Ode to Empire: Photo Love: Elinor Carucci

I really lucked out with professors this semester. Typically when I try something for the first time and it's not perfect, I get turned off almost instantly. So when my first set of color prints were not Museum of Metropolitan Art worthy, I was ready to throw in the towel; naturally. My color photography professor is exactly what I've been needing. She wasn't particularly gentle my first critique, but she did recommend that I look at photography, a lot of it. So I have been, looking at A LOT of pictures...

title: Mirror Reflection, 1999
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My first time alone in the photo lab, I think I only printed two pictures. I spent the rest of my time traveling the pages of countless photography books, as though each one were a road map, leading me somewhere; anywhere.

title: Feet Moving on Bed, 1999
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I decided to cool my heels when I arrived at Elinor Carucci. I picked up Closer, and I remember reading just the first three paragraphs of her introduction. After absorbing a mild dose of information about her family, I was fiend-ing for more of her pictures.

Admittedly, I will tell you that I'm an amateur in every sense of the word when it comes to photography, despite my perusing it as a degree. Nonetheless, I choose to believe that my distinct perception of things makes me a potentially beautiful photographer, notwithstanding my amateur status. Believing as much, I think former is proven by what I discovered while visiting her pictures.

At first, I was curious about how many times she photographed herself naked. Nudity doesn't bother me at all. I actually find myself instinctively drawn to all things vulgar. Only her pictures weren't vulgar at all. Instead, a sense of privilege came over me as I turned the corner of each page. She was being so honest; each picture more telling than the one prior.

title: Mother Puts On My Lipstick, 1993
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Those three absorbed paragraphs I mentioned earlier, informed me of her photography obsession starting at 15, and beginning by taking pictures of her mother. She described her mother putting on her lipstick and the revelation, if I may be so bold as to label it that, which made itself relevant because of it. I didn't read any more of the introduction until earlier this evening, even though I've looked at her pictures everyday since that first private photo session, two and a half weeks ago. I felt I knew enough by the little information fore mentioned to interpret the honesty and truth described in her photographs.

So I looked at them, over and over again, for days. Sometimes looking at the same picture for minutes on end. After enough of this, I realized what she was trying to tell me, trying to tell everyone, with her pictures. Nothing. They were not riddled with lessons learned, but rather lessons captured. They were souvenirs from her day-to-day; memories from a trip to her own life. And she was discovering when she took them, and printed them, and looked at them endlessly herself. Unknowingly yet ever so inquisitively, taking each day a frame at a time, and learning to see new things, though they may have been there all along. And I understood why I felt so privileged in those first moments when I experienced her pictures, because she encapsulated the essence of her discovery, and I got to be a part of it.

title: Naked, 1999
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I won't water down any more of her intellect with my own interpretations. If you feel so inclined to venture off and dicover her for yourself, start with her intro to Closer. Or, visit her website and tour her bodies of work, then read the info and see what resonated with you both before, and after. Here are a few more of my favorites from her earlier work. While you look at these, ask yourself if you have ever done anything this honest. I only hope that someday I can produce something with this much self generated truth.