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Tell
me a story about a kiss. Tell me where you were and what the weather was
like. Tell me what was said (what was not said). Tell me what you could
not even tell your best friend. Tell me the story as it sits in your
memory: the story of the guy you kissed on a rooftop who disappeared to
Mexico
and the backseat where you and your girlfriend had sex in high school.
Tell me the story and take me to where it happened. Drive me there, and I
will take a photograph. – Sara Macel
Kiss
& Tell
features work by 8 artists from the US
and abroad who find their
subject matter in personal connections and use photography to explore
intimacy. From the electric sensation of a favorite shared kiss, to
intimate portraits of a photographer’s muse, to images that challenge
our perceptions about sexual identity within intimate partnerships, the
artists in Kiss & Tell present a visual dialogue exploring
private realms that are as complex and layered as the intricacy of
intimacy itself.
The title is inspired by the work of Sara Macel. To
create Kiss & Tell, Macel gathered stories from strangers and
friends about their favorite kiss. A visual narrative of borrowed memories
and place, Macel’s project suggests
both the veiled privacy we share with intimates, as well as the
provocative act, in photographing, of bringing this personal realm into
the public sphere. Sara’s work opens the dialogue in Kiss & Tell,
asking the viewer to go to that place – be it physical or felt memory
– of the feeling you experience in a sublime kiss. The absence of
figures in her imagery invites our own personal associations and
experiences, while simultaneously reminding us of the limits. Unless we
are part of that connection, lips locked, how deeply can we ever really
understand what exists between two people?
Artists, Todd Jordan, Elinor Carucci, and Kyung Duk Kim,
attempt to broaden and visualize that dynamic and private world by sharing
personal moments between themselves and their lovers. In sleep, in the
midst of a fight, or in times of play, these artists use the camera to
explore the boundaries and boundlessness of their private connections.
Working
within the long tradition of the artist and muse, Todd Jordan’s
sensitive and observant portraits of Myriam shadow the footsteps of iconic
greats and the work Alfred Stieglitz made of Georgia O’Keefe, Harry
Callahan of Eleanor, Emmet Gowin of Edith, and Nicholas Nixon of Bebe.
With candor, trust, and curiosity, Jordan’s pictures study someone with
whom he is very close, and the resulting images reveal a generous spirit
and physically and emotionally open connection. Todd’s images showing
Myriam both in everyday settings of serious contemplation and playful
intimacy, express a desire to understand a whole person rather than single
parts we may choose to love. While the photographs present Jordan’s own
view, Myriam’s willingness to reveal herself is equally essential. In
exposing each other through this collaborative visual exploration, they
deepen that which already lives between them.
Elinor
Carucci also
finds subject matter in her own life, but looks not at the romance of
close partnership, but rather the reality of the struggles we can
experience. Created during a time of crisis within their marriage, her
diaristic narratives are drawn with deep reds and blues. Picturing
fragments of their most intimate and vulnerable daily exchanges – naked
taking a bath, tending toenails, sitting together exposed but separated by
a gulf of space… we see the couple often just out of reach from one
another, a tension or fear palpitates between their bodies. With titles
like Guilt, Will it Feel the Same, Love in Spite, and Cherries I
Ate by Myself, the work becomes both a visual and conceptual metaphor
for the opposing challenges couples may face in seeking both autonomy and
fulfilling connection. In taking a step back to photograph their lives,
Carucci finds the space to observe and better understand the emotional
terrain between the lovers. In turn bringing them closer to reconnecting.
There
are also the many elusive personal places that exist between two
confidantes - places behind closed doors that remain invisible and
untouchable to those outside the circle. Kyung Duk Kim’s delicate
photographs of herself and
her husband reflected in the fleeting light of a lamp above their bed
suggest a visual metaphor for intimacy itself. The fragility,
vulnerability, and transcendent nature of those connections as well as the
boundaries of public versus private are brought to light, quite literally
in Kyung’s circular portraits. Within our everyday lives, where we rest
our head, lie the complex and often inaccessible emotional bonds that
unite two lovers. No one outside that circle, in Kyung’s case,
metaphorically that light, can fully see nor understand the inner workings
within the marriage. As the frame expands beyond the two, that which is
shared between husband and wife becomes abstract, unreadable, and fades.
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Karen Brett
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Similar
to Todd, Elinor, and Kyung, Johnny Miller's homage to his
parent’s love in his installation of found love letters written while
his father was serving in Vietnam, transport us into the private
correspondence between two sweethearts separated during wartime. The
letters reveal the two sides within any intimate relationship – the
desperately passionate love but also the banal and routine concerns of
daily living. From dentist visits and money concerns to wildly romantic
confessions of undying love, the letters are both humbly authentic and
innocently dedicated to the idea of all consuming earth shattering love
itself. While this couple has since parted ways, (making these letters
perhaps more bittersweet), their sincere dedication and heartfelt vows of
love for one another stands like a beacon of hope, trusting the power of
love to sustain and carry us through dark hours.
Also
examining ways in which love is expressed, Bharti Parmar’s
cyanotype images of 19th
century amatory lockets reveal a micro drama of symbols and reflect on
cultural objects of the past about human expressions of love. Evoking
secrecy, seduction, and echoing the closed doors of lovers that Kyung’s
work reveals, Parmar’s images carry metaphorical titles that speak to
romantic hopes that lovers will always remember us, cherish us, and be
faithful for ever more. Grounded in historic rituals connecting enamored
couples as they professed love or traveled apart, the work suggests that
emotional communication can often be best expressed through symbol and
action rather than words.
Finally
calling into question our cultural and social assumptions about sexuality,
gender, and identity, both Karen Brett and Kelli Connell create an
alternative and often overlooked interpretation of intimacy.
Karen Brett’s
tightly framed and tactile color prints from the series, The Myth of
Sexual Loss, explore the ageing sexual body with integrity,
sensuality, and sensitivity. They challenge ideology surrounding sexuality
and the fear of the ageing body that exists within our society, allowing
us to reconsider our own assumptions about personal intimacy and
sexuality. These images contradict narrow ideas about the objectified
sexual body. They are authentic, without inhibition, and celebrate the
fired spark of physical sexual intimacy.
Kelli
Connell’s
digitally constructed
images featuring a couple in which both models are the same person,
question social constructs and the identity of self in relationships.
Often re-enactments based upon her own experiences, Connell’s rich and
familiar scenes of shared days of rest, tense quarrels, and heated
afternoons of foreplay and lovemaking, allow one to consider one’s
relationship with the self – perhaps one of the most profound if not
constant relationships we are in, as well as the dual roles we play within
an intimate relationship with another. Masculine and feminine, and
interior and exterior roles shift. One may also question where the single
self presides and where we dissolve into the identity of the couple. The
interpretations of this work can be as diverse as the viewers who will see
it.
What does it feel like to
share your most personal, exposed, or private moments? How does it make
you more vulnerable, open, or connected? What would it look like? In
kissing and telling the diverse creative visions presented in this exhibit
allow us to think upon our own affections and heartstrings with greater
meaning, deeper expression, and compassionate understanding.
-
Kate Menconeri, 2007
This
exhibit was made possible in part with support from Holiday Inn of
Kingston, Lucky
Chocolates, Catskill Mountain
Coffee, Chocolate
Cheers, Woodstock
Wines & Liquors, Polaroid,
the Andy Warhol Foundation for
the Visual Arts, and the New York State Council for the Arts, a state
agency.
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