Assignment & Critique,  News

Assignment – Reflection – Result and First Essay with Rita Colantonio for our Upcoming Book ‘Away with Words’

As the first chapter of our new book ‘Away with Words’ begins to take shape, Rita Colantonio’s work is the perfect conceptual starting point for our series of twelve 1000 word essays personally written by myself. This non fiction work merges discursive scholarship with what may be construed as personal flights of fancy. That’s not to say it will disappoint, moreover I have given myself a far and wide range to delve into photography, literature, art, theory, design and music as I tease out my own offbeat associations and at the same time astutely tune into each mobile photographers key tropes and artfully deconstruct their imagery. I thus begin…

What are we looking at?  We are looking at a street photograph or perhaps it could be referred to as ‘candid’ or a ‘social documentary photograph’ as this genre includes people in a public place. We are looking at Colantonio’s image of  two young ostensibly anonymous opposing sex adults, sitting side by side a canal in Venice. The weather appears ambient, the trees are in full leaf. Colourful bed laundry has been strung out to dry adjacent to an apartment window. It is not summer but perhaps spring time as the couple in the foreground are wearing jackets, to seemingly prevent a chill. There is the feeling of intimacy between the two adults as well as monumentality, in the expression of the depths of ordinary life. There may be glare from the reflection of the canal, both adults wear sunglasses to shield their eyes. The female rests her head on her left hand and in turn her elbow rests upon her left knee. Her right arm is drawn across her waist. Her legs are naked and closed together at the knees, with her feet and her lower legs wide apart. She wears green ankle boots. Her red handbag is adjacent to her left side and it is open. It looks as if there is a bottle of still water peeping out, perhaps she has just shared a drink. Her long brunette hair is parted at the centre and falls loosely over her shoulders. The male with shoulder length blond hair and slight beard, touches the shin of his left leg, it is bent at the knee and faces the female, his right leg is more upright but also bent at the knee. He wears green cropped trousers with colourful red and blue laced trainers. He wears a large watch on his right wrist and the sunlight catches the face.

How can this image be interpreted? The young adults are not talking, they appear to be in deep thought. The female’s cocked head looks ponderous. We don’t know whether she is pondering doubts or pondering something bigger. The male may be forlorn or he may not. We can create a distinction between identity and imaging. It looks like something, but we don’t actually know. This photograph challenges our perceptions, perhaps they need to make an important decision but equally are we ready to accept the reality of other concepts?

One of my favourite books and I have plenty is entitled ‘Flaneuse’ by Lauren Elkin. From the French verb ‘flaner’, the ‘flaneur’. or ‘the one who wanders aimlessly’. There’s a chapter within this book entitled ‘Venice – Obedience’ and within this she discusses another good read, ‘The Comfort of Strangers’ by Ian McEwan. This book is set in Venice and it is not your typical Venetian romance, if anything, it is seedy but to Elkin she felt that reading McEwan’s book, ‘loosened something in her mind, or maybe planted something’. She was unsure of exactly what it was but it left her with the determination to write about Venice and as she describes later, she had recognised Venice as a ‘shadowy double for Paris’ and I could not agree more. Having arrived in Venice via a splashing vaporetto two summers ago, I recognise both viewpoints and most of all, in this instance of Rita Colantonio’s imagery. Colantonio has a painterly eye for colour and composition and it is palpable in this colour photograph. There is a deep attentiveness that speaks of her disinterest in anything other than making the seemingly mundane world outside of this image seem luminously beautiful. I conjure the fantasy that this young couple are students of art history specialising in the early Renaissance. They appear unaware or at least, indifferent that Colantonio is taking their photograph. A photographs context is a powerful determinant of its perceived meaning.

Conclusion

Colantonio is a photographer possessed of a painter’s sensibility, spreading dramatic texture and tenderness throughout this image. There is visual rhyme and potentially reasoning in this photograph. The bells in Venice ring every fifteen minutes, for fifteen minutes, there’s never silence but this image emulates that there is.  Colantonio does not transfigure or transform this couple, she has captured them in plain sight. There may be tension of unspoken conversations or this may represent precious quiet moments of shared company. There is no expression of feeling of poetic awkwardness. We know that Colantonio is present and also manifestly absent from the field of the image, this is the view through her lens. We are viewing what she wants us to see, at the moment of exposure.  Colantonio shows us the true contours of this young couple’s relationship, the simple crushing human truth of a great picture representing simple humanity, isn’t that what we all need?

Colantonio has captured the essence of our assignment ‘Reflection’ perfectly. Our brief was that it could be interpreted both literally and figuratively and Colantonio has illustrated her understanding and deciphered our brief consummately. We have the reflection from the canal as well as the reflection in each of the character’s facial expressions. Ad Reinhart once quipped ’Sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting”, extirpating that expression, I would say “Portraiture is something you sometimes bump into when you back up to look at street photography.

‘Thinking about the Possibilities’ ©Rita Colantonio

Hello again…please donate

We have a small favour to ask. More people than ever are reading TheAppWhisperer.com and we could not be more excited about that. We specialise in mobile photography and mobile art and we value all of our readers, writers, contributors and viewers but we do have costs and we do need to ask for your help. We at TheAppWhisperer spend many hours each day, each week and each month to bring you this high quality level of journalism. We do it because we are passionate about it and because we want others to be as passionate too.

If everyone who reads our website, who likes it, helps to support it, our future would be so much more secure. Please help us by offering a contribution or supporting us with a monthly donation of your choosing.

[seamless-donations]

Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]