Addison Gallery of American Art: "The Kids are Alright"

1. Compare and contrast: Betsy Schneider and Jocelyn Lee

Betsy Schneider; "Quotidian"

"In this work, I attempt to answer the yearning to control time endemic

to both the parent and the photographer."

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Jocelyn Lee; "Last Light"

 "During this time, I made portraits of my dying mother and our family. I also made landscapes of the blooming and passing of the flowers and trees around my mother's home during the final seasons of her life. This body of work is a meditation on time, mortality, and my attempt to pause the stampeding progress of both."

 Although the two photographs titled, "Gail and Isabelle" and "Mom After She's Died" are not on Jocelyn Lee's website, the link to the rest of the ones from her series is posted above.

Both of these artists focused on the development of life. Scneider focused on the beginning of it while Lee focused on the end of it. Both seem to try to stop time because Schnieder is trying to capture the way her daughter develops by photographing her from birth to 11 years old. It is very interesting to see the way she grows in character while standing against the same white background just about every day for 11 years. It also shows the development of the family because in the second photograph I posted, there is a little brother that comes into the picture.

What I liked about the two photographs from Lee's collection is the fact that one was a photograph of her in her own bed, and the second one was of her after she has passed away on her hospital bed. The juxtaposition of the two shows the quick progression of lung cancer and how it took her life. The fact that there are other people mourning on her hospital bed really hit me, with the pale skin and the expression of emptiness in everyone's faces.

2. Choose one or two artists whose work you connected with the most. Describe why the piece spoke to you. Did you have an emotional response?

Melonie Bennett's work really connected to me because his style of taking family pictures is the same as mine. The pictures reminded me of the pictures I took with my 35mm b/w film this past summer. The pictures were taken in the moment, showing my family the way they are in their natural state, and no setups.

Lisa Lindvay's work spoke to me as well. Not to go into so much detail, but it reminds me of the way my family was like when I was in high school. Everything in my house seemed to be falling apart due to certain circumstances in our parents' lives, so it seemed like my sisters and I were fending for ourselves.

"These photographs are from an ongoing series that depicts the lives of my father,

sister, and two brothers over the past five years as they take on the burden of

my mother’s deteriorating mental health.

This work represents an extended look at the physical and emotional currents

within our home. The images are a visual representation of the internal dilemmas

associated with this entropic state. The photographs expose how my mother’s illness

influences the condition of the space and emotional well being of my

family members. This is an exploration of how individual identity is shaped

and altered within our familial relationship."

3. On a more critical note, choose a piece that may have given you a negative emotional response or perhaps a piece that should not have been in the exhibition. Be descriptive in explaining the piece and why you had this response.

Patty Chang's "In Love" was probably one of the most disturbing videos I have ever seen. I think it was really disrupting to have it as one of the first things you see when you walk into the exhibit. I wish it hadn't been in the exhibition because it made me so uncomfortable, and it also did not seem to fit with the rest of the work that was in there. Her idea behind it is really thought out as far as the symbolization goes, but I was too grossed out by the video to appreciate it. It is hard to believe, but the description said that they are not actually making out in the video, but are instead eating an onion. Honestly, I would not have figured that out without reading the description because I just could not watch as this artist intimately touched lips with each parent until the end of the video when the onion got reconstituted.

4. Do you take photographs of your family? Why or why not? When you were young, who took the photographs in you family? Do you have a favorite family photograph? If so, please describe it.

Usually my parents would be the ones taking photographs of us when my sisters and I were little, but that all changed once my older sister got a digital camera. When that happened, it was Sharon (my sister) and I who would take pictures of our family. I'm not sure if I have a favorite family picture. There is one that I really like, though, of us at Christmastime when I was 7 years old, but I'm not sure where that photograph is.

Today, Sharon and I still take pictures of our families when we get together. I like to take a lot of candid pictures that are similar to Melonie Bennett's photos. I did a final project of family photos last semester that I really enjoyed. I think by now, my foster family has really gotten used to having the camera around them. But as far as my biological parents go, they really do not enjoy getting their pictures taken if they aren't smiling and looking pretty in them.

I hope to one day convince them to be in a series of photographs that I have really been yearning to do, but it is just about impossible when they are too sensitive to having their photographs taken.

5. What  three observations can you make about the entire exhibit, other than the obvious facts that it was about family and photography.

• I was expecting it to be an exhibition of just photographs; I did not expect video installations to be in here.
• Many of these show the relationship (or lack thereof) between parent and child.
• With the exception of about a handful, all of these artists portray the struggles within families that people never know unless you are actually in the family. (i.e. marriage issues, death, gender identity, growing up, etc.)

6. Has this exhibition changed the way you think about making photographs? Why or why not?

It has really expanded my knowledge of artists, but I don't think it has changed the way I think about photographs. Their styles all seem familiar to me, and none of them stick out as being "revolutionary".

7. Define the following:

Pigment print: 
printing by the use of pigments instead of dyes. The pigments do not penetrate the fiber but are affixed to the surface of the fabric by means of synthetic resins which are cured after application to make them insoluble. The pigments are insoluble, and application is in the form of water-in-oil or oil-in-water emulsions of pigment pastes and resins.

Cibachrome print:
also called "silver-dye bleach prints." The dye destruction process depends upon the bleaching of dyes that are formed wholly in the sensitized material, rather than formed during processing

Chromogenic print:
a print made when colored dyes are put on the emulsion in multiple layers and are sensitized to different wavelengths of light

Giclee/Iris print:
high quality digital inkjet prints produced on art paper

Lightjet print:
an actual photographic print exposed by the Lightjet laser printer. The printer reads the information in a digital file, then uses lasers to expose the image onto Archive paper. Lightjet prints are made on light-sensitive photo paper, which is exposed with red, green and blue lasers.

Inkjet print:
a type of computer printing that creates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper, plastic, or other substrates