Joan Logue
Joan Logue is said to be a pioneer when it comes to video portraits, she began in the 1960's as she realized the new medium's potential. Joan studied painting and photography as she grew up so it was odd that she chose to start making video portraits. The reason she chose to try video portraits is because she thought it "expanded painting and still photography, taking the 'instant' out of portraiture to give it a presence in real-time." It is said that she is recognized as the first video portrait originator and made her first video in 1971. She states that her video portraits allows the viewer to observe the subject in contemplation and silence because she uses real time and silence to expose the subject's presence.
Photo by Kathy Brew 2010
Joan has made hundreds of video portraits mostly for installations since 1971 and also created a new kind of video portrait called 30 second portraits. Her subjects in her videos are other artists, her lovers, family, fisherman, writers, poets, philosophers, composers, street people, and auto portraits. She has done video portraits of many famous people (including Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez), a lot like Robert Wilson but not as contemporary. Joan originally grew up and worked in Los Angeles until 1977 but then traveled all around the world doing her artwork and her video portraits. She became a professor to teach her work and now resides in New York.
Her video portraits seem to be staged, but in a more relaxed environment like the subject is in their own workplace or home. There are only a couple I have seen that look like she set up some sort of black background or maybe had them come into a studio. With how many video's she has done, I would assume she would go to that person and make their video wherever they are. There are some video portraits where she even has another smaller video of the person doing whatever they were famous for on top of the video portrait. For Noam Chomsky's video that I have posted above, she went to his MIT office and asked him to just sit in silence while she videotaped him for 23 minutes at his desk. The length of her videos also vary and there does not seem to be one set way that she makes them.
Joan's video portraits were made before there were more advanced technologies in video's so her portraits are obviously not as high quality as other video portrait artists that I have seen. I think it is really interesting to research her since she is said to be one of the first people to ever make a video portrait. I had not even heard of video portrait's until this year so it is hard to imagine that someone was making these over 40 years ago. Joan stated that "for her, video portraits have a life of their own, it's always in the present." This was very interesting to me because other portrait artists that I have studied have not let the subject do whatever they want, they are usually heavily staged. Joan wants the subjects to be themselves, which I find very inspiring.
Clayton Cubitt
Clayton Cubitt is an American award winning photographer, filmmaker, and writer who is from New Orleans but is based in New York City. He has done many international exhibitions and has worked with a lot of famous people throughout the world. Clayton mixes art and fashion with technology and is known for applying an "arrestingly controlled and sleek sense of style" to art, portrait, erotic and fashion photography. Clayton has been described as "one of a new breed of photographers no longer content to draw a distinction between the worlds of fashion, art, and porn." Clayton was inspired to study photography from seeing the photograph "Susie Smoking" by Nick Knight and also the photograph "Green Room Murder" by Helmut Newton.
Clatyon has worked with artists like Kanye West, and Die Antwoord, and is the guy who did the Hysterical Literature videos that circulated the internet. He also stated that his long portraits inspired a Superbowl commercial and he worked and did portraits of many hurricane Katrina victims. Clayton's website shows a lot of his different forms of artwork like his portraits, his fashion photography, his videos that include music videos and long portraits, and his different projects. Clayton is very interesting in that he has a wide variety of different subjects and interests. Die Antwoord on one hand is probably one of the weirdest music groups I've ever seen and is very sexual and all around strange. He also has his long portraits which are quiet and still and serious. And then he has his Hysterical Literature videos that he says were inspired by his long portraits where he has a girl reading her favorite book while being teased under the table with a vibrator. And then he goes on to work with hurricane Katrina victims, which is obviously very serious and not sexual or weird in any way. He also did a series called Man Vs. Man where he took images of men boxing.
Clayton describes his long portraits as "The experience of a portrait, extended into minutes. Breathing in and out with the subject." His long portraits are always a closer shot of the subject's face and are always silent. He either takes the video of the subject in his studio or in theirs, with not much background unless the person shows a little of their studio in the background. They are all just about 5 minutes in length and there is no music or any sound, except for if the person makes any sort of sound. In an interview conducted with Clayton he talked about how in todays world, everyone has a well-practiced pose for "selfies" and social media, and he was interested to see if he could make a portrait that made it impossible for the sitter to maintain this pose. This was his inspiration for his long portraits project but he then stated that this way of making portraits was too anonymous for him.
Clayton then went on to do his Hysterical Literature project because he thought the long portraits did not say enough about the sitter. He used the term "interesting but mute" when describing his projects. He also stated that the long portraits were a conceptual ground that was already explored by Andy Warhol's "Screen Tests." He then decided to make a video where he interviewed a woman who was being distracted by a vibrator but then decided he wanted to be removed from the process as much as possible, which is where he got his idea for Hysterical Literature. I have actually seen his work all around the internet and Reddit but never knew who the artist was behind the work. I am shocked and pleasantly surprised to find out all of these cool art projects that I have liked were all done by this one guy.
http://hystericalliterature.com/
My Project
I really enjoy both of these artists work work and for my project I would like to think about how I as the artist am interacting with my subject. An artist is always giving their lens when creating a work, and no matter how much they try to separate themselves from the work they will always be a part of it. Video portraits are interesting because they are very obviously about the subject and not the artist, but an artist can decide to put themselves in the work by making it completely their own (for example Robert Wilson) or they can try to separate themselves from the work and make it completely about the subject (for example Joan Logue). For my project I need to decide how I would like to present my subject and if I want to make it completely mine, or if I would like to make it about the subject. Or maybe both? I could I could do one video where I try to take myself out of the video as much as I can and then make another video where I completely create it myself, and make the subject not herself at all.
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