Category: Photography

I came across this fashion shoot the other day on the Trend Hunter blog and was completely blown away. It was shot by Frank Bayn and Steff Rosenberger-Ochs (what an amazing surname!). The images feature a model clad in couture and staring dreamily at the camera, looking for all the world a spoiled little brat. The viewer at first looks at the model’s haughty expression and suggestive pose and then notices scenes of destruction and mayhem in the windows (I think they’re mirrors and only a motif of windows… but someone correct me if I’m wrong) behind the model. It is almost as if the model is frozen in time and doesn’t notice the destruction around her. The title “Don’t Touch…” seems to say that the model doesn’t want the luxury and prestige portrayed in the photographs to go away and wants to be self-absorbed and oblivious forever. I think this is also saying that there are more important things to be worrying about than looking good, which is a breath of fresh air in this consumerist, “buy, buy, buy”, “more, more, more” culture we have.

I had a day off from college today so I decided to visit the Irish Museum of Modern Art to see the new exhibition, Conversations. After getting lost and wandering around the trendy apartments in south quarter (and daydreaming about how we wanted to live there…), we finally found the IMMA. It was well worth the wandering around though, I was literally in awe at the images. I literally turned into “photography fan-girl”, much to my boyfriend’s dismay. I walked around going: “THEY HAVE A LANGE PHOTO! THEY HAVE A SOTH PHOTO!” and squealing when I saw photographer’s works that I admired. I loved all the photographs, some that I knew, from photographers I know and some that I’ve never seen, from photographers I didn’t know. The arrangement of the images played a big part in their meaning, they were placed in “conversation” with each-other, a photograph from the 1800’s alongside a photograph from 2003. The images complement each-other in a way you wouldn’t expect.

From the IMMA website: “Modern works are juxtaposed with older works, European with American, and staged subjects with documentary images. These conversations create unique visual groupings, including images of visitors responding to art in museums, such as Thomas Struth’s Audience 4 (2004), which shows people gazing upward at Michelangelo’s statue of David at the Academia Gallery in Florence, and Musée du Louvre 4, Paris (1989), where visitors contemplate Théodore Géricault’s famous Raft of the Medusa in a Louvre gallery.”

The stand-out images for me were:

Neeta Madahar’s image “Sustenance 104, 2003”

Toni Schnider’s image “Switched”

David Hillard’s image “Dad”

Vera Lutter’s image “135 LaSalle Street, Chicago, VI”

The exhibition is produced by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and runs til the 22nd of May at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Military Road, Kilmanham Dublin.