One hundred sixty seven Words

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

Jeffrey McDaniel

An outtake from my Hopper’s American series. This one is not part of the final selection.

After Love

Afterward, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.
These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.
Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.
The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar
and overhead, a plane
singsongs coming down.
Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when
the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self
lay lightly down, and slept.

Maxine Kumin, “After Love”

 

Want

God I want you
in some primal, wild way
animals want each other.
Untamed and full of teeth.

God I want you,
in some chaste, Victorian way.
A glimpse of your ankle
just kills me.

Clementine von Radics, “Want”

My friend, my first model, and my former assistant in the living room, a few years ago.

Observations from an Exhibition

Milan Image Art Fair, known as MIA, just ended. I was featured as a Proposed Artist, and showed my Hopper’s American series.The fair has a unique format. There’s about one hundred booths, of which ninety are set up by galleries from around Europe. The kicker is that each booth may only showcase one artist. Those galleries who want to represent more than one artists arrange for multiple connecting booths. The remaining ten booths are granted to artists who are selected from a large number of submissions, and I was chosen early last year, before I had gallery representation. Between my selection and this recent show I found representation by CAMERA WORK, one of the top ten Photo Art galleries in the World. I discussed the opportunity with my gallery here, and ordinarily a represented artist does not host his own booth at a fair, but they felt it would be a good experience for me to go. Though I’ve been to many fairs as a buyer, fan, artist, and general aficionado, it is a different ball of wax entirely to experience that part of the art world first hand.

It’s not easy. The hardest part is standing there for eleven hours a day, talking about my own art. Most of the people don’t realize they’re talking to the artist directly, and the comments and questions run the gamut. My work is very good, and I got a lot of compliments. Many of the people who attend photo art fairs really know the genre, and it was great to hear so much validation. The nicest moment of course is being bought by someone who really understands my particular style. To be added to a collection by a collector who has Gregory Crewdson, Cindy Sherman and Sandy Skoglund is a huge compliment.

More frustrating are the large huge number of hobby photographers who come to these fairs and want to talk endlessly about camera gear. They will bore you into the ground with questions about lenses, paper, and post-production issues, with virtually no interest in the artwork itself. But I’m professional enough, and can keep smiling and answer all questions.

Equally frustrating are the people who want to talk about naked models, without realizing that my work means something to me, that it’s more than just pretty pictures. The Hopper series is important to me, and all my work has happened in some personal way, whether it is obvious or not: The Hoppers documented a major change for me… I had a third son, we had moved from Los Angeles to Berlin, and most of all I was dedicating myself to this form of art. The images I created were about that moment just before or after something happened, with uncertainty over whether it was a good thing, or a bad thing. The images are melancholic and dramatic, because that is how I was feeling at the time. And as always, I use the language of fashion photography on purpose: it breaks down the image filter that modern people have acquired. So when occasional booth visitors dismisses the images as just “pictures of hot chicks” they completely miss the point of my work.

Of course there were also critical comments. Some of these had merit, and came from people who really understand photography. They focused on the complexity of the process, and the nature of the image. One I liked was a visitor who confided in me that he’d seen the artist’s newer work, and that it was even better than this older series. Others showed me elements of my work that I had never fully considered before, and that will flow directly into the newest series. A few told me in quite diplomatic but articulate ways why they dislike my style. It’s a matter of taste, and I respect their choices. But some of the criticism was quite off-center and tangential. Fortunately I’m a grown-up, and have honed my thick skin through online communities and other forums. But let’s just say that the hundreds of people who show up to a Photo ART Show with fully packed camera gear bags are not going to be talking about art and feelings.

The real reason to go is to connect with new galleries, publications, and collection advisors, and to build a list of people who are genuinely interested in my work. This part of the mission was highly successful. There were many galleries who came by to speak to me, or took me over to their booth to discuss their approach to art. But many of them don’t have the scale that I’m looking for. Simply put, I am very committed to my path as an artist, and I want to work with galleries that are equally serious about their business. But there were three galleries on my list before going to Milan, and all three conversations went very well. I expect a few interesting shows in the next eighteen months.

I will say this… I am extremely grateful to a huge team of people that I work with. I know I made a major impact at this show. Call it hyper-confidence, but my work was some of the very best on show. I mean that in terms of creative content, execution, and technical efforts. Everything from my printing and framing, to materials, and of course the images themselves. I am coming home more sure of myself and my art than ever before. Call it pompous, but I like where my work is going, and those who know me will tell you that I spend plenty of time wrestling with my demons and self-confidence.

See you at Photo Tokyo in September  ;-)

Kinda fat and boring

Someone’s probably in love with you right now, even though you think you’re affected and stupid and kinda fat most of the time, someone probably saw you the other day and wiped their sweaty hands on the insides of their pockets, and thought about your body under your clothing and about how you would look asleep in their bed, and what it would be like to look into your eyes until you both finish.

Iron Flatline, “Thoughts from the Booth”

For the sake of Poetry

For the sake of a line of poetry one must see many cities, people, and things, one must know animals, must feel how the birds fly, and know the gestures with which small flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to paths in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings one long saw coming; to childhood days that are still not understood, to parents one had to hurt when they brought one a joy and one did not understand it … it was a joy to someone else; to childhood illnesses that set in so strangely with so many profound and heavy transformations, to days in quiet, muted rooms and to mornings by the sea, the sea altogether, to nights traveling that rushed up and away and flew with all the stars; and if one can think of all that, it is still not enough.

Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge”, trans. Burton Pike

Image taken from an abandoned project. Read about it here.

Drome Magazine Interview

Drome Magazine, Italy’s foremost art magazine, did a big feature on my Hopper’s American series. The magazine and website gets published in English as well as Italian, and having an Italian-language interview describing my work helped greatly during my art fair show in Milan last week.

Here is the Interview in English, though the opener must have been written in Italian first:

Deliberate, timeless, reduced to essentials. That’s how the German photographer Yoram Roth describes his style. On May 9th, he will exhibit his work at MIA – Milan Image Art Fair in Milan. He is one of the few artists able to use the language of fashion photography as a raw material. The glamorous aesthetic is just an element mixed with a narrative approach, aiming to create a story condensed in one shot and new interpretation of pictures. A method that is influenced by paintings, and that’s why the Hopper’s Americans project (2009) is an homage to Edward Hopper. Probably, what makes Yoram Roth’s style so peculiar is the skill in portraying a model without being focused only on her beauty or pose, putting in that way the concept on the back burner. On the contrary, he always succeeds in curbing the fancy nuances, paying all the attention to the feelings created. It happens in Struwwelpeter, the photographic recreation of a children story from 1846, as well as in Hanjo, the adaption of Yukio Mishima’s version of the 15th Century Noh play.

DROME: You live and work in Berlin, a city that influenced a lot of artists, musicians, directors and so on. Can you tell me how Berlin affected your work?
Yoram Roth: My images are staged and constructed, and they happen collaboratively. Berlin has a huge creative community, which makes it possible to create my images. There is a deep talent pool of people to draw from. The large movie industry here means there is a lot of set builders, stylists, and other creative contributors to work with. There are also endless actors and models who are willing to take chances. This is in part driven by the large artistic community. In a city where everyone is trying to achieve something new, something unique, something that has creative impact, the people in front of the camera are less likely to be governed by fear as they might be in New York or Paris these days. In the fashion and television centers around the world, a nude picture might ruin a lucrative contract, or a political statement is considered too risquée. The contrary is true in Berlin – the people want to create something provocative.

D: Could you tell me which aspects of fashion photography you find more interesting?
YR: I use both the mundane aspects of fashion photography, and the more ethereal. On the production side, I find myself working with models, hair & make-up teams, and lighting gear. That’s all pretty straight forward. But I love to play with the ethereal nature of fashion imagery. We have come to accept fashion models as the ideals of beauty of our time. Usually those images are created to help sell a product, to make the viewer believe that wearing these glasses, that suit, those shoes will take us that closer to heavenly perfection. It’s not unlike the depiction of saints in baroque painting. But when I use elements of fashion photography my goal is to draw the viewer in… but there is no product, no service that is being sold. It’s confusing at first. We have learned to develop a visual filter in our time. No generation in human history has been visually confronted with as much imagery as we have. So the mind must dismiss it as quickly as possible. Coffee machine, got it. Buy a car. Go on holiday somewhere exotic. We do this all day long. But when you come across my images, you stop. And you’re in the image. And you’re not sure why… and then you need to understand the feelings I’m depicting. And that’s where the image filter breaks down, which is why I use elements of fashion photography.

D: Who are the photographers you admire the most?
YR: My great role model is Gregory Crewdson, but I also admire the work of Izima Kauro.

D: You paid a homage to the painter Edward Hopper. Besides the narrative approach, what do you think you have in common with him?
YR: When I saw the Hopper retrospective at the Whitney two years ago (after finishing my homage) it struck me that Hopper didn’t really care so much about the subjects in his image, their purpose was really to embody an emotion. Most of his characters are emotionless. The drama is suggested, not told. In photography the expressionless image is less successful, in part because of our different relationship to imagery from a world filled with product images. Nonetheless I placed as little emphasis on expression as purpose, and focused on the body rather than the face. I believe I share Hopper’s desire for the image to be a catalyst to the story, rather than the story itself. On a simpler note, I am an adherent of color theory, and limited myself to a very specific palette of subdued colors in the series.

D: How can a photo become a narrative one? How could you tell a story through the images?
YR: It’s not impossible to tell a story with one image, but it’s ultimately not that interesting. I have studied a lot of art history, and much of the religious paintings coming out of the Renaissance right up to Neo-Classicism told simple stories. And although many of them are absolutely beautiful, they leave little room for personal interpretation. But that’s exactly the point where an image becomes interesting. If you can study a picture, and piece together your own story, then an image becomes narrative beyond telling a story. The world is filled with beautiful decorative pictures, but they don’t give you room to think for yourself.

D: Your images are laden with details. So, what’s the relationship between a picture and its details?
YR: I try to place elements that serve the narrative that gets constructed by the viewer. In my Hopper’s Americans series, I put media devices such as telephones and radios into almost every image, but also books. These provide the viewer with a context for the subject’s experience. Is she waiting for a phone call? Did he just hear something important on the news? What was she reading? But these elements also provides a way out of the image that isn’t physical. There’s always a window or a door, but a radio goes elsewhere. As a narrative photographer, the elements must serve several purposes, much like a painter places objects in his frame. They have to have symbolic value, they have to contribute aesthetically, and they have to be contextual.

D: On 9th May, you will exhibit at MIA – Milan Image Art Fair. Can you tell me your expectations and your fears about the show?
YR: Milan is known for good taste, so of course I hope to be particularly well received and successful. I’m worried about getting lost between so many of the big names that are represented there, but I take pride in being a part of it.

text by Gabriele Girolamini

Originally published by Drome Magazine on May 8th, 2013