Photography and Sculpture
 
     The Grounds for Sculpture, located just outside Trenton, New Jersey on the old New Jersey State Fairgrounds, holds an annual juried photography exhibition called Focus on Sculpture, in which amateur photographers are invited to submit photographic interpretations of sculpture.  Some submit purely realistic images; others, more abstract or impressionistic.  It is always a difficult thing to determine how to photograph someone else's art and transform it; the challenge for the photographer is to not simply "document" the sculpture, but bring an independent creative verve to the image.  The two examples here attempt to do that.  In the one above, at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art's Greek and Roman hall, two young boys stand before a Classical nude.  One seems to be explaining something to the other, whose eyes and mouth appear slightly widened in some kind of comprehension.  What have they learned? Clearly, something in this ancient work of art has resonated with them and possibly provided an epiphany for them.  At the end of the day, isn't that what art is about?

 

To the right, Franz West's Lemurenköpfe ("Lemur Heads) grace the Studenbrucke in Vienna, Austria.  These expressionistic, abstract figures contrast with the realism of the city scene: the man pausing to contemplate the view from the bridge, on his way to or from somewhere else.  The Lemur Head looks one way, the man another.  Sculpture is not limited to the museum or the sculpture garden; the city streets and space provide appropriate grounds for such sculpture and transform the city into an open air museum on its own. 

 

 

 

 

December 2009

 

 

    




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