Thank You Montreal!

I played a show a few years ago now, and here are some pictures I took to remember the night!

Mass Production

     At one point art collectors were able to truly conquer all by having one of a kind pieces of art all to themselves, museums took turns with these pieces displaying them all over the world, allowing all of us to experience the beauty, but soon enough the art of prints came into action. Now everyone could hang the Mona Lisa in their house, if course it was a dumbed down version, done on either a matte or glossy finish poster, but with a nice frame, you now had yourself a piece of art hanging on your wall, right?

     I feel as if some of these classic pieces that have been reproduced and/or re-released definitely lose their original aesthetic. No longer do you get to feel the art, but you merely have it take up some wall space in your living room. There's absolutely nothing beautiful about a poster of the Mona Lisa, no whimsical feeling to pair up with Van Gogh's The Starry Night.

     Another issue that has come up n the present day is the mass production of "art". Stores like Urban Outfitters, who's artsy furniture, and apartment accessories are sold by the thousands to hipsters everyday, in an attempt to make their small studio apartments "unique". This is a great attempt at making yourself seem artsy, but the fact of the matter is there are over 1000 other people in the same city as you that have that exact same picture hanging over their bed. So is Urban Outfitters really selling us art? I would say no they're selling us junk to portray a lifestyle that we like to display. Does this make us horrible people? Absolutely not, if we deprived of all things reproduced, then none of us would have anything on our walls, we'd live a bare, bare world, that would be rather depressing. So I say go out and buy that print hang it high and hang it with pride!

Early Portraits vs. Modern Day Portraits

                             (Top:Andrew Jackson photographed by Mathew Brady in 1845  Bottom: George Clooney, Martin Schoeller, Close Up: Portraits (1998-2005)

           The main objective in any portrait past or present is to capture that moment in someone’s life. In most cases a portrait was taken in a moment of succession, a point of pride in one person’s life, a family’s time spent together as a whole. Being able to capture that beautiful moment in time, and to cherish that and conceal it so it can be represented as almost a time capsule is truly beautiful. And though the idea of a portrait continues to develop, it can also be destroyed in the modern day.

Photographers such as Martin Schoeller who have created an art in creating portraits, can still acknowledge the beauty that the portrait once conveyed. With his work Close Up: Portraits (1998-2005), Martin Schoeller took stripped down, hyper-close portraits of both world renown celebrities and everyday people. These photographs take an in-depth look at the human face, nothing is hidden, the wrinkles, the laugh line, the scars are all put on display accentuating the face and displaying it in a completely new fashion. Though Martin Schoeller’s work does not end there his photographs grace the pages of some of North America’s most popular magazines (The New Yorker, Outside Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire, and Vogue). Both his stripped down portraits and those of which include backgrounds and props are truly remarkable, and display a true understanding of the modern day portrait.

Where the modern day portrait tends to lose its lustre is when social networks come into play. As much denial as there is, the “display pictures” are also portraits. They’re moments caught and digitally saved into the modern world, displayed for everyone. This is for the most part where portraits have steered in a new direction in comparison to the early day portrait. What was once a display of success and pride now becomes a bad recollection of the night before. And though for some, the core meaning of the portrait holds true, in capturing a moment in your life that can now be looked back at for years to come, it seems in the modern day we’re all photographers attempting to capture our best sides.

Welcome

Hello my name is Bryan Richards. I was born and raised in Montreal, and I'll take that to the grave, I love the city to death. Here's a picture I took called "Flashing Lights"