Week 11 Update

One photographer I just remembered is Julie Moos and her series of portrait photographs, Friends and Enemies. In each of her portrait series Moos has been interested in examining objectively a specific socio-cultural milieu, placing her subjects in neutral environments, posed frontally and usually in pairs against a blank backdrop. The series Friends and Enemies was shot at a private high school in Moosâ home city of Birmingham, Alabama. At the invitation of the school's principal, Moos spent several months during the 1999-2000 term interviewing students, teachers and counselors, as well as analyzing candid photographs in school publications.

Recognizing that much of the high school experience revolves around interpersonal relationships, and thinking about the violence that had recently occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado, Moos was sensitive to the friendships and rivalries which she discerned in the class of 2000 at the Birmingham school. Converting a classroom into a temporary studio for a week, with parental consent forms signed and students agreeing to participate, Moos selected students in pairs to be photographed, sometimes choosing students who were good friends and other times students who were enemies, rivals or barely knew each other. The students did not know with whom they would be paired until they arrived for their sessions.

"In presenting her finished color images, which are printed large so that the sitters are virtually life-size, Moos does not inform viewers of the relationships among her subjects. With the stark settings and the face-forward poses that do not allow for interaction among the sitters, viewers are left to try to discern the feelings and relationships from the subtleties of codes of behavior reflected in body language, facial expressions, and styles of clothing and hair. Moos straightforward portraits are compelling for the way they evoke the nuances of character and personality in her subjects. At the same time her photographs challenge viewers to resolve the visual riddles they contain, bringing forth our own memories, experiences and preconceptions and making the photographs in a way portraits of ourselves as well."

This body of work hits heavily on two aspects of the Baker essay.  The first lies in the use of text to convey narrative.  Allan Sekula has "repeatedly insisted on regarding photographic meaning as a hybrid construction depending on both textual and contextual factors in order to be capable of being read" (p.75).  In Moos' work, each photograph is labeled only with the names of the people in the photos, but the viewer has the knowledge that these are "friends and enemies."  The viewer then naturally attempts to read body language and visual clues to label whether each portrait is one of friends or enemies.  

These images are of course also double portraits.  When two people are presented within a photograph- it is simple to try and relate them  Within Moos' work, you are already informed of their relationship.  Moos' has taken control of the generation of crucial questions by giving them text and titles, just as Sander's did in his "Farm Girls."