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| Photography (1998-99) and Untitled: Philippe VACHER (1990) by James Coleman were at the Marian Goodman Gallery, 11th January - 19th February, 2000. |
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| Photograph 1989-99 - Projected Images with synchronised audio narration |
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| The Society Of The Spectacle |
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| James Coleman's recent exhibition in New York City demonstrated his command of both photography and film as well as furthering the narrative possibilities of his 'slide-tape' translations of still photographs into active visual media. The two pieces in the show span several years of creative production and, like much of Coleman's work, examine the terms of photography as a medium of visual and emotional perception, specifically exploring the gaze as it is practised by the viewers he makes complicit in the process. |
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| In Untitled: Philippe VACHER (1990) a man in civilian clothes (the late French actor Philippe Vacher, who often portrayed doctors on television) stumbles dangerously into a surgery table. From his unsteady position he gradually rises to right himself and return our gaze, to face our witnessing. Indeed we are examining every exacting, incremental movement engaged in by Vacher over a real-time period of only three or four seconds, re-shot frame by frame by Coleman and extended to 171/2 minutes. The vibrant color of the film fades to black and white as Vacher slowly turns and rises to meet our gaze directly. Coleman's portrait-like title of the film gives permission for the viewers' voyeuristic study of the subject. But the capitalization of the subject's surname also bestows a level of power to Vacher's position, an attribute he assumes as he turns his gaze on the viewer. We find ourselves both in sympathy with our subject's difficulties and disquieted by his recognition of our perception of them. |
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| Coleman's experience in theatre is apparent in his careful staging of his latest slide-tape presentation, Photography (1998-99). The contemporary mise en scene of this narrative-driven sequential image slide projection ranges from the hallways of a middle school to its graffiti-covered courtyard to a backstage dressing room where student performers liberally apply makeup in preparation for a dance rehearsal. Performing both for the camera and for the recital, the mostly female students pose, alone and in groups, in these various locations, first in street clothes, and later in full makeup and garish costumes. The students of Photography silently interact, enacting a story, gazing upon one another in alternating disinterest and judgement, and the mood instilled is solemn. The singular naming of the work indicates that we are to see the various components of the piece as one fluid whole, a feat easily accomplished with the use of voiceover narration. |
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| Photography is mimetic, more documentary photography than cinema, providing a poignant, if fictionalized, vision of Irish adolescence. At times the youths wear ambivalent expressions and seem more about pose than gesture, rooting the work in its photographic origins. Rarely are they depicted actively engaged in conversation. Rather, there is implied emotion with the narration providing context for the images. In flowery antiquated prose, the narration supplies a framework on which to position the photographs, and provides a voice for the silent objects of our gaze. Delivered by an adolescent girl with infallible pronunciation and a soft, tempered Irish lilt, the narration provides concrete interstices between the progression of still images, made dynamic by Coleman's talent for implying activity. As two girls turn away from one another in one photograph, for example, the narrator explains, 'gliding away... my faithful friend, like a dark stream.' To illustrate the complex maturing process ('finding first their pathway free') of these adolescents, the narrator proposes, 'Could a rose brave the storm? Such might her emblem be.' The narrator's forceful and deliberate sighs punctuate the text with a further element of realism. The narrative structure is further compelled by the insertion of visual breaks in the slide presentation, which create several distinct chapters. These interludes consist of pulsating patches of diffuse color on the white screen, the only moving images in the work. |
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| Although the two works were divided in this exhibition by both their dates of production and a long gallery corridor, effectively distancing them from one another in both a physical and a conceptual way, this juxtaposition of Untitled: Philippe VACHER and Photography serves to illustrate Coleman's varied skills with images, both moving and still. |
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| Karen vanMeenen |
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