Susan A. Barnett/Fine Art Photographer
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 2:50AM Just a call-out to my sister-in-law's site. Susan married my eldest brother Jerome, for whom my youngest son is named. Susan and Jerry are godparents to my eldest child, who's a very talented artist in her own right (her prize-winning self-portrait hangs in my office and she's got enough of web presence in terms of her anime and fiction that's she's recognized by fans at fantasy/comic conventions--in costume, mind you; but no, she won't let me link to her work just yet . . . and she's impossible to find without her handle).
Sue has been active in the art world since before I met her in the summer of 1985 upon my return from Leningrad. I detoxed with her for a week at Fire Island (too many Lucky Strikes and too much Stolichnaya in the USSR over the summer), where I held onto her arm for dear life whenever we ventured out (it was my first exposure to an openly gay community--not just individuals or clubs but an entire universe!; as the father of non-straight teenager, I now look back on the experience as downright quaint and provincial).
At that point Sue was primarily an agent, and later in the year I got to traipse around with her, visiting her various artists (imagine "Rent" without the cool numbers and everybody far less attractive) in various seedy locations around NYC. Sue located an original painting of horses done by a noted artist that we still hang in a place of pride upstairs in our youngest daughter's bedroom.
Sue later went on to do a lot of bead work herself (we possess one of her best works: a tiny shopping bag done up as the U.S. flag), often working with found objects (we used to hunt for and send her early industrial shoe lasts). Sue also paints. We have a gorgeous watercolor of a single orchid hanging in our dining room. It's as entrancing as anything you've seen from Georgia O'Keefe.
Perhaps counterintuitively, Sue became a photographer after losing the use of one eye a while back, and she does a lot of amazing shots of neon signs, often capturing neon through shooting them in reflection in large-size pane windows, thus capturing through the window and off the window (these are my favorite works of hers, and we have an especially good one handing in our master bedroom). Lately, she's been shooting a lot of T-shirts on the streets of NYC.
The T-shirt shots are cool, but definitely check out the neon. Those shots are so fascinating that you cannot believe they're not photoshopped (and my favorite ones of hers are not even on the site). Her manifesto explains her approach:
After Neon
John Szarkowski said a photograph is not what a picture is of but what it is about. My photographs are about desire, which is the fundamental motivation for all human action. It is the desire for pleasure which can be liberating and enhancing in opposition to fear. These photographs ask how do you express desire. They are a visual hunger founded in desire: illuminate enticement. They contain the signs and symbols that are desire's stock in trade, that create the atmosphere of delight where it is still safe to appreciate and like what is offered.
They juxtapose consciously and unconsciously elements of the real world with artificial light to create a new world. To delight in the images is to seek the pleasure of your own desires. They seduce you into examining and accepting your own hidden desires and agenda. They say don't be embarrassed to want, don't be ashamed to feel, don't be uncomfortable just to look. You don't have to explain: it ís all OK.
They take the demotic and public and make it private in a world dominated by financial, political and social fears. My images say lighten up and look around for what it is you want and can in fact have.
Anyway, very much worth checking out if you like such things. We'll keep Sue's link listed to the side with my wife's poetry and my beloved Packers (not so beloved after disappointing me and my kid last Sunday in Lambeau . . ..)
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