Brief

• Is there any sense in which Lee’s work could be considered voyeuristic or even exploitative? Is she commenting on her own identity, the group identity of the people she photographs, or both?
• Would you agree to Morrissey’s request if you were enjoying a day on the beach with your family? If not, why not?
• Morrissey uses self-portraiture in more of her work, namely Seven and The Failed Realist. Look at these projects online and make some notes in your learning log.

Nikki S Lee

Nikki s Lee is a Korean born visual artist best know for her work Projects (1997–2001).

“She is best known for her “Projects” series (1997–2001), in which she attempted to assimilate into various social and subcultural groups—among them young punks, senior citizens, yuppies, and hip-hop fans—by precisely mimicking their styles and mannerisms. She would appear with them in casual group snapshots taken by friends or passersby, the amateur point-and-shoot images reinforcing Lee’s attempt at verisimilitude” (Vogel, 2020)

• Is there any sense in which Lee’s work could be considered voyeuristic or even exploitative? Is she commenting on her own identity, the group identity of the people she photographs, or both?

When i first looked at Lees work, it made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I really wasn’t sure why and to a certain extend Im still not entirely sure. After more reading a research I started to get a better idea of what she was trying to achieve through the Projects and this only continued to make me more uncomfortable. The question wether this work could be seen as voyeuristic or exploitative starts with the question of wether the people she was integrating with, knew that she was taking on this persona and were given credit. Lee did not know how well known and valuable her work would. These were certainly things that contributed to my feeling of unease. This was an early work and I wonder if there is some immaturity at play here? I agree with Lee when she says that individual identity is fluid but why she should select this way of expressing it could be seen as either insensitive, immature or perhaps down to her need to perform.

“Lee believes that individual identity is fluid and that her Projects were extensions of herself” (Nikki S. Lee | Artist Profile | NMWA, n.d.)

“For Lee, it seems, these identities are all fundamentally subject to convention; absentminded viewers might be fooled, but she is not deceiving the people whose lives she is temporarily sharing: After all, there’s no way this Korean could convince a group of Latinos, for example, that she’s one of them, though it is quite possible for them to act as if that were the case. The people who pose with Lee are her collaborators but they don’t have to understand why she’s doing what she does; they only need to be willing to play along” (Schwabsky, 1999)

Other aspects of her work that made me uneasy was the way in which she pigeon holed some ethnic groups, cultures or labelled groups that are now seen or should be seen as inappropriate.

“The bar for NO when it comes to blackface and brownface must be: All kinds, every kind!   

Darkening one’s skin to pose for a series of photographs in a community one has no affinity with, does not belong to, and as an entertainment project with ongoing profit plan—this is not an interpretation of blackface. It’s blackface” (Kim, 2016)

There is definitely a divide when it comes to Lees work, with a whole range of cultural, ethical and political issues that at times are criticised and applauded.

“Lee’s debut earned further praise from the New York Times. In his review, Holland Cotter suggests that Lee’s work occupies a “post-ethnic” position that rejects essentializing notions of identity. He was especially impressed by Lee’s bleach-blonde persona in the Ohio Project (1999), where she was photographed alongside blue-collar white Midwesterners. Her ability to lampoon upper-middle-class white culture was also applauded. In a 2001 article for Art Journal, Maurice Berger analyzes her pitch-perfect emulation of preppy style in the Yuppie Project (1998) as a critical take on whiteness” (Vogel, 2020)

I doubt I would be able to gain enough information to make a truly informed decision about exploitation on Lees part but in light of what I have discovered via the internet and books I am still uncomfortable with her Projects. I am in fact slightly more uncomfortable that I was before I started.

Trish Morrissey

• Would you agree to Morrissey’s request if you were enjoying a day on the beach with your family? If not, why not?
• Morrissey uses self-portraiture in more of her work, namely Seven and The Failed Realist. Look at these projects online and make some notes in your learning log.

Trish Morrissey is an Irish photographer who also works in films and video. She describes her work as

a study of the language of photography through still and moving images (Morrissey, nd)

In Morrissey work Front (2005-2007) she travelled to beaches in both the UK and Australia and asked groups of family or friends if she could photograph them in a group shot, with Morrissey herself replacing one of the females.

It was interesting to note that the title for each image is the name of the woman she replaced.

“Each photograph is named after the replaced woman who, in her presence-absence, becomes the fulcrum of the image and its material author” (Bastwick, 2005)

Morrissey is addressing the notion of borders and boundaries

“using the family group and the beach setting as metaphors……These highly performative photographs are shaped by chance encounters with strangers, and by what happens when physical and psychological boundaries are crossed; both the cuckoo and mythological “shape-shifters” are evoked” (Morrissey 2009)

The people in the images look very relaxed and natural. Unless you are aware of the situation it would be hard to work out that one of them is a complete stranger. I did wonder why this was the case. My own experience of taking photos of people I don’t know, is that they immediately change as soon as they know or think they might be in range of my camera. In this case of course, they were not having their photo taken by a complete stranger, they were having it taken by a family member or friend. Most of them are looking at the camera and therefore their partner, wife, mother or friend. They are also then not looking at the stranger in their midst.

Boothroyd asks is to think about our own reaction if we were asked to participate in one of Morrisseys’ shoots

• Would you agree to Morrissey’s request if you were enjoying a day on the beach with your family? If not, why not?

Along with a large proportion of the population, I really don’t like having my photograph taken or ever take photographs of myself. My initial reaction was therefor no. However when I thought about it and as long as I was the person being replaced (and taking the shot) I might well agree. I would off course have to be happy that she was going to use the images for the purpose she was stating and would want some form of signed document to ensure the images were not used for other purposes.

Her work Seven Years (2001 – 2004) was born out of her previous work Twenty two (2000-2001)

“Morrissey’s impetus for this new direction was born out of the discussions and remembrances that her Twentytwo project catalysed within her family.  A box of photographs (into which her parents added their Twentytwo portraits) became a focal point for shared, disputed and reinvented memories of her family’s history” (Cotton, 2004)

Many of us are fascinated by “family photographs” and the rise in interest of people to find out about their ancestry has only fast forwarded this fascination. Whether its family snaps of people we know and immediate family or long gone ancestors, it seems we are constantly intrigued.

It’s hard to pin down what the fascination is! I guess there is the acceptance of time passing, the changing faces of self and family, the sadness and comfort of seeing people we have lost, the changing fashions and landscapes and perhaps the added comfort of belonging then, and still belonging now.

“For all of us, our snaps can be the compelling mediators of the re-appraisal of identities and familial relationships. Seven Years became Morrissey’s attempt, in collaboration with her elder sister, to make the subject of these photographs the subtexts of family relationships that are embedded in the formulas of family photographs.  To think of Seven Years as a re-staging of specific family photographs is inaccurate, or at least only part of the ingredients to these distilled ‘family’ photographs” (Cotton, 2004)

Another work by Morrissey is The Failed Realist (2011) also relates to family and involved her young daughter. Face painting is a well known pastime for children and adults alike but as the title suggests this series is more complex. As she herself explains

“This photographic series was made in collaboration with my daughter when she was between the ages of four and five years. Face painting is a rainy day activity that we both enjoy.  Once her motor skills evolved sufficiently well for her to control a paintbrush, she wanted to paint me rather than be painted.  Instead of the usual motifs of butterfly, or flower, she would decide to paint something from her immediate experience – a movie she had just watched, a social event, a right of passage, or a vivid dream.  Beyond the innocence of the child’s intention, more sinister themes such as clowns, carnival and the grotesque are evoked by these mask like paintings” (Morrissey, n.d.)

The title of the series comes from child development psychology after observation of his young daughter by the psychologist Georges-Henri Luquet. As Morrissey explains

Between the ages of four to six children are often more verbally than visually articulate.  This means that what they wish to express through mark making is often beyond their physical skill. The psychologist Georges-Henri Luquet (1927/2001) called this The Failed Realist stage – the child’s desire to represent his or her world is hampered by motor, cognitive and graphic obstacles that will be overcome with time, but for the moment, their interpretation is flawed (Morrissey, n.d.)

I find this series very difficult to understand. I am not sure what is is portraying and can’t get find any clarity in the explanations of Morrissey or others. I find the images rather unsettling, i want to know who’s idea it was, if her daughter was present when the actual autographs were taken and how much fun (or not) was had during the actual face painting itself. For example, the image called Party Girl is reminiscent of females with their mascara running due to crying or  at the end of a night “partying” looking decidedly worse for wear. I have to assume that her daughter has no notion of this and it is my own interpretation. She may of course witnessed friends or family members with less than perfect makeup and as such would be in no way a criticism of Morrisssey’s parenting.

 

It seems that I’m not the only one who finds the images unsettling

“Even if we acknowledge that Morrissey’s face was animated during the moment of painting (rather than resolutely neutral and ambivalent), the mood and ideas expressed across the photographs can be unsettling.  Childhood is a complex negotiation rather than an idyll, and the particular age charted through these photographs is one where there is a peak in the occurrence of nightmares and irrational fears.  In Penny the grim genie-like face with the swirling black marks is possibly less scary at rest than in motion, and both Party Girl with outsize-black tears and Lady Bird with the red, black and purple face with the single black tear, seem likely to be tragic even with a smile”

 

Bibliography

Morrissey, T., n.d. Trish Morrissey. [online] Trishmorrissey.com.
Available at: <http://www.trishmorrissey.com/works_pages/work-tfr/statement.html&gt;
[Accessed 6 February 2021].

Vogel, W., 2020. Nikki S. Lee Provokes Debates about Cultural Appropriation – ARTnews.com. [online] Artnews.com.
Available at: <https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/nikki-s-lees-shapeshifting-art-cultural-appropriation-1202682096/&gt;
[Accessed 4 February 2021].

Figures 1-2
Nikki s. Lee Available at: <https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/nikki-s-lees-shapeshifting-art-cultural-appropriation-1202682096/&gt;
[Accessed 4 February 2021].

Schwabsky, B., 1999. OPENINGS: NIKKI S. LEE. [online] Artforum.com.
Available at: <https://www.artforum.com/print/199907/openings-nikki-s-lee-32240&gt;
[Accessed 4 February 2021].

NMWA. n.d. Nikki S. Lee | Artist Profile | NMWA. [online]
Available at: <https://nmwa.org/art/artists/nikki-s-lee/&gt;
[Accessed 4 February 2021].

Kim, E., 2016. Nikki S. Lee’s “Projects”—And the Ongoing Circulation of Blackface, Brownface in “Art”. [online] contemptorary.
Available at: <https://contemptorary.org/nikki-s-lees-projects-and-the-ongoing-circulation-of-blackface-brownface-in-art/&gt;
[Accessed 5 February 2021].

Morrissey, T., n.d. Trish Morrissey | LensCulture. [online] LensCulture. Available at: <https://www.lensculture.com/trish-morrissey&gt; [Accessed 5 February 2021].

Figures 3-5
Morrissey, T., (2005-2007). [image]
Available at: <https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/34/morrissey.php&gt;
[Accessed 5 February 2021].

Bastwick, D., 2005. Morrissey | CCC Strozzina. [online] Strozzina.org.
Available at: <http://www.strozzina.org/en/artists/trish-morrissey/&gt;
[Accessed 5 February 2021].

Cotton, C., 2004. Seven Years Part 1 by Charlotte Cotton | Photoworks. [online] Photoworks. Available at: <https://photoworks.org.uk/seven-years-part-1/&gt;
[Accessed 6 February 2021].

Figure 6 -9
Morrisey, T., (2001-2004) Seven Years [Images]
Available at: https://www.lensculture.com/trish-morrissey?modal=project-230591
[Accessed 6 February 2021].