Koto Ezawa: History of Photography Remix
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Harvest of Death, 2005 (from “History of Photography Remix”)
© Koto Ezawa
Harvest of Death, 1863
© Timothy O’Sullivan
Two lectures in one day. After seeing Laurel Nakadate speak in the morning at MassArt, I saw Koto Ezawa speak at the MFA.
Working at the cutting edge of contemporary art, Ezawa takes movie or news segments and rather than “filter” the original to make it look like animation, as digital technology permits, he reconstructs it by hand. “I drew all the hands, eyes and figures using drawing software and re-created all the motions, trying to simulate the motions of the people in the video,” Ezawa said. “What results is very stylized, but it’s an honest effort at translation.”
In his lecture, Ezawa refers to his animations as paintings. He focuses on the process of creating shapes and colors and how they relate to each other as being synonymously linked to elements of painting. He talks about being a visual DJ, mixing images. His more known works are made from “monumental” film documents of pop-cultural highlights and significant events or people American history, which he then turns into graphic animations. The Simpson Verdict, Who’s Afraid of Black, White and Grey, and Lennon Sontag Beuys were ones that he showed, not to mention scenes from the infamous Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee “Honeymoon” video, an internet phenomenon. But after all of his animations he showed a project which as soon as I saw it I realized I needed to share here for those who have not seen it.
For History of Photography Remix, Ezawa has taken photographs from the slide library at SFAI based on what he felt to be important, interesting, or essential images in the history of photography and recreated them digitally, made new slides from the digital files, and presented them on lightboxes. Ezawa noted that he has been incessantly asked how one can decide the history of photography or, more specifically, what is necessary to highlight. In response Ezawa says he feels this is, in a way, part of the charm of the work.
See a few more examples here and here. Unfortunately, I can’t find my favorites from this series online but if you’re interested, Nazreli Press has released a book of this project.
April 11th, 2007 at 9:06 am
I don’t really get the point of those paintings.
What are they adding to the original photographs? Or to the subject of the photography? I don’t really see what more i get from looking at the paintings than looking at the originals…
April 11th, 2007 at 10:21 am
Roland,
I don’t know for sure that there is a point, that’s for you to decide — I was just sharing the photography-related work for people to consider. However, if I remember correctly, at the lecture he discussed how he finds it interesting that these objects can reference the originals with so little information provided. He spoke quite a lot about working with a copy of an original, which he does in many of his projects. And I think in the History of Photography Remix he is deconstructing some of the more well known images and making them into these unfamiliar “paintings,” objects to those of us that don’t know the history of photography — and to those of us that are well versed in the images, they reference an “original.” I think, on many levels, this also speaks about photography’s ability to be reproduced. I dont suspect that they are necessarily adding anything to the original photographs, I think it’s what he is taking away that is becomes important. I wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly what Mr. Ezawa was thinking, though.
April 12th, 2007 at 6:01 am
My problem is that i don’t know what to do with these paintings. The originals are more detailed, so more interesting to me in a documentary way. And the paintings, except that they refer to the originals, don’t give me more information about anything. I don’t even see his interpretation as an artist. That’s what i want them to add. Ezawa point of view.
Sure, you can see what picture they reference to with so little information, but then? I really don’t see what he’s trying to do.
I think it would have been more interesting to me if it had been done by computer, with some kind of a routine, showing how they can transform images we know, or places we know, but still keeping them recognisable. Something like the jpgs series from Thomas Ruff.
I don’t know if I’m really clear, maybe it’s because it’s confused in my head.
April 12th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Actually, in a way, they were done by computer. I believe Ezawa took samples from the original images in Photoshop in order to find the colors that he used for the solid blocks in his “paintings.” So, it’s as if the image is reduced to only having 10 pixels of color.
I see what you mean, though — it falls short a little for me, too. But, it’s interesting.