ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY

THE ART OF THE MONOGRAPH

Three beautiful pieces

By Jaden Fuhrer

Stunning Juxtopositions

In the world of photography, everybody has a story to tell, whether it is through photojournalism, fine art, or everything in between. One can find series online that people have carefully curated showcasing an artist’s body of work. But where else would one be able to tell their story or speak their truth? Photographic monographs tell stories and portray feelings in carefully curated editions. Any consumer of art should look to monographs for three reasons: curated inspiration, ease of access, and a storytelling experience unlimited by traditional cultural distinctions.

Artists create through inspiration. Whether you’re an intuitive creative or someone who requires strong sources of inspiration, both minds are fine-tuned by influences and life around them. It’s a great way for people to take another person’s understanding of the world and apply it to their own. A monograph about the life of a horse doctor and how they perceive beauty while living in the world of death. It is an eye-opening experience to all who have dealt with death in any way. A monograph about the study of how younger men tackle their own masculinity could help a young man dealing with the same problem come to terms with who they are. These books inspire thought and conversation.

Books that inspire conversation

The monograph is a way of seeing into another person’s world and feeling the way in which they did while creating it. The weight of importance can be found in each picture and spread, straight into the binding. Monographs are a curated experience into the grander souls of each community and person. Three that particularly come to mind, though very different in subject matter but are all relative to the feeling of conflict, are I Can’t Stand to See You Cry by Rahim Fortune, The Holy Bible by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, and My Last Day at Seventeen by Doug Dubois. All have different takes on photographic art but they show an understanding of their presented theme, conflict. These works present societal and personal conflict as means of inspiring us to both understand and overcome them.

A different life

Rahim Fortune’s I Can’t Stand to See You Cry is a true story told by Fortune in a tumultuous time in his life. It is an exploration of Texas and the surrounding states through his eyes all while his father is slowly passing away due to undisclosed diagnosis. Fortune’s work depicts relationships with family, friends, and strangers, public and private, all while an ongoing pandemic is looming over the world. In 112 pages Fortune is able to tell his story through beautiful black and white photos. You can feel the people and places around him.

You feel his thoughts

This work’s relevance to conflict is obvious; a monograph about the life of a black rural Texan community and its reaction to a one man’s death might inspire others to look at people and communities in a more nuanced way. Specifically, in the photograph referenced above, Fortune uses  staging and studio lighting to show the friction between the public and private life all in an attempt to maintain grace. The use of high contrast black and white paired with the couple's softness towards each other shows this maintenance all while facing a darkness in front of them. His story of his own conflict, though personal, is highly relatable and demands that we pay attention to experiences way beyond our lives.

You pay attention and you look

My Last Day at Seventeen by Doug Dubois tells the story of a group of small town Irish children and how the freedoms of childhood are forfeited by the inevitable coming of age and past experiences. Whether you are 12, 18, or 40, this time comes for everyone. In 79 images, Dubois uses text, photographs, and comic strips to show the personal and social consequences of becoming an adult too early or too late.

A candid shot of adolescence

Dubois depicts a world of people whose lives are paycheck to paycheck and where their children are left to fend for themselves. It is a story we have heard countless times, but what makes this story stand out is the way Dubois produces this monograph. The constant action in his selection of photographs and the way he assimilated himself into a once forgotten community is a plea to their humanity. He pays respects to these children who have lost themselves in a world that doesn’t speak to them.

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s The Holy Bible is all-encompassing in its depiction and understanding of conflict. With the Archive of Modern Conflict’s archive of photographs, Broomberg and Chanarin use texts from the King James bible, they show viewers how God reveals himself through violence and catastrophe. When one flips to Numbers 26:10 this passage is underlined, “And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up together with Korah, when that company died, what time the fire devoured two hundred and fifty men: and they became a sign” coupled with a photograph from the Pacific during World War II showing American servicemen jumping ship after being struck with a rocket and those left aboard burning to death. The monograph questions ideas of authorship and the ‘unspoken criteria used to determine acceptable evidence of conflict’ (Mack 2022).

We feel the conflict in words and images

Broomberg and Chanarin’s use of biblical verses shows that conflict reigns true throughout the bible. Without telling a first person or communal story, they tell a painful and gruesome situation.  One may find that stepping into this marred King James Bible and viewing the pictures in this context helps these images and verses slip out from under the thumb of religion and see the world all for what it is.

Though these three books all tackle the conversation of conflict, they present pain and the world in radically different ways. Fortune’s I Can’t Stand to See You Cry is somber and makes you want to cry, whereas Dubois’s My Last Day at Seventeen depiction of pain is a surprisingly playful journey, and finally Broomberg and Chanarin’s Holy Bible is a shocking showcase of  the Bible’s relevance and the concept of Divine Violence - as demonstrated by the essay attached to the back by Adi Ophir. All three of these visual masterpieces are true to their own and feel grounded and not held down by the words of a critic.

The balance is amazing

The differences between them are striking as well, though. It is obvious that since they tell such different stories that they would be contrasts of the same topic, however, in conversation with the stylistic choices, they differ in greater ways. Fortune’s book shows that he a master of black and white photography with his silky highlights and starkly contrasted blacks with portraiture and landscapes all telling the story he knows must be told, but can a book with simplistically styled photography, that one might find ‘not great’, tell a story as impactful as Fortune’s? Of course, and we find that in Dubois’s book. His ability to tell each individual substory within his greater theme is impeccable, especially coupled with photographs that feel so real and unpainterly. Even in Broomberg and Chanarin’s book, though they use a story that has been told for centuries, they tell a story that is of equal importance and just as relatively painful as the other two. All four authors have made an immeasurable impact on the world of art and storytelling. With their unique stylistic choices they spark thought and invite conversation so that people may find what they need.

These monographs, I Can’t Stand to See You Cry, My Last Day at Seventeen, and Holy Bible are not just for other artists or art consumers but for everyone who is willing to find different understandings in a world of growing turmoil. It is hopeful that an artist, young or old, can find these books useful to them so that they themselves may create works of art that represent them in the ways they see fit. All of these titles can be found online digitally or for purchase from their respective publishers (Loose Joints, Aperture, and MACK).

©Jaden Fuhrer and the CCA Arts Review