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ART REVIEW | Alessandra Sanguinetti @ AIB Gallery

BY ANNA FINK

I had never known the work of Alessandra Sanguinetti until I came to school to study photography. I immediately fell in love with her work featuring two cousins, “The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams.” I was drawn to these fantastical images in which young girls performed their visions of growing up. Sanguinetti captures the girls as they play dress up, wear wedding dresses, have pregnant bellies and ultimately hold a fake funeral. Although critics have questioned whether or not Sanguinetti forcefully instructs the girls, in her artist talk she discussed how “any other way of representing the girls would be a lie.” She doesn’t consider her photographs planned or scheduled, it is more of improvisation.

Alessandra Sanguinetti, Ray of Light, 2005

Sanguinetti has photographed these girls in the most pivotal years of their lives, a time where their bodies and minds are rapidly changing. She has captured their awkward moments and all their different personas as nine and ten year olds. As the girls play “make believe”, audiences are given insight into their lives and how they think. Guille for instance, is already worried about men leaving her because of what she’s seen in movies. Belinda is seen experimenting with different personas throughout the photographs; dressing as a man, explorer and a nun. Although these girls are playing, they are not acting out what one would assume young girls would act out. Guille and Belinda do not pretend they are princesses or animals, rather they are imagining themselves in a different period of their lives. Their mature ideas suggest the end of childhood and what is to come.

Just as in “The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams,” Sanguinetti acts as a witness in her series entitled, “On the Sixth Day.” She first started photographing as a young girl when she realized that someday everyone would die. Her need to document these things pays respect to her subject matter and in addition creates a permanent record. “On the Sixth Day” refers directly to how God created animals on the sixth day of creating the earth. In this series, she focuses on our relationship to animals and our dominance over them. We decide when to feed, care and ultimately end the lives of animals.

Alessandra Sanguinetti, Untitled from the series On the Sixth Day, 1996-2004

There is a clear reference of man versus beast and how animals play sacrificial creatures. Her images explore the every day lives and life cycles of animals on her father’s farm in Argentina. As viewers, we get very close to these animals. We notice the rich colors of their fur, their expressions and even can begin to observe how they are feeling. We are shown things we do not see or think about often, such as a tiny cow fetus, blood stained hands and skinned animals. We get very upset when people die and excited when children are born, but it is not a big deal when an animal goes through these stages. Sanguinetti has photographed this series from a low perspective, similar to through the eyes of an animal and creates a new viewpoint for her audience. Her photographs of animals have a “fable-like” aesthetic, as she mentioned, however, a line is drawn between fantasy and real violence.

In all of Sanguinetti’s work she discusses the relationship between the real and the fantastical world. Although at first glance her work may appear highly imaginative, the realities of her subject matter are not light and comfortable.

Anna Fink is a senior photography student at the Art Institute of Boston.

TAVARES STRACHAN @ MIT LIST

Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home
MIT LIST Visual Arts Center
May 7 to July 11, 2010







The MIT List Visual Arts Center is pleased to present Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home, the next phase of a new project by Bahamian-born, New York-based artist Tavares Strachan. Since 2006, Strachan has been working on this multiphase body of work that explores space and deep-sea training. “Orthostatic” means to stand upright, and “tolerance” refers to the ability to withstand pressure. Combined, the phrase refers to the physiological stress that cosmonauts and deep-sea explorers endure while exiting, and re-entering our home, the thin surface of planet Earth.

The Orthostatic Tolerance mirrors Strachan’s interest in establishing an Ocean and Aerospace Exploration Agency in Nassau (BASEC) both to continue his own exploration efforts while fostering educational outreach efforts for children in his home country. Strachan is perhaps best known for the work, The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want, 2004-06. For this project, Strachan embarked on an Arctic exploration during which he extracted a 4.5-ton block of ice and shipped it to his former grade school in Nassau, where it was kept frozen by a solar-powered freezer. For a year after the Arctic remnant was installed in the sub-tropical environment, Strachan presented lectures in elementary schools throughout the Bahamas. (MIT press release excerpt)

AIB Photography BFA Thesis: Marrow Mending featuing the work of Liz Affa, Kate Bullen, Malin Sjoberg, and Tiffany Ulrich

April 30th from 6 - 8 PM at the Art Institute of Boston Gallery

601 Newbury Street, Boston, MA

This is the fourth BFA Photography exhibition for the 2010 graduation class at the Art Institute of Boston.

Liz Affa's work deals with how her perception of men has been tainted because of thought patterns she has inherited from generations of women in her family. The work is multi-media based involving illustration on fabric then sewn on a sampler and stained. Themes of domesticity and the idea of the house vs the home are inter-woven throughout the work.

Kate Bullen's photographs transport you to a constructed reality that is both inviting and disturbing. The black and white photographs trigger a sense of familiarity within these constructed worlds.

You can visit Kate's website here.

Malin Sjoberg's still lives explore psychological states of the mind as well as weaving in stories from her families past.

Tiffany Ulrich explores the idea of materials and their value and what happens when you strip them of their worth or elevate them through sentimentality. Tiffany's sculptures are embedded with her own family mythology as she attempts to mend the issues that have occurred to her family within her lifetime.

Fred Ricthin Lecture | PRC @ Northeastern University

Fred Ritchin After Photography

Thursday, April 29, 2010
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Northeastern University (Building 20F, in West Village)
MBTA T-Stop (E-Line - Northeastern)
Click for campus map with directions

In a digital environment, what can emerge from a medium transformed? How will it change us as people? And how can we influence what comes next?

Fred Ritchin is author of the recently published book, After Photography, and has been writing on the digital challenge for media since a major article for The New York Times Magazine in 1984. He is professor of Photography and Imaging at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and directs PixelPress. Ritchin was picture editor of The New York Times Magazine, executive editor of Camera Arts magazine, and founding director of the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Program at the International Center of Photography. Ritchin has also authored In Our Own Image: The Coming Revolution in Photography (1990), and his essays have appeared in other books such as In Our Time: The World As Seen by Magnum PHotographers, An Uncertain Grace: THe Photographs of Sebastiao Salgado, Mexico Through Foreign Eyes, Sahel: End of the Road, and Under Fire: Great Photographers and Writers in Vietnam. He is currently finishing another book Outside the Frame, on photography and human rights. He also writes the blog afterphotography.org.

Interview with Jenn Warren | Sudan

April 27, 2010

AIB alumna Jenn Warren will join AiC via Skype and discuss her recent documentary projects in Sudan.



Jenn Warren is a documentary photographer based in East Africa, specializing in NGO, humanitarian, and development projects. Clients include Medecins sans Frontieres, UNICEF, CARE, WFP/PAM, Amnesty International, PSI, the National Democratic Institute, SafePoint, and TASC. She was recently awarded the 2008 Nikon Emerging Professional Scholarship to attend the Missouri Photo Workshop 60 and is featured in the Best of ASMP 2008, Alligator Juniper Photography Annual 2008, and the 2008 Center for Fine Art Photography Peace Corps Exhibition.

PLASTIC FOREST | NYT OP-ART

AIB alumn Bryan Graf was recently featured in the New York Times OP-ART.


From the sereies Roadside Wildflowers
Photographs copyright Bryan Graf

These are photographs of plastic bags that I pulled from trees and shrubs in the woods near my home in New Jersey. To make these pictures — photograms — I took the bags into my darkroom and gently dropped them between my enlarger’s lens and a piece of light-sensitive paper. I then illuminated the scene with a flash of light for less than a second. The resulting images trace the objects gliding in the air moments before they come to rest. Like Earth Day, they are for me a prompt to reflect on the relationship — sometimes vexed, sometimes beautiful, always complicated — between humankind and nature.

—BRYAN GRAF

Photography BFA Thesis, On Life and Death: Molly Geiger, Christopher Hoodlet, Tara Sellios, & Paul Yem

April 19-24th at The Art Institute of Boston Gallery at University Hall

1815 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA, 02239

Reception: 5-7 PM Thursday, April 22nd.

This is the third BFA Photography exhibition for the 2010 graduating class at the Art Institute of Boston.

Molly Geiger has been working on an on-going documentary project photographing midwives and home birth.

Molly's website can be seen here.

Chris Hoodlet's work chronicles his experiences within the land and his journey of life affirmation through landscape.

Paul Yem photographs the changes within the land he grew up in and how a photograph can function as a memory of an ideal landscape.

You can see Paul's other projects on his website here.

Tara Sellios translates her vision of the seven deadly sins through still lives depicting both beauty and repulsion.

Teenage Girls Explore Their Lives Through a Camera’s Eye | NYT

By COREY KILGANNON

for the New York Times, March 2010



Visit NYT's slideshow

Alessandra Sanguinetti Lecture | AIB

Strauch-Mosse Artist's Lecture
The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University

APRIL 20, 2010 | 6:30 pm
Room 101, Boston University Kenmore Classroom Building
565 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston


Copyright Alessandra Sanguinetti