Please go to Stephanie Lazensky to see a fuller (though not complete) collection of images. I have been photographing like this for almost 4 years, tucking the images away in a small sketchbook (not their final destination, I hope). I will write more in later posts, but first I would like to get general comments and questions. The working title of this series comes from a poem by Maxine Chernoff.
2 comments:
I first looked at this last night, and managed to stop myself from posting a comment that was just the word yes repeated in varying typefaces. Upon reflection this morning, I shouldn't have stopped. The attitude of this series, somehow fits being tucked into a sketchbook, maybe one you find in the back of a secondhand store. Which fits the content of the poem. Circle nears completion here. The only real issue is to find a way to share these that is as isolated and intimate as that first moment of discovery. My feelings would take it into either a staged environment in which the photographs are placed as keepsakes, or else some form of small object that can be handled and held dear by the one who receives it. The first thought there is of jewelry, but those boxes tend to isolate rather than connect.
My first thoughts were that the images were documents of an experience - but that seemed too passive...then I thought, maybe they are relics, objects to be included in the experience, completing the circle. Then I thought: that also seems too passive. The images feel like a secret witness. They are a crack in the door - they are 'dear diary.' So, I'm not surprised that you've given them a home within a book.
I actually really like the installation idea that Phil suggested - yeah, I could be biased. But it does play with the images as relics, using their 'objectness' within the intimate setting of an arrangement of other objects- a sort of psychological home, one that you invite others into to bear witness as well. There is also a voyeuristic quality to the work which further implicates the viewer when they have to actively explore another person's intimate life.
Other artists that come to mind for me are Louise Bourgeois (RIP :( ) In terms of the rooms she built entirely of doors and windows with all the sculptural objects inside. Roni Horn's 'You are the weather' - photos taken of a woman's expression as she submerged her body into water of different temperatures on different days ( there is something entirely personal about that kind of vulnerability).
Just finished reading Anais Nin - stranger in the house of love. i imagine that if she took photographs, they would be of similar things.
Another thought that popped into my mind was just the genuine quality of these images. A lot of these kinds of images seem soooo...staged. But yours feel entirely believable - images of the art of living.
Thanks for sharing, I feel like I will go back to these with more to say...
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