Photography Collection

Tanyth Berkely, Grace

When the photographer Berkeley steps out of the door of her Brooklyn apartment she is seeking out people, people who are unique. That perfect face of a model who could launch an advertising campaign – no, it is not to be found in her photographic portraits. Berkeley doesn’t call up New York modeling agencies to see their latest up-market versions of Venus and Adonis. Instead she wants to challenge and expand our sense of beauty. Instead she seeks extraordinary faces. Take Grace, for example, her hair, eyebrows, and skin completely white. Scientists would simply nod and classify her as an albino. Or Berkeley regularly photographs a woman from her neighborhood who is an artist in the manner in which she applies makeup to her face. Sometimes you’ll catch Berkeley leaning on a doorframe, studying her surroundings. Other times she wanders the streets of New York. Tanyth Berkeley’s quest for extraordinary human beings is one that betrays a profound loathing for the slick, airbrushed world of marketing and advertising. A loathing for the worldwide reign of terror by youth and beauty, one maintained by the fashion magazines, advertising spots, and billboards that serve as their commissars. A dictatorship of images.

Photo courtesy of Tanyth Berkeley

The documentary filmmaker Christian Klinger accompanied Tanyth Berkeley on her journey through New York in order to portray her life and work in the film People Love Photos. Just as with Traci Matlock and Ashley MacLean, two artists from the Texan city of Houston who appear in the roles of Rose and Olive – and whose work just as surely does not conform with any traditional pattern of photographic beauty. Here the principle is not applied to their models but rather to the settings they appear in: rundown quarters of the city, dusty parking lots, and all sorts of dingy and desolate environments. Sometimes the settings are in a nature that has been romantically transposed by means of image editing. Rose and Olive fathom the murky depths of modern society. Their world expresses a yearning for harmony between nature and culture.

Photo courtesy of Rose and Olive

On the contrary, the photographs of Elinor Carucci portray her family and illustrate her close relationship to her mother, illustrate her marriage bonds – love and quarrels with her husband, the whining faces of her children. Her photos arrestingly illustrate a whole world of feeling that is permeated with a deeply-felt sense of optimism. Christian Klinger documents the artists without further commentary. Scenes and people speak for themselves. Gallery owners interpret the works of the photographers. Therein lays the strength of the film, even if the slow settings of the hand-held camera used to make it sometimes give it a lengthy effect. Certainly the documentation shows no idealized world, such as is to be found in the photos of Jock Sturges. Carucci’s pictures have a transcendent effect while those of Rose and Olive or Tanyth Berkeley do not seek to emotionally engage the eye of the beholder. They only seek to show what is in its true environment regardless of whether the people, the settings, or the quarter of the city is beautiful or ugly.The motivating factor is the desire to provoke.