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Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts Fall/Winter 2003, Volume 30, No.2 Locating Intimacy: The Space Between Editor: Marisa S. Olson Table of Contents • In This Issue $8 each (no discount) [Add to Cart] table of contents 1. In This Issue By Marisa S. Olson 6. Does Size Matter? By Geoffrey Batchen 12. If You Can Read This, You’re Too Close: Art and Personal Space By Alison Bing 18. No Fisting, No Squirting, No Coffins By Barbara DeGenevieve 24. Maya Deren And The Skin Between Us By Mark Alice Durant 30. [MEDIA_SPACE] Are You Awake? Are You In Love? By Matt Locke 36. Exhibition Review The Furtive Gaze By Margaret Hawkins 38. In the Gallery Mütter Museum: Photographs By Marisa S. Olson 40. Book Review Julia Scher: Tell Me When You’re Ready Julia Scher: Always There By Jill Miller 42. Books Noted By Whitney Grace 45. Books Received in this issue: Locating Intimacy: The Space Between The visible is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination.-Fredric Jameson This issue of Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts is truly an embodiment of the journal’s premise. Anchoring itself in a current SF Camerawork exhibition, it seeks to touch and expand upon the range of issues elicited by the show. Locating Intimacy: The Space Between began with the precarious nickname “the sex show.” In the end, co-curator Frank Yamrus and I didn’t want the exhibit or journal to be strictly about sex-after all, we all know sex is tired. Shows of that ilk have been a dime a dozen lately, but none of them have satisfied our desire for intimacy. Within these pages, five writers of varied backgrounds give us their own personal take on that hard-to-define term, often tempering their reading of intimacy with details of their personal relationship to some domain of the visual arts. Of course, as in the work of the exhibition’s nine artists, these relationships are spatially defined, or at least physically understood… Geoffrey Batchen asks an age-old question in “Does Size Matter?” Recalling a time when the photo was a small personal memento or document, Batchen considers the impact, and relative popularity, of blowing photos up to epic proportions. Alison Bing plunges into the “horror” of the packed image, tracing the trajectory of public demand for minimal space. Both authors are concerned with the individual’s intimate relationship to the image-a subject near and dear to Mark Alice Durant’s heart. Durant’s first-person narrative gives readers an inside glimpse at the life and crises of the photohistorian. In this case, the author’s passion for his subject material, the life of Maya Deren, is parlayed into a pseudo–love affair, with the photos taking on new meaning. Moving from pinups to porn, artist and feminist theorist Barbara DeGenevieve relates so-called fine art photography to pornographic imagery. In the end, she shows us, the two are not so different - not only because they both invoke the fabled “frenzy of the visible,” but because, historically, their subjects have had more in common than not. Finally, British media theorist Matt Locke inaugurates the journal’s “[Media_Space]” column with a personal account of three artists' digital projects. Pioneer of the phrase “travelling intimate zone,” to refer to the immediate space around a person and their portable communication devices, Locke unfolds a theory of “relational aesthetics” in his critique. In the “space between” these essays you’ll find images by the concurrent exhibition’s artists. . Marisa S. Olson Editor book review: Two New Books from Julia Scher By Jill Miller Julia Scher: Tell Me When You’re Ready: Works from 1990–1995 Julia Scher, with an introduction by Anna Indych / Boston: PFM Publishers, 2002 Julia Scher: Always There Julia Scher, with essays by Brian Wallis, Andrew Hultkrans, Avital Ronell, Bill Horrigan, Andrew Ross, Giovanni Intra, Lynn Tillman; ed. Caroline Schneider and Brian Wallis / New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2002 Imagine a volcanic lava eruption. Or a mountain so vast, its snowy peak is impossible to differentiate from the surrounding sky. German philosopher Immanuel Kant described the sublime experience as an oscillating feeling of horror and pleasure, resulting in an individual’s inability to tear his eyes from the awe-inspiring, incomprehensible scene. Such forces of nature cause human beings to confront their inadequacies and their ultimate lack of control. Although Kant envisioned the scenarios occurring explicitly in nature, this might be because other such models of large-scale destruction were inconceivable. His essays were first published in the eighteenth century, long before 110-story skyscrapers and commercial airliners were a part of our everyday experience. In a society where we regularly tune in to see tornadoes tearing through pastoral settings or deliberate attacks on urban monuments, our media outlets have become an extension of our vision; a panoptic, global media eyeball that is always watching. We no longer need to imagine the horror of distant natural disasters in order to sense our inadequacies. The ever-watchful eye of our twenty-four-hour news channels has succeeded in scaring the hell out of us while simultaneously flattening any semblance of a truly horrifying experience. We feel insignificant, but hopeful in the knowledge that somewhere else, perhaps in that distant land riddled with natural disasters, someone does not share our knowledge, our privilege, or our immunity. This is the person without cable television or DSL or potable water. This is a person without access. Those who know Scher’s work find it especially resonant in the post-September 11, hyper-homeland security aftermath. During the World Trade Center attacks and for days after, many Americans found their eyeballs oscillating between network news channels. Our horror was pacified by the continual coverage of, and our nonstop access to, intimate details surrounding the events. As citizens, we regained our power by experiencing information access, therefore learning that “power” and “access” are interchangeable terms. This power dynamic can be scaled micro- or macrocosmically: the United States watches the world. The state watches its citizens. Security by Julia, Scher’s ongoing museum security guard project, watches museum patrons (watching works of art). The power lies in one’s ability to watch, to know, to have access. It’s no surprise that since September 11, two books about Julia Scher’s artwork have been released: Julia Scher: Always There and Tell Me When You’re Ready: Works from 1990-1995. While Scher’s work was certainly worthy of an artist monograph before 9/11, her unique sensibilities are particularly poignant in America’s current climate. Much like our own government, Scher’s work instructs its audience-citizens to trade their privacy for the power of looking, so that for a moment they forget that they too are being watched. Although almost simultaneously released, the two books take different approaches to presenting Scher’s work. Tell Me When You’re Ready is oversized, hardcover, and enveloped in a luscious pink jacket. The artist stares plainly from the cover photograph, a smirk playing about her crimson mouth as she’s dressed in a customized pink uniform from the well-known Security by Julia series. In this case, it’s fairly safe to judge the book by its cover: Tell Me When You’re Ready is seductive, expensive, and sleek, the advertisement and commodity neatly packaged into a big, sexy coffee table trophy. Like any good commodity, it’s logical and easy to navigate. The monograph includes a chronological listing of Scher’s exhibited projects (forty-three total) from 1990 to 1995. Each project includes a brief, sometimes too brief, description of the piece followed by extensive visual documentation. The layout is neat, the photographs plentiful, and the pages velvety soft. While most artists dream of a monograph so massive and slick, something about this book is too, dare I say, easy. The lack of critical dialogue-or even adequate, in-depth descriptions of individual projects-is by far the most disappointing aspect of this book. Some descriptions are as short as three sentences long-the text engulfed by the expansive whiteness of the surrounding empty margins. However, the images (which include photographs, drawings, architectural plans, and screen captures) are truly spectacular, by themselves worth owning a copy of this book. Bottom line: there is no other place to find such a detailed visual account of these early projects. This book is gorgeous; anyone who loves Scher’s work must have it. Seemingly opposite in formal and stylistic priorities, Julia Scher: Always There is a smaller, more modest account of the artist’s work. The book includes five critical essays, many framing her work within a post-September 11 context. Always There does an excellent job deconstructing Scher’s philosophical concerns, touching on contemporary society’s obsessions with knowledge, access, and control. The monograph includes a rigorous introduction and a lengthy interview with Julia Scher. Unfortunately, where this book soars academically, it fails visually. The poor quality of the photographs is disappointing, particularly when compared with the contributing writers’ efforts. Unlike Tell Me When You’re Ready, Always There is carried by its critical essays, yet it offers slim visual representation for many projects. For example, Always There, the project from whence this book is named, is represented by only two photographs. Also noteworthy, the documentation of Scher’s projects completely lack descriptions and includes only very basic information: the title of the work, the exhibition date, and the venue. The editor assumes that the reader has read the critical essays and therefore requires no further explanation of the projects. Always There and Tell Me When You’re Ready are very different, yet highly complementary artist monographs. It’s difficult to decide which book best represents Julia Scher, as neither provides a complete critical and visual package. When selecting which book to purchase, you’ll find yourself (in an appropriately Scher-like fashion) turning your gaze back onto yourself. The books, like the artist, return the focus to the viewer, demanding that you ask exactly what it was you were looking for in the first place. By Jill Miller Jill Miller is an artist and writer who lives in San Francisco and Los Angeles.   home | about | exhibitions | bookstore | events | membership | journal | mentoring | links Copyright 2004. SF Camerawork. All Rights Reserved.