ARLENE BECKER



ICONS OF THE EVERYDAY
Piezo Prints
Watercolor Paper - Photographic Paper - Canvas - Silver Metal - Light Box


METHOD

My starting point is to take a candid photograph. I then depart from the photograph in its original incarnation to further explore what it is within the image that caused me to photograph it - some truth I personally found in the narrative. I use partial abstraction, elimination, and alteration to better reveal the something that caused me to take that picture - grab that shot.

CONTENT

Being Out There Plus "The Vastness of Reverie" *
Everyone functions in two simultaneous worlds: one is our immediate surroundings - the other is our world of reverie. We go to gathering places, and while we are relating to those around us, we are concurrently alone. After studying and photographing everyday scenes, I highlight or alter meaningful elements within a scene to create tableaux that signify issues of solitude or connection, longing, alienation or involvement. I investigate ordinary people as they experience subtle and shifting states of social interaction. I look for people who convey something special embedded in what at first appears banal, perhaps my equivalent to the myth of Michelangelo seeing the horse in the block of marble.
The places to find appropriate subjects seem to be the commonplace/common place - on the street, on public transportation, in the café, etc. A human instinct for involvement and isolation seems to go back to the prehistoric caves of Africa, France and the Western World, where people found opportunity for social interaction and personal contemplation while participating in the survival/pleasure act of eating. Is the café so far from the cave?

LOCATIONS

I have been working in two cultures to explore the commonplace/common place The first culture, which was started before and will continue, takes place in my own - Americana, where I have found many subcultures. In the second and current body of work, I have picked up where numerous artists left off in a previous century, finding my muse and challenge in the dynamic, though cliched city of Paris. Wherever I find my images, humans are similarly and interestingly complex.

EDITION AND SIZE

Prints are in editions of ten, each print unique in size or interpretation. They range in dimensions from 15” to 50”, determined by the venue. The ink is ultrachrome (ink with pigment) and original photos are taken either in film with a Leica M6 or digitally with a Nikon D80 or Leica M8. I am currently printing on extra heavy Sommerset Watercolor Paper and ultra fine weave matte canvas..

PERSONAL

I moved in 2006 to New York's Hudson Valley from Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I lived for ten years after moving from my original home of Chicago. Interpretations are usually subjective. In some ways I project myself into my subjects, and I would like other viewers of the images to sometimes do the same.

*Bachelard - The Poetics of Space