The Sixties
By Fred Camper
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Long before Larry Clark directed the movie Kids he was a still photographer known for his portraits of teenagers on the pharmaceutical and sexual brink. His best photographs capture with raw directness a seamy underside few of us would otherwise see. But his untitled 1968 photo of two attractive teenagers in a bathtub also questions our participation in such scenes. This shot has been taken from the perspective of a standing adult, which not only makes us aware of the presence of an observer but also implicates us as voyeurs. Is the subject here the kids, or our erotic interest in them?
Arbus, Clark, and Michals all focus on their human subjects as sources of erotic interest and absurd humor. Looking at these subjects, we think about the ways in which we look at each other. Ken Josephson, Garry Winogrand, and Lee Friedlander address the act of looking more abstractly. A number of Josephson’s photos of outdoor scenes also include a hand in the foreground holding a photo of the same scene. Drottningholm, Sweden (1967) shows a large palace with a postcard of the same building. A row of statues visible in the postcard is covered with wooden sheds in the larger photo, a discrepancy that reminds us that every photo is merely a provisional representation of its subject, seen from a particular angle and taken at a particular time.
Claxton isn’t troubled by the idea that photography is voyeuristic or by the paradoxes of illusionistic representation. Instead his images seem to spring from the music, and from the people engaged body and soul in making it. Claxton celebrates this act–and not passive, narcissistic display. He also respects the highly individual nature of jazz musicianship. Blue Mitchell (Trumpet) and Junior Cook (Tenor Sax), Detroit, 1959 shows the two men side by side, their instruments clashing visually in their angles and shapes–suggesting not only two different sounds but two different personalities. In this picture one’s eye tends to move from left to right, from the musicians’ mouths to the bells of their instruments, which point in roughly parallel directions as the music of two individualists becomes one composition.
