Leonie Hampton, In the Shadow of Things, photograph, 2011, courtesy of the artist

Vernacular photography tells us our story. It shows us who we are and who we want to be. Open any photo album, and you’re confronted with cultural clichés played out to illustrate an ideal of family, success, happiness. No surprise these are the moments we choose to memorialize. These amateur-ish snapshots create an archive of moments of imagined joy; they stop time at the instances when we are happiest (or at least when we are aping happiness) and then catalog those pictured felicities as memories.

Leonie Hampton’s autobiographical photography, In the Shadow of Things, on view at Forma in Milan, draws deeply from this vernacular aesthetic. Her work reveals both the intense emotions interweaving a familial unit and the mundane context from which they arise. At times poignant, funny, or simply peculiar, Hampton presents a narrative tour of her cultural environment. According to the texts accompanying the show, that narrative revolves around her mother’s obsessive-compulsive, hoarding tendencies. But, more importantly, these photos describe a young photographer coming to terms with her own identity within this unit, struggling to understand her nature, her decisions and impulses against the cultural backdrop of home.

Leonie Hampton, In the Shadow of Things, photograph, 2011, courtesy of the artist

Most suggestive of this inquiry is the inclusion of a collection of family snapshots, chronologically ordered, The Christmas Tree Series. The artist captions these images in pencil, directly on the wall, giving a brief description of the theme—amateur group portrait in front of the Christmas tree—leaving blank spaces where the years’ photos have gone missing. In one, the caption states the Christmas tree was salvaged from the trash heap, and indeed the ‘tree’ in the picture is now only a naked branch, having lost its needles. The subjects, Leonie and her siblings, are similarly threadbare, wearing shorts and t-shirts, asserting that this year the photograph was snapped sometime, perhaps a lengthy period, after the winter holiday. This is a tribe clinging to a tradition that it has outgrown, a group bound by duty if not hope, re-enacting the story of a happy family at Christmastime, preserved once again for its ongoing archive.

Leonie Hampton, In the Shadow of Things, photograph, 2011, courtesy of the artist

In the images shot by Hampton herself, the impulse to preserve an ideal of the family is clear as well, but in a way, less choreographed, less rigid. These candid photos reveal the concerns, sensibilities, and banalities of these people’s lives, pictures of a changing home, a changing dynamic. They present the evidence of a bent toward preserving and archiving the household, presumably the symptoms of Hampton’s mother. At each turn, they manifest the vision of the artist, also documenting, accumulating, cataloging, as she understands her relationships with these characters and as she settles her own identity as one of the story’s collecting protagonists herself.

Pipilotti Rist , Aujourdíhui (I Couldnít Agree With You More, version chaise longue), 1999, courtesy of La Triennale di Milano

As I encounter the Happy Tech exhibition on view at Triennale Bovisa from the position of someone primarily in the artist camp, I certainly have my biases. I am less interested in the technology vs. art debate, as it seems a bit reductive, and much more interested in the featured works of A-listers like Pipilotti Rist, Alfredo Jaar, Thomas Ruff, and Bill Viola, among others. The exhibition is ambitious, and approaches the issue with a utopian vision of the creative potential that technology supplies art. Though many of the pieces use new media, they at the same time manifest a cynical or conflicted attitude to aspects of technology and progress. This is counterbalanced by the relative optimism of the corresponding tech displays. But for me, the strength of the show lies in the interactions between the artworks themselves, rather than their reciprocal relationships with the complementing science exhibits.

One of the most arresting pieces here is a 16-minute video loop by Rainer Ganahl, Dal Vaticano a Piazza della Republicca Bicycling Roma, in which he rides a bicycle against traffic through Rome. The camera is situated from the viewpoint of the rider, so we see only the handlebars of the bike, often free of hands, and the bicycle’s forward moving trajectory through the city. Cars and trucks advance toward us, neglecting to swerve their paths, and we feel acutely impelled to go on watching. The artist-cum-cyclist continues, through intersections in which traffic is moving parallel, through oncoming truckage, through gridlock, squeezing his bicycle through the spaces between stopped cars and motorbikes facing him at stalled intersections. It’s an impending disaster, and deeply wrought with intensity, as we feel both the utter recklessness of this journey and the inability to stop as we experience the adrenalin of the moment coursing through our bodies.

Rainer Ganahl, Dal Vaticano a Piazza della Repubblica senza ritorno, Bicycling Roma, 2006, courtesy of La Triennale di Milano

Tearing myself away from Ganahl, I move on to the Tony Oursler piece adjacent. Blue Classic is two large, vaguely head-shaped, bulbous blobs on which are projected blue faces, disturbingly distorted by the shapes of the ‘screens.’ They move their lips, speaking a meditation nearly inaudible over the cacophonous street noises of the Ganahl piece nearby. It’s repulsive and at the same time deeply compelling. But I am momentarily distracted by the sound of the Bicycling Roma video, the artist is speaking to someone. I move back to watch. And again I’m drawn in. Once more I feel the intense anticipation of a calamity. I can’t stop. And then, I reluctantly pull myself away. Back to Oursler. I lean in to hear the blue creature’s utterances: “Don’t stop. I’ll die…Keep me alive with your eyes…Don’t look away…I’ll die…Don’t stop. Don’t stop…I’ll die. Keep me alive…” And it’s true.

Tony Oursler, Blue Classic, 2009, courtesy of Triennale di Milano

Both pieces need me. Both need my empathy as a viewer. Both will die without me. In the Bicycling Roma piece, the imagined catastrophe occurs if I’m not watching. I’m powerless to prevent it, but as I continue to ride along with the protagonist, it feels as though, by my presence, he is protected from harm. And the pathetic little alien character of Blue Classic is sustained by me as well. He is okay, so long as I’m there with him to share in his loneliness, his need for attention, to provide that necessary attention. Together, these artworks evoke both the estrangement and the seduction we experience through media technology. The intimate exchange of viewing these pieces is somewhat akin to how we consume news media or reality television. They present us with both the wreckage of life and the potential redemption inherent within it, through a heightened visceral experience. Though we are horrified, we can’t stop looking, because it’s us on that screen. Through this media we experience humanity, and by inclusion, some portion of ourselves. So we’re compelled to watch, to in some ways view ourselves through the projected lens of the media.

Eve Sussman | Rufus Corporation, Marilisa Reflected, 2005. Photo by Ricoh Gerbl. Courtesy Impronte contemporary art.

The abridged version of the story goes something like this: Shortly after the founding of Rome, the local men noticed a decided lack of ladies with which to start families. They attempted to negotiate a deal for some of the women of neighboring tribes, known as Sabine; however, the patriarchs of those tribes refused. Plan B was to arrange a great feast, invite all the neighbors, and then kidnap the females, which is exactly what happened. Some histories are adamant here that no sexual assault actually took place, that the ‘rape’ was in fact an abduction. The Sabine women were then offered marriage with Romans, along with civic and property rights and the privilege of mothering free men. Later, as the Sabine tribes confronted Rome in an attempt to reclaim their daughters, the Sabine-Roman wives intervened, begging their fathers and husbands to cease combat, in fear of being orphaned or widowed. And the war was ended, thus sealing the destiny of Western civilization.

Eve Sussman, in collaboration with the improvisational players known as the Rufus Corporation, stages her revision of The Rape of the Sabine Women in an idyllic 1960’s setting, filmed on location in Greece and Germany. Having been shown, since its release in 2007, at major international exhibitions in New York, London, San Francisco, and Berlin, among other venues, The Rape… is now premiering in Italy, screening at Impronte Contemporary Art in Milan through March 19. This 80-minute ensemble-musical without dialogue, in 5 acts, is filled to overflowing, cinematically. Its slow, sumptuous shots, voluminous and heavily pitched sound, dramatic staging, and densely packed art-historical references lend themselves to a deeply self-conscious and masterful, if overwrought, work of filmmaking. This piece never loses sight of itself.

Eve Sussman | Rufus Corporation, Annette with Rabbits, 2005. Photo by Benedikt Partenheimer. Courtesy of Impronte contemporary art.

The Romans here are costumed in dark business suits and ties, hovering somewhere between the glamour of double-oh-seven spy-culture and the comforting anonymity of the everyday corporate employee. The Sabine women recall Holly Golightly in mod shift dresses and big dark sunglasses, all against an opulent backdrop of sleek mid-century (and at times, ancient) architecture and design. The characteristic representation of Roman-Sabine married life is a drawn-out summer party scene at a lavish mid-century vacation home, in which affections are openly shared, alcohol flows freely, and cigarette smoke obscures our vision. Sussman provides viewers with a re-imagined fantasy of indulgence, affluence, and Roman excess.

But (spoiler alert!) the modern paradise collapses in on itself at the culmination of the film, as a slow, fraught battle ensues between the men and, though the women attempt to intercede, the struggle continues to utter destruction. And in the end, I’m compelled to consider the value of the feminine role in this version. Whereas, in the original legend, the Sabine women were venerated for their heroic halt of the conflict, here they are unwary co-conspirators in bringing forth the decline of a deceptively prosperous dreamworld. This myth of love in the face of adversity, buoying the frenetic rise of a civilization, is recast instead as the final fall, no thanks to the ladies, of an overly idealized utopia.

Double Sunset no. 3, 16 x 20 inches, analog c-print. 2007. Courtesy of the UnoSolo.

A pinhole camera is a primitive, often homemade photographic apparatus composed of a darkened chamber, in which light sensitive film or photographic paper is inserted and then exposed via a tiny ‘pinhole’ puncture in the wall of the compartment. It’s Photography 101 at its most basic. San Francisco based artist, Jason Kalogiros constructed his from an Old Fashioned Quaker Oats container, featuring the familiar face of the pleased ‘Quaker’ man on its exterior. He created two apertures in the can, positioned directly in the eyes of the Quaker Oats figure, cleverly drawing a connection between the medium of photography and our own visual perception.

Testimony of Simplicity, on view at Unosolo Project Room in Milan chronicles Kalogiros’s use of his twin pinhole camera to reconsider iconic pictorial subjects. On exhibit are a suite of photographs of sunsets shot with the device, as well as a number of images of figures in landscapes, and something of a self-portrait, a photo of the Quaker Oats camera most likely captured as a reflection in the mirror.

Installation shot of all 12 double sunsets. Courtesy of UnoSolo.

Confronted with Kalogiros’s Double Sunset series, arguably the most prominent pieces in the show, , I am struck by a pair of glowing eyes piercing through the serene canvas of a darkened sky as two suns descend over a horizon. The sunset, honored subject of many a snapshot elicits a contemplation of the photographic process itself, as we imagine these orbs of light seeping in through the exterior of the Quaker Oats apparatus, via its ‘eyeballs,’ into a darkened interior to create their lucid impression.

Reciprocally, the resonance between the photographic process and human vision is disrupted by the doubling of the picture. The image contains its own copy. It is so obviously recognizable as a sunset and not a sunset in the same moment. Here, seeing isn’t believing. Accuracy of representation has been an issue at stake in photography since its inception. By cloning the image upon itself, Kalogiros reveals an ambivalence toward the medium’s evidentiary claim. Replication becomes a tool for both affirming and denying the veracity of the photographic subject.

In the Same Place no.7 (Bernal Hill), 4 x 5 inches, analog c-print. 2010. Courtesy of UnoSolo.

These contentions of representation and repetition, this vacillation between authenticity and imitation embodied in much of contemporary photography, reaches its crescendo with another piece featured in the show. This photograph, at 4”x5”, much smaller than the sunsets and characteristically blurry, appears to describe two people, one on either side of a divided frame, each holding a poster size likeness of his/her counterpart. A copy of a copy. An inverted double. Presumably, the process for making this particular photo, as well as the other portrait pieces in the show, was a bit different from that for the sunsets, as it is impossible for the two halves of this image to have been exposed simultaneously. Questions of timing arise. Which model was exposed first? Which is the underived representation and which its simulacrum? The two converge at once.

Here, Kalogiros has created a unique moment of trickery in which the original document is bound up with its facsimile in its own tiny hall of mirrors.

Testimony of Simplicity will be on view at Unosolo Project Room in Milan, Italy, through January 29, 2011.

The artist’s portraits of young children highlight the attention to detail, composition and color that characterize much of classical painting. In fact, she is a painter by training -influenced by Old Masters such as Diego Velázquez, Agnolo Bronzino, Philipp Otto Runge, Francisco Goya- and is now employing digital photography to create portraiture. Lux imperceptibly manipulates her photographic images, creating a bewildering space that seduces the viewer to explore every inch of the surface.

In the pastel-colored photographs, her flawless, pale doll-like subjects are dressed in vintage period clothing, and inhabit what seems to be a dreamlike world. Her apparent hyper-perfection is met with a harmony, and demands deeper investigation by causing an uncomfortable state of wonder. In the estranged context of the photographs, her uncanny figures are isolated, as if not capable of establishing a relationship with the viewer.

Born in 1969 in Dresden, Germany, Loretta Lux studied painting in Munich at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, from 1990 to 1996. Various solo exhibitions of her work were held in New York at Yossi Milo Gallery, in The Hague at the Hague Museum of Photography, and in Amsterdam at Torch Gallery. She received the Bayerischer Kunst foerderpreis in 2002 and The International Centre of Photography’s Infinity Award for Art in 2005.

Loretta Lux, Photographs, galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan, September 9th-October 31st 2010

Acaso features a series of photographs which are the result of a four-year project by fashion photographer Javier Vallhonrat. The images largely differ from the hip and glossy fashion-related work he often realized for publications such as Vogue and the New York Times.

The works exhibited at the Galleria Carla Sozzani -located at 10 Corso Como in Milan- explore the ways in which we tend to interact with, and transform, space in order to give shape to something, such as a house or a building, which we can occupy as inhabitants. The images prove to question the meaning of the concepts of ‘place’ and ‘home’ as sites around which we construct our experience, our individual memory and our identity, while at the same time trying to make sense of an unfamiliar condition such as the absence of what might be a ‘safe’ place we recognize as ours and which we can refer to. Vallhonrat seems to invite the viewer to come to terms with a re-definition of a perception of space that moves from being abstract to becoming real and concrete, a process which highlights the interplay between nature and man. Privileging shades of grey, green and blue, the images by the Spanish photographer depict a variety of tasks performed by male characters within a landscape setting, and although the photographs suggest that some kind of action is taking place, the overall impression they deliver is one of extreme stillness and solitude.

Born in Madrid, Spain, in 1953, fashion photographer Javier Vallhonrat studied Painting at the Fine Arts Faculty of the University of Madrid in the early 1970’s. He achieved international recognition soon after receiving his Fine Arts degree, while shooting for the Condé Nast Publications. In 1992 he started working on advertising films, while teaching photography at the same time. He has also worked for various international fashion designers, such as Comme des Garçons, Christian Lacroix, Jil Sander, Martine Sitbon, Yves Saint-Laurent, Chloé, and John Galliano.

Acaso will be on view at Galleria Carla Sozzani in Milan from 18th October to 22nd November 2009.