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Looking at photography from a collector's angle
by Andrew Seguin
 All artists benefit from seeing the work of their contemporaries. It’s particularly valuable for students, whose nascent imaginations are enlivened and enlarged by seeing what more experienced practitioners are crafting. To that end, girls who are taking the Upper School photography class — a traditional black-and-white darkroom course — visited the International Center of Photography last week. On display were two exhibits, Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art and The Collections of Barbara Bloom, both of which use photography in unusual ways.
The exhibits were an important contrast for the students, who are mostly beginners and just getting used to the craft-based photographic process. “These girls are particularly interested in the darkroom aspect of photography,” teacher Duane Neil said. “They really like working with their hands and using the paper and the chemistry,” he added. And though both exhibits featured artists who make photographs in the darkroom, they also included people whose work is simply collecting and arranging such photographs.
One artist in Archive Fever, Christian Boltanski, created a piece that resembled the back room of a warehouse. Cardboard boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling on wooden shelves and faintly lit by desk lamps; taped to the front of each was a photograph of a person and a date from the year 1973. “There’s no individuality here,” one of the students commented. She went on to explain her idea that the setup, which mimicked a filing room, reduced the photographs’ subjects to anonymity. Another student, however, felt that the manner in which Boltanski presented the photographs, in handmade tape frames, lent them a personal touch. “By framing something, you show you care about it,” she said. These comments made it clear to the museum guide who accompanied the girls that he wasn’t dealing with just any school group; these girls were engaged viewers of art.
The students’ discussion continued in Barbara Bloom’s exhibit, whose conceit was collecting. One of its rooms contained numerous photographs that Bloom had amassed, shrouded by white curtains that viewers had to pull back. Her images expressed the theme of voyeurism, featuring people sneaking glances or being sneakily glanced at. The students discerned that Bloom was playing with the idea of photographers — and those who look at photographs — as voyeurs.
While looking at art can be a private, personal affair, doing it in public, at a museum, can yield a variety of insights. There’s the opportunity to talk about what’s on the wall with other viewers, and to see an artist’s work in relation to another’s. That’s just one of the reasons Chapin’s art teachers use New York City as an extension of the studio. Another is to instill the sense that for artists, the whole world is classroom.
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