This year, photographers from 30+ countries submitted their work to Critical Mass 2014. Our commendable pre-screeners have finished their work and I would like to attempt to loosely categorize the greatly varied subject matter that photographers have put out into the world via Critical Mass.
What matters to them? How are they portraying people, places, ideas, emotions? How are they technically doing this? Who are their influences?
Below is a visual sifting of content, method, and trends that I jotted down during my own pre-screening experience. Please note that no topic listed has any more weight than another, and this is absolutely not an all-inclusive list. The point of this is to give a condensed peek at the topics photographers find important enough to create work around.
Price range of prints: $75 to $10,000
Creative Influences: Lee Friedlander, Karl Blossfeldt, Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Elliot Erwitt, Cartier-Bresson, Kandinsky, Caravaggio, Francesca Woodman, Duane Michaels, Robert Adams, Michal Rovner, Ansel Adams, Disfarmer, Nan Goldin, Karl Blossfeld, Aaron Siskind, William Blake, Louise Erdrich, Susan Sontag, Sylvia Plath, William Blake, August Sander, Andrei Tarkovsky, William Eggleston, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, David Hockney, Wee Gee, Brassai, Sol Lewitt, William Christenberry, Rauschenberg, Duchamp, Robert Heinecken, Woody Guthrie, Surrealism, Fauvism, German Expressionism, Wabi Sabi, Japanese Buddism…
Geographical places/about: Poland, Appalachia, Japan, Long Island, Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota, China, Seattle, Salinas Valley, Mexico City, North African Battlefields, the Ukraine, Haiti, India, Colombia, Finland, Russia, Oklahoma, Berlin, Nepal, Ethiopia, Turkey, Kenya, Canada, Los Angeles, the Ozarks, Tokyo, Italy, New England, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Mississippi Delta, Israel, France, Lake Como, Japan, San Francisco, the Sonoran desert, El Salvador, the Midwest, Siberia, Afghanistan, Bogota, Yellowstone National Park, New Orleans, the Gowanus Canal, Kazakhstan, the Arctic…
Emotions/Psyche: anxiety, inadequacy, serious concerns, mortality, discovery, loss and renewal, isolation, losing love, virtue, emotional home, sense of belonging, vulnerability, uncertainty, tenderness, strength, defiance, love, foreboding, angst, yearning, anticipation, selflessness, loss of memory, prescribed happiness, transcending trauma, intimate bonds, fleeting time, spirituality, religious beliefs, femininity, secrets, depression/bi-polar disorder, subjectivity of self-identity, non-verbal communication, solace in an overwhelming world, disintegration of memories, mourning, transformation…
Landscapes/Nature: flowers suspended in ice, flowers submerged in water, zoos, close-ups of parasites, topiary, leaves, trees, wildlife destroyed on highways, dead birds, rocks, mist, the visual phenomenon of shadows, lighthouses in landscapes, saffron, cicadas, the ocean, weather, George Washington’s Elm tree, geometry in nature, “forest bathing”, the importance of land, “heliotherapy”, rock quarries, climate change, the forest, pit mines, fog, birds caught in mist nets, trees symbolic of human condition, Sika deer, drought, night landscapes, urban landscapes, urban night landscapes…
Portraits: man’s self-portraits dressed as woman after mother’s death, taxidermied primates, portraits of people singing, primates in captivity, portraits of people with favorite objects, self-portraits with well-known photographers, menacing animals, street portraits, portraits of blind people, mug shot self-portraits, goats, exotic breed chickens, anonymous men, school shooting perpetrator portraits, transgender people portraits…
Family: daughter with Down’s Syndrome, brother-in-law with Down’s Syndrome, emotions of motherhood, parent’s failing health, banal childhoods, stages of maternal love, loss of father, teen mother, visual diary of relationship with great-grandmother, sister with cancer, “boy moments”, childhood trauma, twin daughters, details of fatherhood, realizing mortality after having children, mothers grieving children lost to gun violence, illness of a child, adoption, familial artifacts, docu-fictional reconstruction of childhood memories, relationship with sister, same-sex families, divorce, death…
Socio-documentary themes: circuses, high school bands, Abraham Lincoln impersonators, child boxing matches in Thailand, conventions, Eagle Scouts, nuns, squatters camps in London, cotton farming, drive-in movies, the “American Dream”, the “American Woman”, “Americana”, American Apparel billboards, suicide locations, rehabilitations centers, rape in the military, the ROTC, the Hassidic Jewish Community, the Evangelical Christian purity culture, the theater of daily life, boxing gyms, Indian hobbyists, sites with violent histories, American Indian culture/tradition, The Warao tribe of the Orinoco Delta, the juvenile justice system, vacant stores, Cosplay people, musician-athletes, the afterlife, cultural artifacts/relics, state lotteries, public spaces, exploitation by advertising/fashion industry, amateur photography on social media platforms, nuclear policy, urban geometry, urban environment, missile defense sites, the Chinese population in Florida, cultural perception, cultural influences on youth and beauty, cross-cultural truths, Utopian communities, the idea of being middle-class, the marginalization of America, Chinese New Year’s celebrations…
Issues of sexuality/human bodies: graphic nudity online/in the media, gay and lesbian youth prom, lesbian women in South African townships, women having orgasms, archetypes of beauty, gender/identity, aging, nude women bouncing on trampolines, nude women swimming, nude women with flowers, nude transgender people, gay pride parades, pornography…
Specific topics: cemeteries, casinos, pom-poms in the Arctic, NASA images and cat ashes, tattooed skin, father’s tools, industrial age tools, reflections in windows, plastic bags, the last independent bookstores, barns, interiors of museums, interiors of artists studios, interiors of hotel rooms, machetes, pay phones, estate sale items, personal survival kits, roadside marquee signs, vacant transparency film sleeves, sewing patterns, locks of hair, cremation, dancers, internal topographies, surveillance equipment, road trips, inheritance, disconnected laughter, data acquisition, false food, parasitic animals, “folk taxonomy”, object-oriented ontology, cityscape montages, exploration of digital grain, heads wrapped with fabric of meaning, “dead” stuffed animals, the human body, mortality, surfing, superman costumes, camera viewfinders, barns, patterns in rusting objects, expired/stained photo paper…
Cameras used: Holgas, Lomos, large format Polaroid, large format, medium format, camera obscura, digital, pinhole, smartphone…
Various mediums: salted paper prints, dry plate gelatin ferrotype, wet plate collodion , digitally manipulated vernacular images, gum bi-chromate, platinum-palladium, cyanotypes, photogravures, chemigrams, mordançage, digital collage, digitally manipulated vernacular images, encaustic, C print photograms…
Appropriated imagery: vintage/vernacular photography, family archival photography. A few examples of object imagery were sewn/embroidered on…
Next week: Finalist list will be announced!
