I have been following Dash Snow for quite a while. He is the kind of photographer that really disturbs you, yet you feel like you NEED to see more. Before I start picking apart his photography I feel that it is necessary to discuss the ironic nature of Dash and his imagery. When I first stumbled across his imagery I was in Europe and was reading this... thing (for lack of a better word) that seemed almost like a paragraph written by a friend of his that I found in the entrance to a gallery. It was literally a photo-copied piece of handwritten notebook paper. I wish that I still had it because the description envied this "free" lifestyle being documented at every interesting and controversial moment. The description alone brewed a great deal of curiosity within me. At the time, it was truly hard for me to figure out the art behind what he was doing. It was fairly early in my blogging/research experience (aka: my extremely lazy stage as a student) so I was unaware of the various photography cultures that exist. Although I was not interested in his subject matter(s) at the time, his style and medium definitely caught my attention. It pushed me to learn about the different possibilities that I have besides the classic 35mm SLR or D-SLR formats.
To get to my main point, Dash died July of 2009. Since I know how much everyone loves Wikipedia I figured I would pull a quote off of there that I found extremely interesting and fitting after going back and reviewing his photography: A New York Times article commented that Snow "met a junkie’s end but did so in a $325-a-night hotel room with an antique marble hearth." I began revisiting Dash's work at the beginning of Intermediate Photography (early 2009) so his imagery was extremely fresh in my mind when I read about his death. I had not researched his past much before I read about his death, and frankly (and embarrassingly) I had not researched statements that he had given or any information about the guy before he died. I did not understand that these photographs are the REAL Dash Snow. They are a unique look into this personal hell that Snow had entered after leaving home as an early-teen to live on the street. I was familiar with Nan Goldin and the great work she has done, but to me there was more with Dash Snow. He began taking pictures to see what he did not remember from the previous night and became aware that what he was experiencing and the people that he surrounded himself with were not ordinary people, and that he had an opportunity to show the world what HIS world was like. Because his lifestyle was so different to mine, it made me thirsty for more even though it grossed me out.
The film medium that is used fairly religiously throughout his photographs is Polaroid. It added to his aesthetic. These beaten, underexposed, gritty, light-leaked, scratched photos have the look and feel to go along with the look and feel of the lifestyle that he and his acquaintances lived. Even if you do not appreciate his subject matter (it takes time to appreciate it), appreciate how aware he became of what he was doing by a long process of experimentation. His awareness drove me to look into various cameras that I can EXPERIMENT with.
Just ask yourself this: Are you using the right films/photographic medium/camera for your photography?
2 comments:
Very interesting photos. After talking with you a bit about the artist, I was intrigued. Upon checking out his work, mostly the polaroids, I definitely know what you mean about not really wanting to see the photos, but at the same time wanting to see more and more of them. I scanned the comments people would leave on a page that displayed his work, and the majority of it was super negative toward the guy. Mostly people were commenting that Dash is just using sex and drugs as a newly presented taboo, when it's been explored for a long time now. But I think that no matter how much imagery of sex and drugs are presented to us, we will be intrigued by it. Maybe this will be a disgusted intrigued, but I think it no doubt has an impact on us. I also think that your question was completely vital to analyzing Dash Snow as an artist. By presenting polaroids, I get a much more tangible feel to them. The words: brutally raw, come to mind. I think as artists we should always be experimenting and not getting too comfortable with what we do.
In intermediate photo class last semester, I presented some of Gregory Crewdson's photos. After looking at a few of them, we noticed that some did not seem to be as strong as others. I think it is a shame when such imaginative phtographers kind of sleep because of doing the same thing.
I think Dash Snow knew exactly what he was doing and inherently why he did it. He's showing us something we don't see, so we're naturally intrigued by it.
That's all I've got for now.
exactly! My initial impression was that the taboo being acted out by hired models is, well... what I would do as an extremely amateur photographer if I got his same idea in my head right now. It would seem contrived and seriously forced. When I finally realized how real and, as you put it, "raw" it is - I could not get enough of his photography. I could almost literally FEEL what was going on.
It just takes it to a whole new level when you discover that the guy started out simply documenting his sedated nights to recall what happened while letting this atmosphere naturally run its course. When he figured out what he was truly doing - it must have been an unbelievable feeling.
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