✖ Via Ryan McGinley: Photographs, “Falling Sunset”, 2006
• Oct 19, 2010 link notes tagged: art photograph photographer fall falling lost young youth body sky sunset space
• Oct 19, 2010 link notes tagged: art photograph photographer fall falling lost young youth body sky sunset space
✖ Via Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Michael Gondry, 2004
Found this picture via This Isn’t Happiness who got it from The Thought Experiment. I was unable to find its original source but a hi-res cropped version of it can be found over at Erase Me, an unofficial fansite.
• Jul 17, 2010 link notes tagged: art movie film Gondry memory childhood youth kid love
✖ Via Ryan McGinley: Projects, “Irregulars Regulars”
• Jul 12, 2010 link notes tagged: art photograph photographer youth young kids spectacle spectators music show
✖ Via Ryan McGinley: Photographs, Untitled (Bathtub), 2005
Ariel Levy wrote about McGinley:
“People fall in love with McGinley’s work because it tells a story about liberation and hedonism: Where Goldin and Larry Clark were saying something painful and anxiety-producing about Kids and what happens when they take drugs and have sex in an ungoverned urban underworld, McGinley started out announcing that “The Kids Are Alright,” fantastic, really, and suggested that a gleeful, unfettered subculture was just around the corner—still—if only you knew where to look.”
“That show, “The Kids Are Alright,” depicted a downtown neverland where people are thrilled and naked, leaping in front of graffiti on the street, sacked out in heaps of flannel shirts—everything very debauched and drug-addled and decadent, like Nan Goldin hit with a happy wand.” (New York Magazine)
I think it’s an inexact account of both McGinley and Clark works. Kids are happy from time to time in Larry Clark’s Kids. And young naked people seems to be a little fucked up in some on McGinley photographs. I would certainly not opposed those two artist that quickly.
• Jun 26, 2010 link notes tagged: art photograph photographer kids youth young portrait movie film trend nude
 | Then the men of the Empire, who had been through so much, who had lived in such carnage, kissed their emaciated wives and spoke of their first love; they looked into the fountains of their natal prairies and found themselves so old, so mutilated, that they bethought themselves of their sons, in order that they might close their eyes in peace. They asked where they were; the children came from the schools, and seeing neither sabers, nor cuirasses, neither infantry nor cavalry, they asked in turn where were their fathers. They were told that the war was ended, that Cesar was dead, and that the portraits of Wellington and of Blucher were suspended in the antechambers of the consulates and the embassies, with these two words beneath: Salvatoribus mundi. Then there seated itself on a world in ruins an anxious youth. |
Here’s the original French version:
“Alors ces hommes de l’Empire, qui avaient tant couru et tant égorgé, embrassèrent leurs femmes amaigries et parlèrent de leurs premières amours ; ils se regardèrent dans les fontaines de leurs prairies natales, et ils s’y virent si vieux, si mutilés, qu’ils se souvinrent de leurs fils, afin qu’on leur fermât les yeux. Ils demandèrent où ils étaient ; les enfants sortirent des collèges, et ne voyant plus ni sabres, ni cuirasses, ni fantassins, ni cavaliers, ils demandèrent à leur tour où étaient leurs pères. Mais on leur répondit que la guerre était finie, que César était mort, et que les portraits de Wellington et de Blücher étaient suspendus dans les antichambres des consultats et des ambassades, avec ces deux mots au bas : Salvatoribus mundi.
Alors s’assit sur un monde en ruines une jeunesse soucieuse.” (WikiSource)
• Jun 06, 2010 link notes tagged: art author novel autobiography confession century war anxiety anguish youth generration history confusion desctruction chaos
✖ Via Ryan McGinley: Projects, “Irregulars Regulars”
“McGinley went on a two-year road trip, traveling to dozens of Morrissey concerts in the US, the UK, and Mexico. The resultant photos, many of which are densely saturated in the concerts’ colored lights, feature candid shots of fans, regularly zooming in for seductive close-ups of enamored youngsters—a celebration of the ecstatic cult of fame and its ardent enablers. A few oblique pics of Morrissey himself are scattered throughout the show, though the shots are careful to avoid the singer’s face.” (more)
About McGinley:
“Ryan McGinley (born October 17, 1977) is an American photographer living in New York City who began making photographs in 1998. In 2003, at the age of 24, McGinley was the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was also named Photographer of the Year in 2003 by American Photo Magazine. In 2007 McGinley was awarded the Young Photographer Infinity Award by the International Center of Photography.” (wikipedia)
• Jun 06, 2010 link notes tagged: art photograph photographer youth young kids zeitgeist crowd music spectacle spectators
| A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you were going to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a thousands years and still ended too soon. |
• May 13, 2010 link notes reblogged from nevver [via] tagged: art novel author book time life youth school summer girls
✖ Via Mona Kuhn: Portofolio France 2002-2008
About Mona Kuhn:
“Mona Kuhn was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1969, of German descent. She earned her degree in the United States from Ohio State University. Since 1998, she has been an independent studies scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited, and is included in public and private collections, internationally and in the United States. Kuhn’s first monograph, Photographs, was debut by Steidl in 2004; immediately followed by, Evidence, published by Steidl and released in Spring 2007. The images appearing in Evidence were photographed entirely in France, where she resides each summer.” (more)
Interesting comments about Kuhn’s work by Joerg Colberg (from his Conscientious’ blog):
“It’s probably not surprising that this kind of photography looks just like advertizing (minus the clothes) and that it usually is described as bringing back “youth” and “freedom” to photography when it is “discovered”. (more)
Colberg is quoting Alexander Adams’ analysis of Ryan McGinley’s work:
“It is here, ever more specifically, that the work continues its travel into the collective Spectacle – the domain of Guy Debord’s societal criticism – it joins product advertising in creating the image of an unattainable lifestyle – the “world vision which has become objectified [17].” McGinley shoots thousands of rolls of film, creates elaborate situations, to attain what he expresses as “the life I wish I was living.” If even he – young, hip, white, famous, and increasingly wealthy – cannot actually attain this lifestyle, it is hard to comprehend it as existing for anyone outside of the shallow frame of his camera.” (much more)
In McGinley’s case, I think it’s really hard to say if this is a weakness or a quality : his work is a symptom of its time. I find the reflexive quality in Kuhn’s work to be less evocative. Some of McGinley’s photos could offer great illustrations for Bret Easton Ellis’ novels. Just like Terry Rogers decadent photorealist paintings.
• Apr 18, 2010 link notes tagged: art photograph photographer youth young nude girls time century critic evolution Debord simulacrum spectacle fiction reality Easton Ellis
