within / without: Blog Review #11

www.aint-bad.com/jordanna-kalman
This week the AINT-BAD website introduced me to artist Jordanna Kalman, whose work considers themes of loneliness, femininity, and individuality. Her series Little Romances caught my attention because of its consistently monochromatic color palate and the interesting yet minimalistic details that characterize her images. I enjoyed how the images appeared to interact with the world outside of their frame, which also reminded me of the relationship between the documented, untouchable past and the consistently fluctuating future.

"When considered as an object the photograph exists physically in the world, it belongs to someone; it gets held, it has weight, value. I've been interested in this concept for some time."

I really enjoyed the interaction of the repurposed photographs - static and unchanging - with the physical elements that add another meaning to them, such as the flowers or torn opaque paper. Much like the artist clarifies, the clash between the photograph and the physical external objects creates a dialogue that the viewer feels far removed from. I love the minimalistic style and the calculated use of color and objects because it forces the observer to focus less on conventional aesthetics and more on the actual composition surrounding the repurposed images, and how this challenges the original photos' intensions and meanings.

"In Little Romances I photograph prints of my photographs and they become a physical object; my object. I surround them with elements from my garden or other personal items not to evoke nostalgia or sentimentality but to deepen my physical connection/claim to these images and distance them from the viewer. The object-image becomes obscured, repurposed, diverted, so that its original intent remains safe from viewing and at the same time it explores a new narrative."