Hi Mitch,
Your critique is well thought out and most helpful. I can agree with some of your points. However,
For me this picture, while technically accomplished, doesn't work.
it does! The picture must be experienced with it's exceptional title and objections. Art is ideas transformed to physicality to move our senses and evoke our imaginations. Here we have an idea and associated religious, erotic and social imperatives posed in one form. The artists intent is clearly perceived. Discussion is generated. The picture cannot be dismissed. It actually works!
Without the title I don't see it saying either fertility or the divine feminine.
Neither would we immediately understand a picture with a circle, dots and a rod as indicating the same subject. However, with a title, perhaps. Titles are sometimes as much part of the art's performance as the physics of the work itself.
Perhaps the main problem I have with it is that it tries to work too conceptually and not enough through form.
Mitch,
This is a difficult point since it points to the style and imagination of the artist. How things are translated from inside the head to a form we can experience together is particular to each creative artist/photographer.
For example, if you hadn't said these were seeds I would take them as pebbles and would start thinking about the beach.
Here you are correct. I thought they were pebbles too! Having them extend beyond the foreground, further gave the idea of a beach. Seeds placed as an offering for fertility would be localized and limited.
The headscarf is also a problem in this respect, not for for the reason Asher states, but it's plain distracting. This may be just my taste, but I would prefer something not so staged and, hence, cold, to depict fertility, with the risk of pretentiousness.
Actually, Mitch, this one point nearly made me move the thread. It's the showing of a headscarf which concerns me. However, it's a matter of speech. I do not want us to offend all the wonderful and pious Muslim women who have protested for the right to wear a headscarf. I also am aware that to others this very same scarf might symbolize a need for women to be more valued and respected and not exploited through lack of education and status. So if this photograph transgressed, it also makes us think about real issues.
I am at a loss in trying to formulate how I would make a picture to depict fertility, but all I can say is that I would try to do this from real life as opposed to a setup, maybe because I don't see how staging this can fail to be pretentious.
Mitch,
You're preference for real life subjects is obvious from your extensive work with street photography in Bangkok. But here, the picture is not meant to look natural. There's no need for this. We see a nude woman with symbols and a title, which together, grab attention. This itself doesn't make it art or successful. However, it's IMHO, an accepted choice.
Much tighter framing could also help — I am thinking about coming in very close, cutting off all or most of the head, as we don't need to see a face or eyes for this, and showing the breasts and pubis. I would make it much more graphic in terms of emphasizing the form. Yes, that's the direction I would go in, perhaps along the lines of some of Ralph Gibson's nudes, but accentuating the fertility aspect by using a suitable model and through the tight framing.
Here I just would have to wonder. I'll revisit Ralph Gibson and see how that might work.
