So Cliché

Glenn Fry, Snap out of it, hand-pulled serigraph on paper, 38” x 30,” edition of 8. Courtesy of Gallery Plan B.

Serigraphs by Glenn Fry
Gallery Plan B
1530 14th Street
Wed – Sat 12pm-7pm Sun 1pm-5pm

Sometimes it seems that the art world has become so jaded that it can only accept work that is depressing and antagonizing. This is not entirely the fault of art professionals; there is a lot in the world that is antagonizing and depressing, and artists as observers tend to notice the problems that exist in this world in a more acute way. Glenn Fry is a rebel against this tradition. Glenn Fry might even be labeled an optimist. It is not that Fry’s work denies the evils and temptations that threaten human existence, but he still has faith in humanity’s ability to overcome such obstacles.

In his current exhibition, Serigraphs by Glenn Fry at Gallery Plan B, Fry presents to us a collection of hand-pulled serigraphs, which look like a combination between advertisements and inspirational college dorm posters. Although it might look like Fry has taken his images from old ads, he actually carefully stages each work with models and then photographs them. Fry then pairs these carefully constructed compositions with his own words. Snap out of it is an image of a young black man wearing a suit and tie, snapping his fingers. The man is blue, the background is brown and orange with a small stripe of bright green in the upper right for balance, the word “snap” is yellow (according to the rules of design this is always the first color we see) and the rest of the text is black. The image is taken from below, making the man seem authoritative and confident. His expression is intense, but concerned and kind. Fry uses every design and advertisement rule in the book, but instead of manipulating us into buying things Fry uses the rules to reach out and offer a friendly slap in the face.

It would be easy to discard Fry’s prints as cheap corporate attempts to make some corny cash… if they were sold in a bookstore. The time and effort put into each of these hand-crafted prints, coupled with the fact that they are exhibited in a gallery, are crucial to classifying these works as fine art. The artist Marcel Duchamp made the point that exhibition in a gallery elevates objects to a godly status that they would not otherwise possess. Most art critics have always believed that this is a bad thing, but in fact, the position that the gallery holds is very important and can be used for good. Love is a framed print that contains a red heart with the word “love” in yellow letters on a gray background. This is a prime example of how Fry’s works share knowledge that might otherwise be written off as cliché and intuitive: many times when we are deep in our own worlds, we lose track of the fact that we do frame “love,” and put it on a wall, and never consider what that means. Duchamp put a shovel in a museum and called it art to remind us that even a shovel has beauty and deserves reflection—Fry offers cliché moments.

-Ophra Paul

Serigraphs by Glenn Fry is on view at Gallery Plan B until July 18.

Thick Skin

Paint Made Flesh
The Phillips Collection
1600 21st Street, NW
Tue- Sat 10am-4pm (Thur 8:30pm) Sundays 11am-6pm

The body has traditionally been used as a symbol in painting, often representing spirituality, idealized beauty and power. Paint Made Flesh, an exhibit put together by the Frist Collection, which is resting at the Phillips Collection in DC for the summer, highlights a different side of humanity, the dark conflicted and anxiety plagued side. The show is comprised of works by a multitude of artists who painted between the 1950s and the present day. The show is divided by themes, time periods and locations, making it difficult to decide where Modern ends and Contemporary begins.

Lucian Freud, Naked Man, Back View, 1991–92, Oil on canvas, 72 1/4 x 54 1/8 in. (183.5 x 137.5 cm). Courtesy of the Metropolitain Museum of Art, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1993 (1993.71).

Although the two Lucian Freud’s date from 1988-89 and 1991-92, they are still very relevant and noteworthy. Freud painted from life over long periods of time and favored friends over professional models; he wanted to portray people as they are, not as they are posed to be. Hailing from the Tate Modern, Standing by the Rags is a magnificent portrait of painter Sophie de Stempel, who worked with Freud for eight years and modeled for him frequently. She is half lying, her body resting on a giant pile of Freud’s painting rags and half standing, her feet planted solidly on the hardwood floor. The perspective leans upwards and only a glimpse of a wall helps to anchor the space. De Stempel’s head rests on her right arm, which is arced over a bulge in the pile, cradled as if there were another person lying with her. Her gesture and facial expression seem to exude a comfort and trust that only close friends can have, but she does not have complete confidence in the stability of Freud’s rags and keeps her feet firmly on the ground. The second Freud painting depicts the controversial performing artist Leigh Bowery. Bowery’s back is turned and a curtain blocks the view into the studio, revealing only the distant wall that Freud used as a palette—these compositional choices speak of a more guarded relationship.

Susan Rothenberg, Crying, 2003, Oil on canvas. 58 1/2 x 63 1/2 in / 148.6. Courtesy of Waddington Galleries. x 161.3 cm

Susan Rothenberg and Tony Bevan paint expressively and reduce narratives to articulate deep, focused feelings of stress and tension. Rothenberg’s “Crying,” an entirely red and white painting—her most frequent colors, because of their fleshy human qualities—depicts a head and neck covered by four hands that seemed to have wiped any recognizable features off the face. The face, hands and arms are red and disembodied, and they emerge from the upper left through a white background that has been layered over red. The work captures the haze and wearing nature of depression. Bevan also uses red and white but in a more restrained aesthetic. The red lines that scar and illustrate “Head” seem to be abstract and cluttered up close, but from far away describe strained, stretched, balloon-like face from a skewed upwards perspective. The face seems to float away, falling apart and coming back together on upon each viewing expressing the struggle to maintain clarity in this complicated world.

Jenny Saville, Hyphen, 1999, Oil on canvas. Private Collection, Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery. © Jenny Saville

John Currin, The Hobo, 1999, Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

Jenny Saville and John Currin are both technically accomplished painters who deal with female beauty from totally different perspectives. Saville moved around a lot as a child, always having to adjust to a new location and new people. She sees herself as an outsider and is attracted to unconventional body types. Her studies with a plastic surgeon led to a discovery of the ‘object-ness’ of flesh, and its ability to be sculpted and manipulated, strangely similar to paint. She confronts and embraces her anxieties about being different with monumental paintings, often self-portraits, which have been built up with large areas of paint layered with a roller. “Hyphen” is a double portrait of the artist and her sister, who is resting her head on Saville’s shoulder. Saville’s eyes seem to dare anyone to judge her, effectively guarding herself and her sister—who stares hesitantly but hopefully into the distance—from the harsh world. By contrast, John Currin embraces the long history of objectifying the female figure in his satirical, campy and playfully hedonistic paintings. He celebrates the ridiculousness of the obsession with a perfect female form in “Nude with Raised Arms,” daring his audience to try look away and to decide whether this smooth creamy young body emerging from a milky blackness is Venus, pornography or both. Even more bluntly camp, “The Hobo” makes fun of the way that everyone, even destitute, downtrodden people, are inexplicably beautiful on bad television. Currin does not accept any guilt for his pleasures but instead dutifully recognizes and embraces the beauty and depravity that seem inexorably intertwined in his view of the world.

Daniel Richter, Duisen, 2004, Oil on canvas, Image Size: 106 1/4 x 137 3/4 inches. Courtesy of David Zwiner Gallery.

German painter, Daniel Richter is concerned with music, current events, and graffiti culture. The craze that overtakes people when they take drugs and infrared pictures inform Richter’s style and present the point of view of “the paranoid westerner,”* a group which he confrontationally and bravely confesses to be a part of. Richter turns current tragic and violent news events into ambiguous paintings that could be read as celebrations. Using neon energetic colors, he layers the complications of living comfortably as part of first world culture while being surrounded by economic, environmental and military problems, both domestic and foreign. “Duisen” is a painting of a crowd of people with upraised arms, who are melting in violent Technicolor in a black cityscape background. They look as if they could be part of a rave at a concert or victims of some as yet unknown bio-weapon. Duisen is a made-up word that is play between the German words that mean millions and south. Richter is referencing the influx of immigrants to Germany from southern countries, bringing with them political, social and economic upheaval.

Paint Made Flesh includes superlative examples by artists Alice Neel, Francis Bacon, Julian Schnabel, Richard Diebekorn and De Kooning and many others that have come from first-rate museums around the world. The Frist has brought together a phenomenal group of paintings but do not expect to find bucolic and carefree works. This is a challenging exhibit that brings together many different stressful concepts and events. If you leave feeling stressed and overwhelmed than the show did exactly what it intended to do.

-Ophra Paul

Paint Made Flesh is on view at the Phillips Collection until September 1st.

*Schatz, Matthias. “Paranoid Westerner” Daniel Richter Paints Crowds, Harlequins, Terror.” Bloomberg.com (July)

**Although I currently work at The Phillips Collection as a Museum Assistant I was not involved with the planning or implementation of Paint Made Flesh. I am not a Phillips Collection spokesperson; I take personal responsibility for this article.

Child’s Play

KENNY HUNTER: LIKE WATER IN WATER, NATHANIEL ROGERS: THE LAST VIKING
Conner Contemporary
1358-60 Florida Ave
Wed-Sat 11am – 5pm

Conner Contemporary Art currently has two shows up in its large space: Kenny Hunter’s Like Water in Water and Nathanial Rogers’s The Last Viking. Both shows are full of sarcasm about, and witty criticism of, contemporary society. Although the shows are presented as separate entities they both use the guise of childlike innocence to tackle large intimidating issues. Hunter and Rogers force us to face our fears by tricking us into confrontation.

Kenny Hunter, Like Water in Water, 2009, resin, jesmonite, steel, paint, 35.43 x 59.06 x 23.62 inches. Copyright Kenny Hunter, courtesy Conner Contemporary Art.

Kenny Hunter’s sculptures are pointedly unreal; they replicate the smooth and perfect aesthetic of caricatures and dolls. In this show, Hunter’s work addresses the human driven destruction of our planet. The sculpture after which the exhibit was titled, Like Water in Water, is a life size deer cast in resin and painted in a soft matt tan. The deer is stepping through a tire and some metal lily pads, which are a few inches off the ground thereby communicating that the visitors to the gallery and the deer are walking through a few inches of ‘water.’ The deer looks welcoming and approachable but after a few moments the realization materializes that this piece is a comment on the environment. Like the deer, we are a few inches deep in trouble.

Kenny Hunter, End Product, 2009, jesmonite, 21.65 x 21.65 x 21.65 inches 55 x 55 x 55 cm, Edition of 3. Copyright Kenny Hunter, courtesy Conner Contemporary Art.

Similarly, with End Product, an unpainted trash bag, we are met by what seems to be a banal, unassuming piece. At second glance it is realized that the paint brushes, coffee cup and banana peel that have leaked out of a hole in the bottom of the bag are a representation of the artist himself. This self-deprecating self-portrait not only heralds the artist’s own ironic participation in the destruction of out planet but imposes itself as a mirror on the viewer.

Nathaniel Rogers, Nimble Jack, 2009, oil on panel, 8 x 6 inches, 20.3 x 15.2cm. Images are copyright Kenny Hunter, courtesy Conner Contemporary Art

Nathaniel Rogers’s works uses nursery rhymes depicted in a hyper-realistic style (that any children’s book editor would covet) to address deeply disturbing psychological issues. Most of the nursery rhymes we learned as children actually were created to remember specific, usually distressing, historical events or social issues. They often were not meant for children but for adults to joke and spread gossip. In most cases the actual meaning of the poems was lost and they instead live on as meaningless entertainment. Rogers once again utilizes these catchy rhymes to talk about cultural affairs. The poem “Jack be Nimble” refers to the sport of jumping over candles—a considerably safer version of an earlier sport of jumping over bon fires. Jack is often thought to be the pirate Jack Black who was notorious for escaping from authorities. Rogers’s Nimble Jack is a commentary on self-destruction and medication. His Jack is kneeling in a bedroom, wearing an eye-patch and holding a miniature version of himself over the candle. On the dresser behind Rogers’s Jack are two empty pill bottles and the expression on Jack’s face is obviously disturbed.

Nathaniel Rogers, Jack Horner (The Last Viking), 2009, oil on panel, 6 x 8 inches, 15.2 x 20.3 cm. Images are copyright Kenny Hunter, courtesy Conner Contemporary Art.

In another painting, Jack Horner (The Last Viking), Rogers addresses the poem “Little Jack Horner.” The poem retells the story of the steward to the Bishop of Glasbury. The Bishop was trying to bribe King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell not to destroy his Abbey and steal the treasures inside. The Bishop sent the deeds to twelve English manorial estates hidden in a pie and had the trusted steward Horner deliver them. Horner, in turn, sat on the jury that convicted the Bishop of treason for being loyal to Rome and either stole, or was rewarded with the deeds to the estates. Rogers, interestingly chose himself as the model for Horner; he is wearing a Viking hat, and sitting on a lawn with a stone wall to his back, a dresser at his left and a burning model of a monastery is resting on top of a box marked ‘fragile’ in the foreground.

Conner Contemporary’s choice to exhibit these two artists work at the same time seems appropriate despite there differences in media and subject matter. By easing the viewer into their choice of subject matter, and using comforting familiar imagery the artists are able to create dialogue about often unaddressed and purposefully ignored subjects. Although Conner Contemporary is a little difficult to get to without a car, their space is great and this show makes the trip well worth the bus ride.

-Ophra Paul

KENNY HUNTER: LIKE WATER IN WATER, and NATHANIEL ROGERS: THE LAST VIKING are on view at Conner Contemporary Art until July 25.

Sharing The Present Past

Artists in Dialogue: António Ole and Aimé Mpane
National Museum of African Art
950 Independence Avenue, SW
10am-5:30pm

Inviting two African artists from different countries to work and exhibit together is a risk, especially when they have never met each other, but it is a risk that curator Karen Milbourne and the National Museum of African Art have taken and will take again with the Artists in Dialogue series. Milbourne chose António Ole and Aimé Mpane to be the first artists in this series because she saw that they “share close ties to their homelands and a connection to the human and natural environments of their native countries.”* Each artist created one on-site installation for the National Museum of African Art, which are accompanied by a handful of earlier works by both artists. The earlier works provide history and context to the new pieces.

António Ole is an artist from Angola whose career spans 40 years. Although he has been widely exhibited around the world—in countries including South Africa, Portugal, Britain, Israel, and Brazil—this is his first exhibit in the United States. Ole has been tireless in documenting the architectural decay, poverty and local violence that has wracked his homeland since the days of colonialism. In fact, Ole actually started out making documentaries. The “Untitled” series of photographs by Ole are a result of his early documentary work. One day, while he was filming, Ole asked an impoverished man wearing a top hat if he could take his photograph. Soon, everyone in the town wanted Ole to take their picture. The resulting photographs are proud and poignant.

Antonio Ole, On the Margins of the Borderlands, 1994-95, Mixed-media installation, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Antonio Ole and The National Museum of African Art

Throughout his work, Ole carries the same mixture of dignity and anguish, which is distinctly related in his most exhibited work, “On the Margins of the Borderland.” The piece debuted in the mid-90s, and—like much of Ole’s mature work—is made up of found objects that Ole feels are representative of the state of his country. The base of the work, a welded iron boat, lays severed in two pieces on the floor. In one side of the boat, more than 200 bricks surround a screen playing a video of moving water. The bricks symbolize the deteriorating buildings and the poverty that is rampant in Angola, and the water represents the Angolan coast. On the other side of the boat, surrounding another screen playing a video of moving water, are bundles of Angolan police reports, which the artist collected off the street outside an administrative office. (In this installation he also included DC newspapers in order to connect the piece to the current exhibit.) The police reports and newspapers counter-balance the bricks by metaphorically weighing down the boat. A fishing net, draped on the paper side of the boat, also represents the Angolan coast. On top of each side of the boat is a taxidermied crow—a bird that can no longer fly—forever stagnant in its preserved state. In the installation that Ole created specifically for the exhibit, “Allegory of Construction I,” Ole used local trash from a DC junkyard to recreate the shanty towns of Angola, making certain to maintain the attempts made by the poor to create aesthetically pleasing homes despite their difficult circumstances.

Antonio Ole, Allegory of Construction I, 2009, Mixed media, Site-specific installation, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution

 

Aime Mpane, Rail, Massina 3, 2009, Mixed media, Site-specific installation, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Photo by Franko Khoury

Aimé Mpane, an artist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also seems to have themes of pride and despair running throughout his work. For the Artists in Dialogue exhibit, he created a multifaceted installation called “Rail, Messina 3.” There are multiple components to the work, the largest of which is a full-scale reproduction of a line of shops in the town of Messina, painted on a wall, complete with open arches where the shop doors would be. The shops are painted in bright colors and bear slogans praising both their wares and god. Money-changing boxes, like those actually found in Messina, sit in front of the shops—but the great irony of these optimistic stores is that few people in Messina can afford to buy their products. Across from the mock storefronts is a chalkboard, its sides stuffed full of blank playing cards, on which Mpane had local school children write their greatest concerns (which often involved issues of race) and then place them into a box. One such card read “one can only live to be 100 if one gives up all the things that makes them want to live to 100.” Mpane asked the students to pick one card out of the box and write it on the blackboard, resulting in the physical accumulation of fears on the surface of the board. Next to the board are plastic chairs and a table, like such tables and chairs in Messina where people might sit and rest, and where Mpane hoped visitors to the exhibit would sit and discuss the work.

Next to “Rail Messina 3” is “Ici on Cerve,” a deeply moving piece made up of portraits of the sick. Cerve means “ to burst, puncture, wear a person out and to die.”** Mpane illustrates this word and the pain of illness in the portraits by carving out pieces and holes in the wood board on which the faces are painted.

Aime Mpane, Congo, Shadow of the Shadow, 2005, Mixed-media installation, Courtesy of Skoto Gallery, Photo Courtesy of Skoto Gallery

In a separate room is the moving piece, “Congo, Shadow of the Shadow” in which a life-size sculpture—made of thousands of matchsticks—in the form of a cross-armed, tense-shouldered man casts a large shadow on the wall in the dimly lit room and looms over a mock wooden grave that lies on the floor. Next to the man on either side lies a flattened silhouette of a pregnant woman and a child, wearing real shoes, which are often the only remnant of human presence when violence barrels through a residential area in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

At the entrance of the exhibit, there are quotes from each artist about each other’s work, but it is easy to see why they are exhibited together even without this gesture. Their messages of hope, regret, and perseverance despite great hardship are clear and affecting.

-Ophra Paul

Artists in Dialogue: António Ole and Aimé Mpane is on view at The National Museum of African Art until August 2nd.

*Karen Milbourne, Artists in Dialogue Blog, About The Exhibition
**Walltext, Artists is Dialogue: António Ole and Aimé Mpane

On the Subject of Photography

Portraiture Now: Feature Photography
National Portrait Gallery
Eighth and F Streets
11:30 am-7 pm

The current exhibition of contemporary photography at the Portrait Gallery, Portraiture Now: Feature Photography, is a deep and diverse cross-section of possibilities that exist in contemporary photography. The six photographers featured in the exhibit, Katy Grannan, Jocelyn Lee, Ryan McGinley, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller, and Alec Soth, all have very different styles and foci in their work, effectively conveying the variety that can be found in photography today. All of the artists publish their work in magazines ranging from Vice, GQ to the New York Times Magazine. Their images help to convey to the public issues ranging from the awkward feelings of inclusion and disassociation at a rock concert to juveniles in adult prisons. In some of the works, the portraits serve as a catalyst to expression of deep ideas that extend far beyond the person depicted, while other portraits delve deep into the psyche of the individual sitter.

Jeff Stackhouse, New York Times Magazine, 9/10/2000, Katy Grannan, Chromogenic print, Collection of the Artist, courtesy of greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York City; Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; Salon 94, New york City; Copyright Katy Grannan

Katy Grannan made several early series for which she would advertise in local newspapers for subjects. She would slowly develop a relationship with each sitter and gain his or her trust. The subjects then chose their own poses and locations for the shoot, revealing the individuals’ ideas about themselves and conveying a duality of vulnerability and confidence. Because of Grannan’s sensitivity to the subject, the New York Times Magazine hired her to take portraits for moving editorials. One such piece is Grannan’s portrait of Jeff Stackhouse for the New York Times, which is overwhelmingly apprehensive and poignant. Stackhouse is a fifteen-year-old boy incarcerated in an adult prison. In the photograph, he slouches in an XL striped uniform that looks more like pajamas than prison garb on the acne prone, baby faced young man. The smattering of bright colors and the interesting lines lead the viewer through the composition, finally settling on the boy’s intense sad eyes. 

Untitled (girl laying in grass), Jocelyn Lee, Chromogenic print, 2002, Collection of the artists; copyright Jocelyn Lee

Jocelyn Lee is interested in “states of transition, our desire for connection, and the search for personal identity.” Her portraits are intensely personal, awkward and voyeuristic. Lee attempts to uncover vulnerability in her sitters. This type of exposure of a person is in direct contrast to what is generally encouraged by contemporary society, breaking taboos, and the resulting portraits are uncomfortable to look at. Two examples placed side by side at the Portrait Gallery are, “Untitled (Girl Laying in Grass)” and “Untitled (Girl with Dead Birds at Night).” “Girl Laying in Grass” is a pretty young girl lying in a nondescript, cropped field, staring with dead eyes at a large brown moth on resting her hand. Similarly, the untitled “Girl with Dead Birds at Night” is lying in a cropped field, but she stares directly at the viewer with glazed eyes while her hands tightly clutch two dead crows. Both young women are pretty and captivating, totally oblivious to the viewer, and passively absorbed in their own thoughts.

Untitled (Morrissey 20), Ryan McGinley, Chromogenic print, 2006, Collection of Arlene and George Hartman; copyright Ryan McGinley

Anyone who has been to a great rock concert can appreciate the feelings that are related in Ryan McGinley’s photographs. The series at the Portrait Gallery are grainy, strangely colored photographs of audience members at a Steven Patrick Morrissey concert. The pixilation of the pictures seems to pulsate with vibrations from the music, and the, often, unnatural colors convey the estrangement and the high that is unavoidable when speakers and fans are screaming powerful lyrics. In a slightly atypical and subtle photograph, the dark, severely pixilated “Untitled (Morrissey 28),” the subject is almost lost in the near completely black background but saved from obscurity by the slight pinks in her barely visible skin, revealing an obviously beautiful but haunting young woman. This glimpse at the girl threatens to pass and fade away in the transience of the moment and the music.

Sir Ian Mckellen, The New Yorker, 6/1/2007, Steve Pyke, Gelatin silver print, 2007, Collection of the artist, courtesy of Flowers Gallery, New York City; copyright Steve Pyke

Steve Pyke’s close-up, black and white photographs draw on the rich history of photographers. Pyke has photographed some of the world’s greatest thinkers and philosophers both on his own and for the New Yorker, where he is a staff photographer. Pyke’s portrait of the great Shakespearean actor, Sir Ian McKellen (a.k.a. Magneto in the X-men moview) features the actor dressed as King Lear, a part that McKellen coveted for his entire acting career. Representing actors in character is a long-standing tradition—in Edo period Japan prints of favorite actors in character were as popular to collect as prints of favorite Geishas. However, successfully representing the character being acted as well as the personality of the actor is a difficult balance that Pyke seems to have mastered. Pike’s photograph of McKellen shows tenderness, experience and throbbing pain, each of which surfaces in the actor’s face and becomes part of the character he represents.

Cindy Sherman, The New Yorker, 5/15/2000, Martin Schoeller, Digital C-Print, 2000, Collection of the artist, coutesy of Hasted Hunt, New York City, copyright Martin Schoeller

Although Martin Schoeller’s portraits are also close-up images, they have a very different aesthetic than Pyke’s. Schoeller’ portraits are color, deadpan and extreme close-ups. Schoeller is German, and like most contemporary German photographers, he has been influenced by the seriate photographs of Berd and Hilla Becher. Like the Bechers, Schoeller treats all his subjects with the same deadpan aesthetic drawing attention to the repetitive similarities, while scrutinizing the differences in his subjects. Included in the Portraiture Now exhibit are portraits of Barack Obama, John McCain, Angelina Jolie and the elusive, finally unmasked, Cindy Sherman, all through the same honest, impassive lens.

Florence, Paris, France, Fashion Magazine, 2007, Alec Soth, Pigmented ink print, Collection of the artist, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery, New York

Alec Soth has explored many different portraiture projects, but the Portrait Gallery chose to highlight Soth’s portraits of women and his struggle with the inevitable sexual, romantic and voyeuristic qualities that an image of a woman poses when it is a man who takes the image. For example, “Florence,” a Parisian model, is naked in her bed, face devoid of make-up, hair tousled and frail shoulders slouched, her blankets covering her lower body but exposing her small pert breasts. It is a very sexual picture, taken as a ‘before’ for Fashion Magazine; the ‘after’ picture of Florence in the same spot, made up and dressed, is not featured in the exhibit.

These six photographers are covering very different ideas in their work and the Portrait Gallery recognizes that fact by displaying each photographer’s works in separate rooms. However, it is important that the Portrait Gallery brought these photographs together under the roof of one exhibit, because these are the images that are being widely disseminated in magazines to a popular audience who may not think of them in an art context, but an informational one. Understanding the subjectivity and goals of the photographs in popular media is important because photography has a point a view and even if it goes unnoticed consciously, subconsciously a digestion of the meanings behind the image will be absorbed.

-Ophra Paul

Portraiture Now: Feature Photography in on view at the National Portrait Gallery until Sept. 27, 2009.