A Symbol Life – Page 12

in the morning IG feed, from someone I follow but don’t know; didn’t know very much about, even. They posted (ukegirl99 ingy pingy) about being awarded the Hasselblad award for 2024. I looked, but didn’t follow up… I don’t put note to the Hasselblad awards, thinking them commercial achievement.

It is easy to overlook things in a world of many things to look at. We look quickly. I do — even though I restrict how much hits my screen — enters my world of books. I know that if I’ve seen her work, the early work, I wouldn’t have noted it, even though the hand-coloring would have appealed. Work has to sustain the artist longer than is usually possible.

Awards make the work something to re-visit. That is more valuable than the dollar amount. In preparing this note to myself, I dug into the Hasselblad award enough to give it value; value because of the artists they have recognized. In one sense, that is what the company+foundation probably hopes happens.

That was that. In reading my email, intending to delete the Hasselblad cast, I saw more about Ingrid Pollard, and the award. Seeing more, I looked for more. Her site: http://www.ingridpollard.com/ No mention, the news is more recent than the website “news” section.

That will change.

[In the video, she recounts her “notification” story. At first, on the phone, she doubted the veracity. It took the email to convince her. In an eWorld, even the one connected because of the phones, we doubt the voice on the other end of the line. Sound isn’t the eye. We prefer text. That thing we can read, show, share. The sound of the distant other is gone in a click.]

From the email: the Hasselblad Award honours individuals whose work significantly impacts the field and pushes artistic boundaries. Ingrid Pollard, the 44th recipient of the Hasselblad Award, joins an exclusive group of previous Hasselblad Award laureates, including Ansel Adams (1981), Cindy Sherman (1994), Hiroshi Sugimoto (2001), Dayanita Singh (2022), and 2023 laureate, Carrie Mae Weems.

Quite a list. Diverse, brought about by the years of an expanding photography world.

1981, Adams. USD 20,000. “With clarity and precision, he visualized the spectacular vistas and rich native details of the Western United States. In 1942 Ansel Adams developed the “zone system” which employs careful sensitometric control and adjustments of exposure and development. As an artist, a teacher, and a master of photographic technique, Ansel Adams’ influence has been felt by successive generations of photographers from all over the world.”
1999, Sherman. SEK 500,000. “Much of her work has been concerned with the position of women in a consumerist and media-driven society, and with the ironies and contradictions of contemporary women’s lives. She can also be seen as a significant “re-inventor” of two important traditions in photographic art – the photo surrealism of the 1930s and the photo-based conceptual art of the 1960s. Cindy Sherman’s influence on successive generations of artists and photographers has been, and continues to be, immense.“
2001, Sugimoto. SEK 500,000. “Inspired by Renaissance paintings and early 19th century photography, and using a large format camera, Sugimoto achieves a wide range of tones in a body of work that reflects his great love of detail, his outstanding technical mastery and – above all – his fascination with the paradoxes of time.”
2022, Singh. SEK 2,000,000. ““Through photography she records and shapes the stories told within the structure of the archive before turning it into a new form. Her works are moving in several senses of the word: the audience is both touched by and is encouraged to touch the images. “ https://youtu.be/3tgMr5lnA3c?si=PEWKChMlfqlH_Wkk
2023. Weems. SEK 2,000,000. ” “When Carrie Mae Weems first appeared on the scene four decades ago, her work was instantly iconic, even if it took time for the world to recognize it as such. As her vision has evolved in intuitive, unpredictable ways, it has only become more essential.” –-Jury chair, Joshua Chuang

A western film set in Montana, filmed in New Zealand. A re-westernized examination, so the meta goes, about machismo — destructive mannerisms of maleness.

The movie unrolls like a silent era film. Every plot point made in pantomime deliberateness. So much so, you know by the middle of the movie what the ending will be. Unless, as my gang said, you sit in the back of the bus.

Wyoming in New Zealand. Coming to terms with changes of an age. A movie I’d hoped to rewatch. Instead, it is a movie I watched, will consider, probably not watch again. I’ve too many other films, books, tasks to do. I don’t think I will get more from another watching than from some other film a first time.

The movie in one scene: the rabbit in the pile of timbers. By now the masculine and the feminine are coming together to stick a post into the hole. A rabbit runs under a pile of timbers. A game begins: toss timbers aside until the rabbit runs.

He can’t. He is injured. The female man lifts the rabbit to comfort it — seeing it is injured, snaps its neck.

The clear morality point: men kill the weak . These two men are gay. One clearly, the other remaining hidden, like a dog in the distant hill— only some can see.

Not an easy point for the larger audience: the dangerous persons in this film are gay. perhaps that is just the contrarian me. The widower’s son is the killer.

Toxic masculinity – come upance, originally told in 1967 by Thomas Savage. The movie is composed with simplified symbolism. References to the dead, the posers, the educated seer. It is of its time, the fading sixties, and the looking back to a baby-boomer whistle vision of the 20s.

Those who liked the film:

>> On April 6, 2023, it ranked number 15 on The Hollywood Reporter‘s list of the “50 Best Films of the 21st Century (So Far),” calling it a “brilliantly uncomfortable chamber piece about corrosive masculinity fed by sexual repression” and a “psychodrama whose epic scope is echoed in its majestic landscapes.”

>>August 24, 2023, it ranked number 8 on Collider‘s list of “The 20 Best Drama Movies of the 2020s So Far,” saying that Campion “unravels an understated love story in the heart of the American west, and shows how forcing someone to conform can lead to tragic circumstances.”

>> The March 2022 issue of New York magazine included the film as one of “The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars”.