[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] A photograph may or may not be art. It's always information.

[Lisa Yayla]

Hi,
I liked the sentence "A photograph may or may not be art. It's always 
information." I think it seems to sums it up pretty good for all types 
of images. Link and article follow.
Regards,
Lisa

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/02/26/theyre_connected_by_community/


  They're connected by community


    Exhibit captures local residents who share a bond

By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff  |  February 26, 2006

A photograph may or may not be art. It's always information.

Before it does anything else, a picture /shows// /something. It can do 
many other things, too -- dazzle or provoke or arouse, you name it -- 
but any other visual action is subsequent to the presentation of 
information.

This primacy of showing underlies ''Document: Contemporary Social 
Documentary Work From Greater Boston," which runs at the Photographic 
Resource Center through March 26. Chris Churchill, one of nine 
photographers in the show, puts it best in an artist's statement. ''To 
find truth in photography we must understand that the medium can reflect 
aesthetic choices on the part of the photographer, but at its heart, it 
is representational."

What's represented here are eight local communities, communities 
variously defined by vocation, location, and circumstance. (There are 
only eight because two of the photographers, Mariliana Arvelo and James 
Patten, are collaborators, as well as husband and wife.)

Arvelo and Patten's subjects are deaf and blind. Arvelo takes color 
photographs notable for their warmth and matter-of-fact humanity. She 
doesn't beseech or strain for emotional effects. She doesn't have to. 
The liveliness of the play of hands she captures as language is being 
signed in '' 'Untitled,' Newton, MA" is a marvel of expressivity. ''Play 
of hands" is the essence of Patten's work: He uses a laser to etch 
tactile equivalents of Arvelo's images. His hang below hers, with a sign 
bearing the memorable notice ''Please touch! But do not lean."

Sometimes community is a function of place, as with Churchill's 
photographs of the students and faculty at the Patrick O'Hearn 
Elementary School in Dorchester, or Suzi Camarata's images of merchants 
and their stores in Mission Hill. Yet as their work reminds us, the more 
specific the place, often the more universal the effect. Who among us 
hasn't gone to grade school? Who among us wouldn't want to entrust his 
rugs to an affable employee of ''Joseph Sullivan Carpet Cleaning"?

Sometimes community is a function of vocation -- and, it turns out, age. 
Claire Beckett's subjects, National Guard personnel, and Surendra 
Lawoti's, Somerville firefighters, both wear uniforms and do dangerous 
jobs. What's striking about Beckett's people is how young they are. It's 
as if their uniforms are wearing them. Conversely, Lawoti's sitters are 
older, more seasoned, fully emerged. She takes big color portraits, 40 
inches by 32 inches, and the faces of these men are worthy of such 
imposing scrutiny. Lawoti's camera looks them in the eye, and they look 
right back.

Looking into the camera can be a social or even political statement. 
That's the case with the 42 snapshot-size color pictures that make up 
Amber Davis Tourientes's big photo mural ''Families on Stage." Each 
image shows a same-sex couple and their children. Like any family photo, 
the pictures are full of affection and warmth. Also, like any family 
photo, they're about people rather than statements. Tolstoy never 
imagined same-sex marriage, but Tourientes's pictures bear out that all 
happy families really are alike.

''Families on Stage" affirms and celebrates its subjects. Only 
affirmation is in order for Michael Manning's images of local homeless 
people and Lisa Kessler's photo project ''Heart in the Wound," about the 
church sexual-abuse scandal. Both Manning and Kessler, who shot their 
subjects in black and white, offer a strong sense of narrative. Even 
with just fleeting glimpses, we sense a context for these lives.

Sometimes Kessler spills over into tendentiousness. Her motivation is 
understandable -- perhaps unavoidable -- but it produces uneven results. 
The heavy-handedness of the looming image in ''Video Projection of 
Cardinal Law Saying Mass for 3000, Boston, MA, March 2002" contrasts 
unfavorably with the grim eloquence of the empty office space in 
''Director Barbara Thorp Moving Into the Newly Created Archdiocesan 
Office of Healing and Assistance, Newton, MA, June 2002."

''Document" has an extensive online component, at 
www.bu.edu/prc/document/links.htm 
<http://www.bu.edu/prc/document/links.htm>, with more than 90 links 
relating to the photographers' work and subject matter. A document, 
after all, can consist of pixels on a screen just as it can an image or 
piece of paper.