Photoshopping the Truth:
Jane Hammond's Photographs and Martha Rosler's Great Power

Jane Hammond: Snow Angel, 2007, Selenium toned silver gelatin print, 11" x 14"

Not too long ago, photographs were considered to be an accurate, evidentiary record of reality. Jane Hammond shows up our gullibility and gives it a tweak in her exhibition Photography at Gallerie Lelong in New York City, through October 2008. Hammond collects old photographs, and skillfully creates digital collages in Photoshop, merging elements seamlessly, adding shadows to fool the eye. The final results are presented as old-fashioned silver gelatin prints. It's the presentation that fools us: if the photo physically appears old, how can it be a Photoshop creation? Hammond's prank leads to fascinating and often hilarious results.

These forged photographs are like false memories or the improbable dreamscapes of Max Ernst's Surrealist collages. They are also reminiscent of a particular genre of photography found in 1940's magazines and newspapers: blatantly faked, fantastical, guffaw-worthy -- a tall tale told in layered negatives.

A few of Hammond's interventions are done with a heavy hand: fantastical landscapes, blatantly Surrealist, packed full of crazy stuff. But where a subtler touch is used, the tone becomes richer, even oddly poetic. The artist appears to be walking down the aisle to marry Elvis; the wedding is occurring in a crypt. An old man, costumed as an angel, appears uncertain why he is sitting on a snow-covered porch.

Several sets of small photos, resembling snapshots ripped from decades of scrapbooks, are presented together in a single frame. Here the artist has inserted herself into every image, appearing Zelig-like in various eras of the 20th century. In one set, she is a photographer, using various vintage cameras in the 1920's, '30s, '40s, through to to present. In another, she appears frolicking in smutty snapshots from various decades. Each image is an exact forgery of some photographic format or presentation style: sepia tint, serrated edges, wide white borders, black paper corner mounts, and so on; each is perfectly recreated. These works are almost a compendium of the history of the photographic scrapbook.

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills (1979) constructed multiple contradictory images of the artist to question the nature of the self. Hammond also constructs multiple contradictory images, but it seems she is not exploring identity, nor simply engaging in narcissistic shenanigans; instead, she is most interested in the way the surface of the photograph holds meaning.

Hammond, previously a painter, has worked with photography only since 2004. The title of her show, Photography, implies that she approaches the medium as an outsider, and that her interest is the surface of the photograph -- what it conceals, what it reveals, and most importantly, how it does these things.


Martha Rosler: Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful, 2004

Martha Rosler also works with digital photo collage in her show Great Power at Mitchell-Innes & Nash in New York, through October 2008. However, there is no attempt at forgery: Rosler collages disharmonious elements, with no intent of giving her images the documentary truthfulness of photographs. Images of fashion models are layered on top of Iraq War combat scenes. The models are disconnected from their backgrounds, oblivious to the carnage occurring behind them.

On a purely aesthetic level, there are some problems with the show. The digital collages are not skillfully made: the elements do not cohere into a seamless whole. Neither do the disparate elements contrast in some visually interesting way. The cut-out edges of figures are harsh. The original source images are low- resolution magazine halftones, which look grainy and boxy when enlarged to many times their original size. Images on the reverse side of the magazine page (apparently from poor scanning) bleed through and cloud the image without providing additional visual interest. A video piece is presented on an off-the-shelf DVD player with a tiny 5-inch screen; the brand name of the device is left uncovered. It's really not clear that the style of the construction of the works has been well-considered; rather, it reads like simple sloppiness.

In terms of content, alas, there are more problems. This is not a subtle or complex show. Little is revealed that is not painfully familiar. Here, there are no moral shades of gray and no room for the viewer to draw their own conclusions. Indeed, the single-minded, shrill tone of the work's content leaves the viewer feeling like one has been beaten over the head with a prosthetic limb. (Rosler has thoughtfully provided an eight- foot mechanical prosthetic leg dangling from the ceiling, apparently for exactly this purpose.)

How can any citizen respond to 8 years of corrupt governance and 5 and a half years of an entirely unjust, capricious war? A few speak out; a few actively tune out; most become numbed and slip into disengagement. Rosler deserves credit for speaking up.

However, political commitment is not a sufficient condition for successful work. Poltical work, at its best, engages the viewer. It can confront the viewer with moral complexities. It can accuse the viewer's complicity with injustice. It can inspire the viewer to take action. It can be the result of careful research, and convey new information in a compelling way. It can even be aesthetically appealing. Sadly, none of these strategies are seen here.

Rosler provides several folios of years of collected New York Times articles about the Iraq War, laid on tables in a makeshift reading room. Reading these over provoked a road-to-Damascus moment of revelation: the Iraq War is A Bad Thing! Later reflection on the show provoked further resetting of the moral compass: losing one's limbs in a war is also A Very Bad Thing! Surely those Chelsea gallery-goers who actively support dismemberment will have their eyes opened by Rosler's Great Power.


(Kurt Ralske, October 2008)