842_missing_3B.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5l-qAb494VUD23iq0TCiUkBrdFIQGRWXdUopp8ZiVu2FaO-8oudxbUcTFzbxp-HeNOrOIE4r8a1_IdbZeQGY1n-2jpdaskXTffkVWXjeaU7XNd0tTQlJa-kfNkbQQktA4-tkatYiisbEi/s640/_T7A1842_missing_3B.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">File:_T7A1842 Nothing Matters George © Richard Ansett 2018</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The huge challenge of attempting to illustrate the complex and bespoke nature of mental health, especially through such a limited 2 dimensional medium, has led me to the realisation that perhaps photography in its purest sense is not enough and I am deluding myself if I consider that somehow I am 'making a difference'. Don McCullin (who does not define himself as an artist) admits that his images will make no difference to the subjects he has taken, many of whom were either already dead or would soon be. It does beggar the question 'what are we doing this for ?' and this is an intellectual anxiety at the fore front of the mind of the empathic artist. Conscience and responsibility are part of the self negotiation in the representation of other people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Depression is hard enough to define in any medium and perhaps so much exposure to it has allowed it to infect my own confidence. Being around complex and overwhelming mental issues does take its toll for a sensitive and confluent person. I have been known to say that I do not care about my subjects but this is a conceptual statement only, their identity is less important than the message I am attempting to communicate through them. I am attempting to detach the conventional narrative that helps us to easily define and therefore compartmentalise the subject as 'other', so that we as an audience can potentially imagine this hell for ourselves.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />For example, without wishing to pull back the Wizard's curtain too swiftly, this man's name is not George, it is in fact Edward; it doesn't matter, nothing matters. I find confidence to declare my process through the anecdotes of other artists and I recently read that David Hockney re-named the cat in his most famous painting 'Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy' because it sounded better. 'Nothing Matters Edward' doesn't have the same flow either.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />I spent some time recently alone with George, he is so consumed with ennui and despair at the loss of his mother that he inspired an attempt to define it, or perhaps to attempt to capture something of it, bottle it or worse pseudo-scientifically observe if the molecules bouncing back from him and onto the cold hard plain of my image sensor convey anything of his suffering to you or even me. Can his emotional and physical pain that is so visceral in the moment be captured within the boundaries of the conventional photograph? My practice is defined by this challenge. I am not looking to redefine the craft but create new and original work within traditional boundaries.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Margaret Atwood accidentally came close to defining depression when she stated that "There is always hope. Otherwise why get up in the morning." Similarly, to believe that “if one thing matters” to quote Wolfgang Tillmans “everything matters” noble as it is, sentimentalises a starker reality, that the fabric of our existence is a fictitious human framework to help make sense of our insignificance. Depression is a consequence of this awakening from this delusion. Depression can be defined as progress as we awaken into a hopeless realisation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />As in the myth of Daedalus and Icarus to face this realisation is to risk destruction. Depression is a bespoke emotional and physical destruction, the pain of imprisonment of self through a failure to rationalise truth.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />The awareness of the hopelessness of reality and our existence within it, is something we must negotiate but this awakening can come as a terrible shock to the unprepared. As an artist I deliberately place my hand in the flame. Mortal anxiety is a catalyst to this process and how we manage our relationship to it defines us as unique, complex individuals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />The paradox is that there is hope; the irony is that there is only one thing that can help us come to terms with 'the hell of existential loneliness, OTHER PEOPLE. We are both the problem and the solution.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">SEE FULL SERIES HERE: <a href="http://richardansett.com/gallery/new-work/nothing-matters-george/" target="_blank">Nothing Matters </a></span><a href="http://richardansett.com/gallery/new-work/nothing-matters-george/" target="_blank">George, 2018 </a>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-24737450126412628272018-11-05T02:26:00.000-08:002018-11-06T10:39:58.402-08:00..Everything Matters<span style="font-family: inherit;">An 4m glycee print, perhaps the largest I have seen, is hung impossibly, delicately by what seems like 4 pins at Wolfgang Tillmans vast archival show at the Tate Modern early this year. Shot on a hi resolution camera, the image is of a common little weed growing through a crack in the pavement in a shadowy corner of a London street. It is monumental but equally tender, verdant and incredibly beautiful, classically composed equal to any still life or landscape master work but defiantly and unashamedly 'photography'. The title of the show pronounces 'If One Thing Matters Everything Matters'.</span><br />
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The work is both deeply autobiographical and political. It is clear from the immediacy and genuineness of the image that Tillmans is responding in the moment, his subconscious gasping at otherwise meaningless and ignored objects that are elevated to the desirable.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The success of a work is in direct correlation to the risk of failure, holding back the narrative to allow the audience our own epiphany, our own discovery of meaning and therefore a sense of ownership. It creates a huge bond between the viewer and the work, it is in line with Gestalt practice; the idea of assisting others towards seeing new patterns in reality space through self-discovery. The artist subjugates his ego in the pursuit of a bigger conversation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />I have empathy for this pathetic, unwanted weed. Tillmans has come to terms with his non-heteronormative sexuality and is an immigrant, I imagine he has had feelings of disenfranchisement. The otherwise unseen, uncared for and reviled is held up and glorified. In so doing Tillmans shows great knowledge of the power of photographic imagery in the representation of what we consider normal. He reminds us of the nature of prejudice and how easy it is to be complicit in the oppressive status quo in documenting reality. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Weed, 2014 © Wolfgang Tillmans</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-14759121293948928382018-08-15T12:04:00.001-07:002018-09-02T15:28:41.964-07:00The Heteronormative State<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZFoi_deuOzfIqVzkNsHQ9-qqdcNxR7qFT6_GdGpkqY15silBPEuMTrqCoy_h7nQ88b30B7x5n2OfMJXp29ZltT8hsAFKPvffSXPX9siS4EO1xWhjlFjYPW8v0qZ7gxCkeVRbpLYvD86qE/s1600/CF018512_GP_liteH1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZFoi_deuOzfIqVzkNsHQ9-qqdcNxR7qFT6_GdGpkqY15silBPEuMTrqCoy_h7nQ88b30B7x5n2OfMJXp29ZltT8hsAFKPvffSXPX9siS4EO1xWhjlFjYPW8v0qZ7gxCkeVRbpLYvD86qE/s640/CF018512_GP_liteH1.jpg" width="512" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grayson Perry - BIRTH MOTHER © Richard Ansett 2018</td></tr>
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It might feel comfortable and safe to sit within the confines of a clearly defined existence and judge others but it is not secure ground. Certainly the previously dominant structures that set out our world are now seen increasingly as merely other ways of living and in a free society even bigots are welcome as we recognise the pathetic hubris of their superiority.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The complications of accepting personal responsibility for our lives and the accompanying existential loneliness are prices we pay to break free of oppressive forms of traditional identity. We increasingly exist in parallel to the passive aggressive bully that is the stereotype and 'minority' is an increasingly archaic term.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">'Queer' has evolved from the reclamation of an abuse to become an inclusive definition that allows us</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> all to share in the complex relationship to what has been identified as the <i>'<a href="https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/what-is-heteronormativity/" target="_blank">heteronormative state</a></i>.'</span><br />
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The heteronormative state should be defined as the oppressor not just of those <span style="font-family: inherit;">broadly defined by sexuality. It is the fabric within which we all function evolved over centuries, the historic legacy is stitched into the foundations and structures that frame our lives. It cannot be torn down so easily like a statue but we can scratch and nudge at it with tools like the zeitgeist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In my latest collaboration with Grayson Perry the focus is on the tireless motif of mother and child for the 21st century</span>.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>Claire is not a natural mother, it is a<span style="font-family: inherit;"> trans- immaculate conception.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A very limited edition giclée available through <a href="https://www.singulart.com/en/artist/richard-ansett-227" target="_blank">SINGULART</a></span></div>
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Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-65881891996614835302018-06-26T12:30:00.001-07:002018-06-26T12:31:53.926-07:00The Fertile Void<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP5-GD_BWzayZbVdwzNYWYZo7BK9AG1VHNXfMii-gGxWiMATkAo4XHGlFV_Z15Hcd0dlZaE4aD8fwRCnp17TkLNqltBxsuo1YmAo7W9mOeFsEUQQpMacg5CqBh9viAWqBRd4ZZ7AIbTpp0/s1600/355Z2211d_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP5-GD_BWzayZbVdwzNYWYZo7BK9AG1VHNXfMii-gGxWiMATkAo4XHGlFV_Z15Hcd0dlZaE4aD8fwRCnp17TkLNqltBxsuo1YmAo7W9mOeFsEUQQpMacg5CqBh9viAWqBRd4ZZ7AIbTpp0/s640/355Z2211d_2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boy Walking with Two Women, Ukraine © Richard Ansett 2011</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />I am possessed by a disproportionate level of certainty with a camera that is challenged by what feels like an emotional Newtonian law of equal and opposite reaction in hindsight. In photography the easiest part of the process is in the initial creation and only then does the hard work start in analysing the processes that led to that creation. In my mind an image continues to have a present value long after its creation and remains 'active'. What might otherwise be considered 'finished' works are altered on a molecular level by time and space, often taking on new meaning or any meaning at all 'after the fact'. It is an argument for never destroying our archives. Photography as first and foremost a documentary record is of no interest to me and is the subject of great anxiety when I come to present my work to others. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">A framework for thought and discussion can be created on other dimensions that feel more valuable than the physical nature of any immediate image but persuading others of that is another matter </span>entirely.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I document the lives of strangers and their journey in the normative universe as creatures somehow more complete than myself; I have come to realise that it is what led me as an adopted young person to photography. My work continues to reflect the need to explore the lives of others from the outside, through a diminished lens celebrating those lives regardless of the level of their own suffering as more 'whole' relative to my own. I am still trapped in this </span>gilded<span style="font-family: inherit;"> cage partly of my own making as willing participant in my own fucked up psychology, its a form of Stockholm syndrome where I am in love with myself as the perpetrator</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">. It is a self love that has created a dogma that</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> brings great joy and mortal satisfaction.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I assumed that being lost was my unique space but my ego was built on what turns out to be shared foundations. I have a new more informed persona now but this is still persona and as much a defensive cliche against the world as any other. My 'poster boy for the disenfranchised' is not really lost in the way I observe in many of the most vulnerable I am exposed to. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">To be free from persona is the ultimate goal artistically and personally but I fear I may not reach it in time, I am not trying hard enough obviously. There is no finished article just different degrees of progress to be recorded. All life is still arrogantly defined and recorded as relative to my experience but this is less about ego now and in older age is closer to a clumsiness that acknowledges my presence as an equal failure.</span></div>
Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-4742015945794445252018-05-15T03:55:00.002-07:002020-08-23T23:34:49.142-07:00Manchester Bombing - After the Attack<div style="text-align: left;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0qqRUBVp4rMRoi0xsvj4GS-S9WhqvFFtiKcrC3-xqoZLpJgcLCIFjndyoYdI2KXzrIob1tfaUK3OQUhqfmYFthoFWwfNvDasPS_heoKB9udAxNhzosxPMraFJwb_w9tuiT-DXC3uZluOT/s1600/CF015409_ATA_Erin2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0qqRUBVp4rMRoi0xsvj4GS-S9WhqvFFtiKcrC3-xqoZLpJgcLCIFjndyoYdI2KXzrIob1tfaUK3OQUhqfmYFthoFWwfNvDasPS_heoKB9udAxNhzosxPMraFJwb_w9tuiT-DXC3uZluOT/s1600/CF015409_ATA_Erin2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Erin in her bedroom, from series After the Attack, 2018 © Richard Ansett</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaVBZH4ldV5DqloYF3tzrjOtdVc5a5HneFJRlyWYsyNhhC1tlzj6kiO5DCsIVx78YNz0l-yy6zNwVMxrQbyZaW4o0NYRE_M8SrCQc0jPXskroSXXGYnxld_iihxbKaU5duHcngU-YUlZ_t/s1600/CF015420_ATA_Erin_TWPP18_b.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaVBZH4ldV5DqloYF3tzrjOtdVc5a5HneFJRlyWYsyNhhC1tlzj6kiO5DCsIVx78YNz0l-yy6zNwVMxrQbyZaW4o0NYRE_M8SrCQc0jPXskroSXXGYnxld_iihxbKaU5duHcngU-YUlZ_t/s1600/CF015420_ATA_Erin_TWPP18_b.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Erin in her bedroom, from series After the Attack, 2018 © Richard Ansett<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Shot just before the first anniversary, this image of Erin is from a series of portraits of the young girls affected by the Manchester Arena bomb. The series attempts to capture something of the emotional and psychological impact that a traumatic event can have on the present for a survivor as they attempt to move forward with their lives. The effect of </span><a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">PTSD</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is unique to every person but a common reaction to this particular event has been a fear of returning to any large public space and in these studies the otherwise innocuous bedroom locations acknowledge that in many cases survivors can find leaving the house difficult. Part of the healing process is a need to withdraw.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In photographing vulnerable subjects a circle must be squared; an instinct to protect with an equal and opposite responsibility to capture something of their struggle in the moment. Empathy is both inherent and learned and is an essential component in the process towards any potentially great portrait but sympathy can limit the necessity to press a subject towards a representative state.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When attempting to capture any expression that reflects complex humanity we must be vigilant of the conventional rules of engagement and resist the instinct to treat the contract between artist and sitter as normative. It is important to be constantly aware when photographing a subject that they are equally aware of us and any emotion we capture is a response to <i>that </i>relationship as evidence of the complex relationship the subject has with the wider world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To evolve in the pursuit of an atypical genuine and complex emotion is to continually feed new experience and education into practice. The self awareness that comes from learning about the hidden forces that motivate behaviour leads to an evolution in every aspect of external persona that attracts the projection of the feelings of others. We can literally (and often silently) become a vessel to receive the emotions of others by recognising (and in some cases) removing the obstacles to our emotional progress. Humans are incredibly sensitive readers of each other on a subconscious level, certainly in trusting someone with our most difficult feelings but a cognitive understanding of these signals free of infection and denial can only be learned.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To capture something genuine that offers insight into the subject, ourselves and something representative for the human experience is the holy grail and requires great commitment which may very occasionally be rewarded.</span><span face="" style="font-family: uictfonttextstyletallbody, serif; font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Erin in her bedroom was shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize and showed at the National Portrait Gallery London. </span></div>
Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-880535591917935702.post-78519069317788051992018-05-07T03:22:00.000-07:002018-05-09T11:31:03.918-07:00Monocultural Monumentalism <span style="font-family: inherit;">The project '<a href="http://richardansett.com/gallery/new-work/lynching-in-america/" target="_blank">Lynching in America</a>' distills a horrific national legacy down to the simple collection of soil by the descendants at the site of a 16 year old boy's murder in a woodland glade outside LaGrange, Georgia.<br /><br />Ironically the blog <a href="http://wakeupscreaming.com/tag/richard-ansett/" target="_blank">Wakeupscreaming</a> has invited me to contribute to their issue themed 'The Great Outdoors' with this series, which feels more micro rather than macro and is the</span> antithesis of what might be defined as great.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams' iconic monochromatic works shot at Yosemite National Park are the personification of 'The Great Outdoors' and continue a romantic tradition of representing US landscape. Free from any presence of humanity these </span>monumentalist<span style="font-family: inherit;"> cliches offer a simpler more palatable monocultural language, a bigger 'universal truth'. The chaos, pettiness and failures of humanity seem too complicated for Adams and he withdraws to contemplate an </span>alternative<span style="font-family: inherit;"> utopia free from our parasitic species. So vast are the mountain scenes that I can no-longer make out the noble attempts of individual truth and reconciliation being played out in our intimate landscape (at the same time the flaming torches of the marching fascists are drawing the gaze of the worlds media just down the road in Charlottesville).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When defining beauty by natural rules we should take time to comprehend the terrible cost in Darwinian terms in its evolution. At the end of her life, Leni Riefenstahl similarly withdrew </span>from the<span style="font-family: inherit;"> world to an undersea paradise in her trite films that accidentally re-enforce her fascist credentials.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am suspicious of representations of the natural world without some acknowledgement of the presence or impact of humankind. To be representing the present we must start to perceive the chaos and mess of contemporary society as a beauty too. The romanticised representation of the natural world is a dangerous meme that threatens a complex democratic and free thinking society.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frances with soil, LaGrange, Georgia USA (from series Lynching in America) © Richard Ansett 2017</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yosemite National Park, Ansel Adams</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span>Richard Ansetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17426926260265825145noreply@blogger.com0