Week 4: Angela Strassheim Visit

Last Wednesday, photographer Angela Strassheim presented some of her bodies of work, including Left Behind, Pause, and Divine Bounty.


The photographs that Strassheim showed for the lecture were made because of some sort of personal interest - mainly because of an experience or an expression of emotion. As a result, they are powerful photographs. They are eye catching. Some of them are uncomfortable, some of them are beautiful. One, titled "The Spanking" (below), was disturbing to me.

After the first few seconds of looking at the picture, I still did not know what was going on, but I did not like it. I asked myself, "Why is a man slapping a grown woman's bare butt? Why are her pants all the way down, but not completely off?" Strassheim described that this was not the exact situation that she was put into when her father used to spank her, but rather it is a depiction of how she felt while it was happening. All of the discomfort that I feel when looking at this photograph is what she felt - and then some. For this reason, it is a very successful photograph.

Photography seems to be the way that Angela Strassheim interacts with the world, and how she copes with it. As with the above photograph, she uses photography as a way to express her emotions. She will not feel satisfied until she gets it just the way that she imagined it in her head (I certainly know that feeling). As with the photographs in Left Behind, Strassheim uses photography as a way to bring herself closer to her family. She gets a social and personal experience out of photographing her nieces and nephews, as if photography is a unique connection that can only be in existence because of the camera. However, when asked about her relationship with strangers (such as those in the photograph "Untitled (Storytime)"), she said that there is some small talk at first but beyond that she just concentrates on photographing and directing. I wonder if the personal connection is present when she works toward it, as with her nieces and nephews, or if it simply depends on the circumstances.

Angela Strassheim's photos are so powerful, in part, because they are cinematic. Maybe it has something to do with the camera she uses (a view camera, mostly) or the light. I'm pretty sure it's mostly the latter. She sometimes sets up studio lighting on her subjects to create  a very dramatic scene.

Untitled (Butterfly)

In the above photo, there is obviously a lot of light coming from the window behind the boy, but there is also light illuminating his front. The result is a uniform light with very few shadows. In the photo below, the light seems to be coming from the point of view of the camera. Once again, it illuminates the scene uniformly, almost like a flash applied to the entire room.

Untitled (Fishtank)

I admire Strassheim's photography because it never fails to make me feel something. They are often aesthetically pleasing because of their formal qualities, and they often suggest a strong emotion or narrative. The cinematic quality brings it all home by giving the sense that these are photographs created by a master who knows what she's doing and has all the resources she needs.