Two Moons

Sarah Moon.Beth Moon.

First, they aren’t the same person. Not the same work. Not the same method. They do seem, in some ways, to talk to the same meaning.

Sarah Moon(born Marielle Warin; 1941) is a French photographer.Initially a model, she turned to fashion photography in the 1970s. Since 1985, she has concentrated on gallery and film work. https://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artists/29-sarah-moon/overview/


“By using the longest lasting photographic process, I hope to speak about survival, not only of man and nature’s but to photography’s survival as well. For each print I mix ground platinum and palladium metals, making a tincture that is hand-coated onto heavy watercolor paper and exposed to light. There are many steps involved in creating the final print and these are as important to me as the capturing of the image,” said (Beth) Moon. A platinum print can last for centuries, drawing on the common theme of time and survival, pairing photographic subject and process.

https://bethmoon.com

How do they overlap? Subject choice. Sure, but how many subjects for the camera are there. What isn’t a prior link. How they are treated? Maybe more-so this. The sensation within me. Yep. that has it, even though that is the least transferable to you. My sensation is a limited exchange system to share.

Being able to find work, to find something to point at is one part of making work. More important to the making is being able to describe it. To translate it is a necessary part of transforming. Absorbing work may mean you don’t have to make anything similar. You don’t need to duplicate the work. That is what the Moons are for me. I don’t have to do this work, nor anything like them. These are sufficient. I can even avoid their process notes, notions, goals, ambitions. Two reasons: I don’t want to do them; I don’t have to do them.

Do I have a preference? Yes. I much prefer Sarah Moon to Beth Moon. They way they think is clear, is different to each other. Sarah talks about the experience of making pictures; the world of camera and subject. Beth Moon spends her words on technique of printing; she is about overcoming process limitations. Her world uses the world of things, but done to make something more permanent than them. Beth converts; Sarah conveys.

Steichen: One Picture

Clement Greenberg reviewed Steichen’s “A Life in Photography.” [1964] and wasn’t impressed… only one photography was worthwhile: the 1921 Dancer’s Hands.

“one wonders at what must have been the lack of a capacity for self-criticism that let Steichen abandon the straightforwardness of these (early) works..”

Clement Greenberg reviewed Steichen’s “A Life in Photography.” [1964] and wasn’t impressed… only one photography was worthwhile: the 1921 Dancer’s Hands. Saying: “..nicely composed … would be artistically inert were it not for what the woman’s arms evoke of attractive femaleness…”

“Photography’s advantage over painting… the enormously greater ease and speed with which it achieves realism. This speed and ease have radically expanded the literary possibilities of pictorial art.”

The windblown “Wind Fire” image is of a student. It strikes me as being one flavor of the terpsichorean image of John Wimberley (a key person in the revival of pyro negatives)

Terpsichorean pose

Sources:
https://www.academia.edu/30974476/Footprints_on_stone._An_outline_of_Isadora_Duncan_presence_today
http://www.artnet.com/artists/edward-steichen/
https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/edward-steichen-1879-1973-wind-fire-therese-5972040-details.aspx
https://huxleyparlour.com/artists/edward-steichen/
https://isadoraduncan.org/foundation/isadora-duncan/
http://www.isadoraduncanarchive.org/dancer/3/
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/steichen-edward/artworks/ https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/california/articles/ladies-we-love-isadora-duncan/