This is not a collection of "chestnuts," famous images, famous people or famous artists. To be sure, there are those, but there are also unknown and less documented pictures, some by remarkable photographers whom very few will ever know.
Each image, in some way, has caused Allan Chasanoff to stumble. It fooled his eye at least for a moment, raised a question about perception, or triggered a psychological remembrance that manifests some kind of forgotten resistance on his part. He has some parameters that guide his selections. The photography has to be a camera-made image made with one exposure and lacking in hand manipulation. He might buy a triptych or pairs, never a cutup or collage. Though he believes both of these activities are intrinsic to the development of twentieth century art, they are not produced through the camera. I am sure that there are contradictions to these rules somewhere in his collection, but Allan will have a subplot for them—if only to subvert the reviewer's attempt to understand his order.
What is important is the image itself. Its value lies in its ability to have triggered something outside of Allan's (or your) visual experience. Its measure is in its ability to dislocate. It might also fit into one of his "categories" that has something to do with his past—his psychic growth. The image stimulated a notation, not a nostalgic sentiment.
Frequently the photograph is too good for the body of work that surrounded it. Sometimes it is out of place because it doesn't represent the photographer's known ¦uvre. Allan will insist that an image doesn't have to be original or in any social or historical context to be of consequence.
The concept of resistance is a strong focus within this collection and gives it continuity. Each picture creates a break, fracture, and tension and engages in a sleight of hand that alters what the viewer might have assumed to be some kind of faithful reality. Most of us still assume that the camera made image has a direct connection to or is a record of the real world. It always surprises me that the pictures are all so good; most have something truly lasting in them. They are about learning how to see, about sophistication, complication and transfiguration of visual photographic language. There are no words per se in these pictures. If they began with conceptualized notions, they stand as visual experiences which are independent from the ideas that initiated them.
There are few heroes for Allan Chasanoff, no stars, not even a mentor. Artists are like other people; the best of them work hard and make things that are a part of a culture which contributes to their vision. The image is what counts. Hence, nobody is collected in any particular depth, nor is any particular photographer considered more important than another, although certain names do get referenced—Brandt, Metzker, Funke, Siskind and Klein. Mention Evans, Atget, the journalists or those "nineteenth century guys," and he'll reply that they're too concerned with recording some supposed fact which is, indeed, impossible.
"There is no objectivity!" To the viewer of this collection, it will be easy to find omissions of names that the cognoscenti have long championed. They are not there because the images they made have no particular relevance to Allan's need to learn from them, that is, to see from them.
While he has amassed a tremendous catalogue of engagements with images, I have never sensed that the purchase of a given image was about any particular necessity to possess it. Perhaps by purchasing it, the image became known to Allan, cognized, if you will, understood and, in a sense, de-accessioned. It is odd that very few of the images in the collection were ever displayed on his walls, and while Allan could quickly tell you the day he purchased a photograph and demonstrate his knowledge of it, it might not have been re-engaged for years, except in his mind. Most of the photographs indeed are file notes for his own creative process.
Allan makes a lot of images (a few years ago I might have said "photographs"). This was when he constructed elaborate tabletop sets that he explored endlessly through hundreds of rolls of film. Today he is absorbed in hypermedia. ("I'm a post-modern," Allan often says, "I use a computer!") He processes the digital signal and the form it communicates and needs little acknowledgment for anything he creates; his pleasure is in identifying this activity as continuously evolving. Hypermedia is liberating; it answers back to the magistrates of culture who license how and what we see, hear and learn. With the new technologies, Allan's need to make photographs wains. The interest in the aura of art making gives way to the process of change, interaction and interdiction allowed by the digital signal.
This collection marks an end for Allan. It sums up a kind of "old order" represented in the domain of photography which pre-dates the computer. The distinction of the Chasanoff collection lies in this fact: the majority of the images are about a disruption of fact and form that anticipates the ready manipulation and interrelationship of the media that is so adeptly fabricated in RAM. The so-called "Post Moderns", relatively unrepresented here, are co-opted by the computer and their own insistence upon creating objects of art for the marketplace. While Allan believes in their critique, their practice doesn't fit his constructs for photography, and their concerns are explored with more facility in hypermedia.
. . .
I am Allan Chasanoff's friend, and we have had a running dialogue about photography for over 13 years. Our banter is the focal point of our relationship and the reason I claim my authority for writing about him.
I can not number the galleries, museums and exhibitions I have viewed with him, though they are only a fraction of the number he has systematically visited. He checks off shows to be seen in the listings, and we engage them in clusters as to location—uptown or downtown. There are a number of directors who say that Allan is the first in their gallery, at the stroke of 10:00 on Saturday morning, bright eyed and grey haired. He knows them all, knows their children and their dogs. He makes gallery-going a human engagement that is rare in this neurotic world, and Allan is always the catalyst. He enters a gallery and disarms the aloofness of the space by asking an assistant about his ailing mother. Because Allan remembers the human details when I and others do not, he gains sway. He can be aggravating this way. Our own dialogue is often shattered as he takes out a little piece of paper from his vest pocket and takes notes. This is his cultural defense system!
Recently we viewed a major exhibition of photography together. He was cherub-like and smiling seeing new images. He admired the perfection of some of the historical pieces which he noted as archetypal. I scan images faster than he does, walk ahead of him and try to quiet my impatience by trying to guess which images he will be drawn to in the next room. I am right. His eye is predictable to me. He naturally lingers longer at them, more quietly, without the huff of dismissal.
But by the time we reach the contemporary section, he has sped up; his hands are in the pockets of his habitual blue blazer. No notes are to be taken here. Now his interest has lagged, and I am ready to leave. It is clear to both of us that no unique insight has guided the selection of the newer images, that they are merely carried along on the cultural ideology established by the exhibits older images. There are no breaks, no displacement of order, no attempt to accommodate a self-referential look at the medium via the breakdown allowed by the now established post-modern stratagems.
Allan is now angry at the authoritarian/autocratic and didactic order of the show; he is moving fast now. Governed by his innate sense of politeness, he doesn't acknowledge that his own expertise in this area far excels that of those who have assembled the exhibition. (Thus, he has left me the task of making that declaration!) I think sometimes it would be easier discussing these issues with him if his ego were, indeed, more involved.
I mention that it took approximately two years to assemble this exhibition. This is incredible to him, all the more so because of the public systems which have supported it. We agree that a collection like the one from which this show was drawn, should be rearranged and replaced several times a year. He would like to see a system that allows frequent visitors to make selections for hanging from the collection. (This catalogue is an item of difficulty for Allan. Despite its loose pages, it is still a fixed form. He wants you to move these pages, cut the borders, and add a picture of yours or some from the newspaper, if you wish. It is, after all, only one kind of arbitrary order which has resulted in the featured photographs.)
The only thing better than going to a gallery with Allan is leaving one! Outside in the "real world," we can finally talk out loud. Within minutes we have polished off the exhibition and are heading for a more serious location—a bookstore!
Words are important to Allan; he has read a lot. But like possessing the image, having had the book gives him some sense of knowing. He buys a new stack: one or two on collage; one on deconstruction of architecture; a post-modern novel, and Jay Bolter's Writing Space, purchased for the twenty-ninth time as a gift. He presents these to those who are not informed about the power of hypertext and the realm of possibilities it offers the individual.
In the street, we find our eyes are sensitized. We come to a Con Ed barrier rudely blocking our path. Allan signs it with a pen, impish with dismay. The repair site is carefully observed as we both find it more interesting than the show we have just left. Mentally photographing the scene, we acknowledge that making pictures is too easy, which is to say that these images we see are not very significant in the world of ideas and are only really a diversion or displacement of some libidinous need. It's time for lunch.
Each image, in some way, has caused Allan Chasanoff to stumble. It fooled his eye at least for a moment, raised a question about perception, or triggered a psychological remembrance that manifests some kind of forgotten resistance on his part. He has some parameters that guide his selections. The photography has to be a camera-made image made with one exposure and lacking in hand manipulation. He might buy a triptych or pairs, never a cutup or collage. Though he believes both of these activities are intrinsic to the development of twentieth century art, they are not produced through the camera. I am sure that there are contradictions to these rules somewhere in his collection, but Allan will have a subplot for them—if only to subvert the reviewer's attempt to understand his order.
What is important is the image itself. Its value lies in its ability to have triggered something outside of Allan's (or your) visual experience. Its measure is in its ability to dislocate. It might also fit into one of his "categories" that has something to do with his past—his psychic growth. The image stimulated a notation, not a nostalgic sentiment.
Frequently the photograph is too good for the body of work that surrounded it. Sometimes it is out of place because it doesn't represent the photographer's known ¦uvre. Allan will insist that an image doesn't have to be original or in any social or historical context to be of consequence.
The concept of resistance is a strong focus within this collection and gives it continuity. Each picture creates a break, fracture, and tension and engages in a sleight of hand that alters what the viewer might have assumed to be some kind of faithful reality. Most of us still assume that the camera made image has a direct connection to or is a record of the real world. It always surprises me that the pictures are all so good; most have something truly lasting in them. They are about learning how to see, about sophistication, complication and transfiguration of visual photographic language. There are no words per se in these pictures. If they began with conceptualized notions, they stand as visual experiences which are independent from the ideas that initiated them.
There are few heroes for Allan Chasanoff, no stars, not even a mentor. Artists are like other people; the best of them work hard and make things that are a part of a culture which contributes to their vision. The image is what counts. Hence, nobody is collected in any particular depth, nor is any particular photographer considered more important than another, although certain names do get referenced—Brandt, Metzker, Funke, Siskind and Klein. Mention Evans, Atget, the journalists or those "nineteenth century guys," and he'll reply that they're too concerned with recording some supposed fact which is, indeed, impossible.
"There is no objectivity!" To the viewer of this collection, it will be easy to find omissions of names that the cognoscenti have long championed. They are not there because the images they made have no particular relevance to Allan's need to learn from them, that is, to see from them.
While he has amassed a tremendous catalogue of engagements with images, I have never sensed that the purchase of a given image was about any particular necessity to possess it. Perhaps by purchasing it, the image became known to Allan, cognized, if you will, understood and, in a sense, de-accessioned. It is odd that very few of the images in the collection were ever displayed on his walls, and while Allan could quickly tell you the day he purchased a photograph and demonstrate his knowledge of it, it might not have been re-engaged for years, except in his mind. Most of the photographs indeed are file notes for his own creative process.
Allan makes a lot of images (a few years ago I might have said "photographs"). This was when he constructed elaborate tabletop sets that he explored endlessly through hundreds of rolls of film. Today he is absorbed in hypermedia. ("I'm a post-modern," Allan often says, "I use a computer!") He processes the digital signal and the form it communicates and needs little acknowledgment for anything he creates; his pleasure is in identifying this activity as continuously evolving. Hypermedia is liberating; it answers back to the magistrates of culture who license how and what we see, hear and learn. With the new technologies, Allan's need to make photographs wains. The interest in the aura of art making gives way to the process of change, interaction and interdiction allowed by the digital signal.
This collection marks an end for Allan. It sums up a kind of "old order" represented in the domain of photography which pre-dates the computer. The distinction of the Chasanoff collection lies in this fact: the majority of the images are about a disruption of fact and form that anticipates the ready manipulation and interrelationship of the media that is so adeptly fabricated in RAM. The so-called "Post Moderns", relatively unrepresented here, are co-opted by the computer and their own insistence upon creating objects of art for the marketplace. While Allan believes in their critique, their practice doesn't fit his constructs for photography, and their concerns are explored with more facility in hypermedia.
. . .
I am Allan Chasanoff's friend, and we have had a running dialogue about photography for over 13 years. Our banter is the focal point of our relationship and the reason I claim my authority for writing about him.
I can not number the galleries, museums and exhibitions I have viewed with him, though they are only a fraction of the number he has systematically visited. He checks off shows to be seen in the listings, and we engage them in clusters as to location—uptown or downtown. There are a number of directors who say that Allan is the first in their gallery, at the stroke of 10:00 on Saturday morning, bright eyed and grey haired. He knows them all, knows their children and their dogs. He makes gallery-going a human engagement that is rare in this neurotic world, and Allan is always the catalyst. He enters a gallery and disarms the aloofness of the space by asking an assistant about his ailing mother. Because Allan remembers the human details when I and others do not, he gains sway. He can be aggravating this way. Our own dialogue is often shattered as he takes out a little piece of paper from his vest pocket and takes notes. This is his cultural defense system!
Recently we viewed a major exhibition of photography together. He was cherub-like and smiling seeing new images. He admired the perfection of some of the historical pieces which he noted as archetypal. I scan images faster than he does, walk ahead of him and try to quiet my impatience by trying to guess which images he will be drawn to in the next room. I am right. His eye is predictable to me. He naturally lingers longer at them, more quietly, without the huff of dismissal.
But by the time we reach the contemporary section, he has sped up; his hands are in the pockets of his habitual blue blazer. No notes are to be taken here. Now his interest has lagged, and I am ready to leave. It is clear to both of us that no unique insight has guided the selection of the newer images, that they are merely carried along on the cultural ideology established by the exhibits older images. There are no breaks, no displacement of order, no attempt to accommodate a self-referential look at the medium via the breakdown allowed by the now established post-modern stratagems.
Allan is now angry at the authoritarian/autocratic and didactic order of the show; he is moving fast now. Governed by his innate sense of politeness, he doesn't acknowledge that his own expertise in this area far excels that of those who have assembled the exhibition. (Thus, he has left me the task of making that declaration!) I think sometimes it would be easier discussing these issues with him if his ego were, indeed, more involved.
I mention that it took approximately two years to assemble this exhibition. This is incredible to him, all the more so because of the public systems which have supported it. We agree that a collection like the one from which this show was drawn, should be rearranged and replaced several times a year. He would like to see a system that allows frequent visitors to make selections for hanging from the collection. (This catalogue is an item of difficulty for Allan. Despite its loose pages, it is still a fixed form. He wants you to move these pages, cut the borders, and add a picture of yours or some from the newspaper, if you wish. It is, after all, only one kind of arbitrary order which has resulted in the featured photographs.)
The only thing better than going to a gallery with Allan is leaving one! Outside in the "real world," we can finally talk out loud. Within minutes we have polished off the exhibition and are heading for a more serious location—a bookstore!
Words are important to Allan; he has read a lot. But like possessing the image, having had the book gives him some sense of knowing. He buys a new stack: one or two on collage; one on deconstruction of architecture; a post-modern novel, and Jay Bolter's Writing Space, purchased for the twenty-ninth time as a gift. He presents these to those who are not informed about the power of hypertext and the realm of possibilities it offers the individual.
In the street, we find our eyes are sensitized. We come to a Con Ed barrier rudely blocking our path. Allan signs it with a pen, impish with dismay. The repair site is carefully observed as we both find it more interesting than the show we have just left. Mentally photographing the scene, we acknowledge that making pictures is too easy, which is to say that these images we see are not very significant in the world of ideas and are only really a diversion or displacement of some libidinous need. It's time for lunch.
