Isabelle Waternaux and her “Visual Pleasure”

A few weeks ago, I mentioned the photographers Nan Goldin and Isabelle Waternaux, both who I saw at the Pompidou in Paris. To catch up a little on my blogging (sorry Barry…), and to continue my thoughts on my recent photography project (and video), I want to talk a little more in depth about the two artists, especially Waternaux, who directly influenced my final projects.

Something that I admired in Nan Goldin’s photographs when I saw them in their slide-show format at the Pompidou was their attention to realism. It is a type of realism that was incredibly difficult to document in artwork–as well as in the cinema. What I mean is that the photographs seemed surprisingly natural. There was some recognition about the photographer being there in the room, but Goldin had successfully made her subjects comfortable enough that they seemed to go about their daily lives. As I said before, there is an attentiveness in every photograph that reveals how Goldin works. Her approach is to use her friends and to study them. Why study them? Because she already has a connection with these people, and with this connection, she can dig much deeper into their lives than she could with any stranger.

This ties in to my own “love of looking,” as I mentioned in my last post, and how this connects to the objectification of the female in cinema. Goldin objectifies her subjects to some extent, but she does not make them into objects of sexual desire. She does, however, photograph their sex lives. When I see these intimate photographs, I become fixated, but surprisingly, not because of their sexual context. What Goldin did so successfully was that she gave us information. She told a story, and she gave each person/character a very important role. Thus, when we watch her characters make love, we are swept into the stories, but we are not driven by our sexual impulses.

As I talked about in my last post, Laura Mulvey does a great job of differentiating our different impulses–and in this case, I would categorize my fascination in Goldin’s work as “constitution of the ego.” I am, once again, jumping into another life, and playing out my ideal fantasies.

I could have done a photography project like Goldin’s, but my art was already heading more in the direction of Waternaux’s. My art work was starting to abstract the human form, but I wasn’t quite sure why. I knew that I was fascinated with this idea of “looking,” and I was beginning to realize that this translated directly into photography and video. So as I looked more carefully at Isabelle Waternaux’s photographs, I started to feel connected to her, and her eye for the human form. She does not only document the female form, but she does photograph nudes in a very different way. For one, she often doesn’t use the model’s face–or she at least disconnects the body from the face by putting them in separate photographs. The photographs of just the body are the ones that interest me the most. She gives us detailed shots of movement: of lines in the skin, and of tension in the muscles. We are not given any narrative, unlike Goldin’s photographs. It is clear in several of Waternaux photos that these are studies, or explorations. At least, that’s how I interpreted them.

So as you can probably tell, I’ve taken a lot of ideas from Waternaux. Now that I revisit her work, I realize that I might have been even more successful if I completely removed the setting. Instead of having my model set on a bed, maybe I should have just documented her movements on the floor. On the other hand, this is where Goldin’s influence once again ties in–My desire to capture truth and realism still shines through, since I want to capture realistic movement from a female. I wanted her to be completely relaxed. Maybe a professional model, like the ones Waternaux used, would have been more relaxed, but even this isn’t completely natural. I was happy with the results I got from using a friend, and not a model. In this way, I can also relate to Goldin’s approach, since I felt like I was getting to know a different side of my friend while I documented her.

Waternaux, overall, was my greatest influence, because of her studies of the human form. Here is her website, so you guys can see for yourself:

http://www.isabellewaternaux.com/

Look specifically at her photos titled “Correspondences” and “MW.”

Talk to you soon!

Zoe