I'm too tired to go into depth. I also didn't buy the $75 "catalogue"
of the show so I cannot do a anatomy-room dissection of what I
encountered--but I went specifically to see the Annie Leibovitz
retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, a place I'd never been even though
I grew up in the City. I was seriously blindsided by the show. That
is, my expectations of a technically adept emotionless glitz-queen were
wondrously destroyed. There was, for example, no evidence of the
meretricious (I think because of Lennon and Yoko themslves) "Bare-assed
John climbing Yoko" picture.
Leibovitz is the only person I ever heard of who brought a camera to her
father's funeral. Then again, he was HER father, her mother and sisters
know how she works. It's nevertheless a bit disconcerting to look at a
photograph of the old man's open grave.
It's also hugely moving because few people have the courage to document
moments that reside at that level of intimacy. Mourning is a common
experience but most of us try to hide it.
More intense: the images that came from her long friendship with Susan
Sontag. I am still trying to absorb the power of the final image, the
dead Sontag laid out in what I recall as a dark caftan. It is one of
the most terrible images I have ever seen. Yet there is an offsetting
serenity in Sontag's face that was not present in the frightful images
of her in the Seattle leukemia center. But as with her father in the
midst of his family, there is a rounding and completing about the
picture that robs it of sensationalism: both images come at the end of
long and loving relationships.
One of Leibovitz's "gods" seems to be Avedon. I am trying to compare
her images of her father with Avedons. Tonight I'm not going to try too
hard. In a sense it's the old apples/oranges issue: Avedon seemed almost
to "have at" Jacob Avedon while Leibovitz worked her father's death into
a long-documented life. As with Sontag there is closure, not simply a
door being slammed. The purposes and ways of seeing are different so
the styles or approaches vary. Both I find indispensible.
More when I can think of it. Or maybe not.
Ken
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Ken Wolman andreachenier.net rainermaria.typepad.com
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"If you should decide to seek your special dream, your heart's desire
Nothing you can ever do will bring more joy to you.
But if you seek your heart's desire, your heart may break.
That's the risk your dreams require, the chance you take,
the choice you make."--David Frishberg
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