Try to see it your way

April 16, 2008 9:32 PM

With the eyes of the other. A Flash exhibit by Clarissa Borges, one of many photographers at zonezero (Previously 1 2 3 4 5).
posted by owhydididoit (7 comments total)

Strange...the women all look normal and the men look like drag queens fresh from the burn unit.
posted by jimmythefish at 9:39 PM on April 16, 2008

I had the opposite impression; some of the later women look decidedly off.
posted by flatluigi at 9:58 PM on April 16, 2008

One of the things that continually impresses me about modern photography as art is that, apparently, all you need to do anymore is push some sort of easily-done idea and have some sort of grand unifying theory behind it. The actual execution only takes an hour in photoshop.

Oh, and you have to have an annoying flash website.
posted by blacklite at 11:05 PM on April 16, 2008 [1 favorite]

Well, there are other artists on that site, some of whom don't use flash or Photoshop (at least not obviously). Maybe you'll like one of them.
posted by owhydididoit at 11:21 PM on April 16, 2008

That was very interesting! Thanks for the post, never heard of zonezero before.
posted by sidereal at 7:03 AM on April 17, 2008

...all you need to do anymore is push some sort of easily-done idea and have some sort of grand unifying theory behind it. The actual execution only takes an hour in photoshop.

What does it matter, as long as the results are interesting? I found these to be pretty interesting. (I didn't read the artist's statement, though, so I have no idea what sort of "grand unifying theory" the artist might have been working from. To be honest, I don't put much stock in them ((artist's statements)). The work should speak for itself.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:56 AM on April 17, 2008

Clarissa Borges demonstrates in her photography works, her preference for operating with a second “reality”, with the effects of a “reality” mediated by the “look of the other”, the man and the woman.

Interfering in one’s eyes and reconditioning them in the other’s eyes, she questions our existence – who am I.

In her process, she doesn’t only look for formal results. What moves her to do these interventions is the search for our identity. These are pictures of couples of various ages, protagonists of the same scene: sofas and armchairs that just suggest an idea of closeness.

In “With the Eyes of the Other” we see couples who appear as if they were in front of a strange mirror, whose figures want to regain an existence from the artist’s action, couples present as if they were characters, projections from the very inner universe of those who perceive them, and, why not, from the unquiet universe of the creator herself.

Maybe in the search of these close-postures-looks, the spectator finds that being present “With the eyes of the other” is an opportunity that we have for questioning the different roles we take throughout life and the impossibility of identification with the other.
We are just images-fusions of the self and the other…

                                                                            =

                                                Hey, cool, look what I can do in Photoshop!
posted by WCityMike at 4:49 PM on April 17, 2008