POST DOCUMENTARY ART
Exercise 5.3
Listen to Jim Goldberg talking about Open See and his exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery: http://vimeo.com/22120588
Visit Goldberg’s website http://www.opensee.org and reflect on how or if it works as a documentary project within the gallery space. (Open College of the Arts, 2014:105)
The interview
This short clip shows preparation for an exhibition. He was part of a magnum team sent to photograph different aspects of Greece for the 2004 Olympics, his focus was immigrants. He talked of the immigrants he came across from various countries, some trafficked, some economic migrants, and some prostitutes. He shared his images and annotations of their stories, but with no idea given about the number of images and how they fitted into the final exhibition.
Goldberg’s website
This functions as a gallery space for images and text of displaced, economic migrants, illegal migrants, and refugees. The front page presents images in a compact montage, as if on gallery walls, guiding the viewer across them.
The side bar tabs:
Wilhelm-Hack-Museum: annotated images of immigrants and their stories.
Tate: A video how to fold a single sheet of images into a book, which is useful; probably an interactive activity at the Tate exhibition.
Deutsche Borse: Another video with a story about a refugee boat, and how to make a paper boat.
Objects: such as torture files to support obtaining amnesty, wallets of the dead, fake adverts and interviews.
Resources: with website links that informs about the issues of many of his subjects.
Reflections:
It is interesting but again lacks information for instance a summary and detailed context. The images are small, and I expected to be able to click on them and they would open in their own windows so I could have closer look, but this was not possible.
Overall, though fragmentated there is a lot of information presented: documents of people’s journeys. The work is collaborative, he uses a variety of media and has unusual narrative techniques. Though disjointed the work together tells a themed story and is a good example of a balance between expression and information in a gallery and could be shared and articulated in an art gallery space.
I can compare this with my viewing of his work see previously, “Raised by wolves” (1989) which documented the lives of runaway teenagers living on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles from 1987 and 1993. In this he used photographs, video stills, found documents, and handwritten texts by the subjects themselves. Here he also tells the story in different ways: a traveling art gallery exhibit, a book, a website, and an experience, though most of the book is photographic as even the handwritten notes are photographed using these texts and his imagery to share their experiences.
What struck me then was the huge variety of presentation that he has used in this project and the same is apparent in his website. The mixed media he uses adds an earthiness and reality to the narrative in the photojournalistic style.
References:
A Completely True Work of Fiction: Jim Goldberg’s Raised By Wolves (2018) At: https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/art/jim-goldberg-raised-by-wolves/ (Accessed 20/2/2021).
AMERICAN SUBURB X. (2018). JIM GOLDBERG: [online] Available at: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/11/theory-raised-by-wolves-as-non.html (Accessed 20/2/2021).
Open College of the Arts (2014) Photography 2: Documentary-Fact and Fiction (Course Manual). Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.
OPEN SEE – JIM GOLDBERG (2021) At: http://www.opensee.org/ (Accessed 20/02/2021).
The Photographers’ Gallery (2011) ‘Interview with Jim Goldberg’ At: https://vimeo.com/22120588 (Accessed 20/02/2021).
Photography 2: Documentary 