Key works in art and communication- Martha Rosler

Term two consists of a lecture program from Alison Rowley, on the idea of key practitioners and bodies of work with significance, term 1 was a program that helped us look at key concepts, term two is designed to help us identify how others put work together and this will help us when putting our own work together. Put simply we are describing how work it put together and why.

Martha Rosler focused the first lecture on a photography piece; it was made in the 1970's centred on representation. The work is a series of documentary photography in an art context; we were encouraged to think about what we make of them.

The series was called 'the bowery into inadequate descriptive systems', the piece consists of 21 black and white photographs and complementary words, although the piece was made in 1970's, Martha Rosler is still making art now and recently won a major art award, with her art appearing in various galleries and books.

The images were photographs of store windows and rubbish on the pavement in this series, looking at the images they were open to interpretation, to see what we thought of them, personally the image we were asked to analyse was strange, it was simply a pile of rubbish on the ground, initially I was confused but going through the lecture I started to understand what it was Martha Rosler was trying to show...

The bowery is a part of New York, originally a slum, a little different to now a days, she described this part of new york as an, archetypal skid row, an outrage and slumming spectacle, in other works Martha took photos like these below...

The idea behind these images she was taking, was that she refused to objectify those suffering from poverty and neglect, this resulting in her photographs being beautiful but not in their content. Looking at the Ethnographic photo, Martha explored those who are ‘others’ to us, but she questioned is it exoticism to do this?

Another example with the war photo, we don’t know who the man being taken away by the British soldiers is, but were looking into someone else’s troubles, maybe being able to identify but cannot re live ourselves. She describes this feeling as ‘looking in as spectacle'.

This image at first seems different, compared to the others, there’s not much rubbish or empty shops, its just an image of a bank from the outside, however the image is the Centre of Martha’s beliefs, the difference between, the image represents the divide between the rich and poor, the bank on the inside and the subtle bottles outside on the wall showing the poor, the ones that fall outside capitalism. The poor are invisible and in places we don’t want to see.

It seems that Martha is pointing out the things us, as an image conscious society, would not dare to say.

Diane Arbus Photography...

At this time Martha was working against another photographer, Diane Arbus, her most famous works came from her series of photographs entitled 'freaks', this was a piece of work that consisted of her taking images like the above, again of people who were seen as 'others' in this case twine.

I think the images Diane is taking look eerie, in today society we don’t see twins of tall people as freaks there just like us, back then this was made an issue of. The photographs seem to bring up an issue that isn’t an issue at all to me. They show what people wouldn’t say, and back in the time they were made, it may have being more of a thought, bit now I don’t think it is.

Richard Billingham photography...

Above are some of the photographs Richard Billingham had in his series, these are his own family and although Martha Rosler commented on the fact that she doesn’t like them. I actually think they are similar in message to her work, the idea that you only see the good side to people you don’t see when they get up on a morning or when there slumming around, the only difference in the two works is that one is a more personal representation by using their own family and being on the inside of the house. Although they are similar I prefer Martha Rosler’s work, even though less personal, the images are more beautiful in composition.