Through April 14 Justine Kurland knows as well as anyone that a seemingly straightforward photograph can inspire multiple readings.
It also implies that a straightforward photograph is of lesser significance or value than a painting or conceptual work of art.
In one part of WOUND, a covered canvas frankly announces, "I propose we meet once a year every year until one of us can't or won't," while another piece is a straightforward photograph of a technical manual written in Chinese. 1) Only at the end; 2) Only when drunk; 3) Tentatively; 4) All the time; 5) Only when we remember.
Most were straightforward photographs of lathes and drill-sharpening machines, probably intended for reproduction in an industrial catalog.
These are followed by furniture designs, elegantly straightforward photographs and woodcuts that seem derived from simple doodles.
The show includes a few more-or-less straightforward photographs, early works, often of nude women, seen cropped and rearranged as panoramic landscapes, puzzles, or small constructions.
An adjacent work recounts the same narrative using straightforward photographs of the markers at the site of the elephant's death.
Many of these works raise issues that are unresolvable for even the most seemingly straightforward photographs: do they bring us closer to reality or do they distance us from a reality that is already constructed largely of photographs?
The departure from the more or less straightforward photographing of plays came with the growth of techniques proper to film, and the most significant of these occurred when Griffith took the camera and moved it in from its position at the proscenium arch, where Georges Méliès had placed it, to a close-up of the actor.
The straightforward photographs that she pops in here and there, like Herb's supper of fish fingers and peas, provide an instant, tangible - and rather comforting - shortcut to reality, as do lifesize photographs of biscuits in I Am Too Absolutely Small for School.
Known for straightforward photographs and films of awkward teenagers, Ms. Bornstein now excels at small, meticulous, slightly naïve etched portraits of her subjects, starting with her teenage roommate, who is observed foraging in the refrigerator, practicing kung fu, reading National Geographic and doing his laundry.
