Bodies of Work

Frans Hals, Catharina Both van der Eem, bride of Paulus Beresteyn, 1629

Tom Burke writes, on Saturday: "[On the subject of] single-subject pictures, in this case Wegman’s Weimaraners: I’ve found something similar in other artists and photographers. Jane Bown was lauded as a great portrait photographer—she did portraits two or three times a month for The Observer newspaper—and seen individually they were great. But I once looked through a collection of maybe 100 of them, and I came away with the feeling that they were essentially the same portrait, just with different subjects. Similarly, albeit on an altogether different level, Frans Hals' portraits: all individually utterly brilliant, but not really meant to be seen in an exhibition of 50 or more. I was ready to look at pictures of something very different well before the end of the exhibition."

Jane Bown, Francis Bacon

John Camp adds: "Your analysis of Wegman made me think of Hendrick Kerstens and the photos he takes of his daughter in the faux old-masters style. As you say, it's a schtick, and often quite amusing as well as quite striking. I particularly like the one with the toilet paper rolls."

Hendrik Kerstens, Paper Roll, 2008

Tom and John's observations make an interesting point that I had never thought of before writing the post about my Rockwell Museum visit with Geoff. I was taught in art school that individual images are stronger when they're part of what was termed a "body of work," a term which itself could mean either a whole ouvre, meaning all of an artist's work over her lifetime, or a project, meaning an intentional multi-work grouping of more limited scope—say, for instance, all of the pictures in one book. So all of Ralph Gibson's pictures are a body of work, but his color pictures in the book L'Histoire de France are also a body of work. But of course the opposite can hold true as well, as Tom puts it so well—that some artists repeat variations on a theme, and a single work seen in isolation is more powerful that many such pictures grouped together. John's suggestion of Hendrick Kerstens (who I wrote about here) as a case in point is bang on.

Curiously, I mentioned N.C. Wyeth in that post. Wyeth (I don't even know what his friends called him!) illustrated 112 books, each of which was a de facto body of work; I mean, you can't group a painting of Robin Hood with a bunch of paintings of pirates. But he himself differentiated illustration from art and was of the opinion that there was a gulf between the two. He could conceive, sketch, and execute a large illustration painting in as little as three hours, Wikipedia tells us. But from 1914 onward, according to the same source, he chafed at the compromises forced on him by book illustration, and longed to do more artistic single "easel paintings" that could stand alone.

I've long recognized that the convention of thinking and working in "bodies of work" often falls flat because of repetition and the lack of organic variety. (That is, you can do it poorly, no surprise.) An example I recall is a book called "sunflowers" or something like that. All the pictures were (black-and-white!) shots of, you got it, sunflowers. I had had enough after three of them, and yet there were dozens and dozens more...and nothing else. Just sunflowers. Bad shots thrown in with the good. Certainly the hope of the whole being more than the sum of the parts didn't hold up in that case.  

On another occasion I saw a show in D.C., at the Corcoran, of portraits. The subjects were mainly of D.C. movers and shakers at the time. It got a lot of attention because the mover-and-shaker class was very interested in who got included and who didn't. But the portraits themselves were as dull as rain—same background, same lighting, same "Sunday clothes," same poses. They could have been production-line advertising shots of office furniture for all the visual interest they had.

Courtesy of Harp Gallery

I know, somebody will say they like this as a photograph. Sure you do, but how about if it was with 89 other pictures of slightly different wooden desk chairs on the same background, printed 30 inches wide and shown on the walls of a museum?

It's probably a crucial point for working artists or those who have ambitions to be. To know which way your work functions best and how it's really meant to be seen: in groups, or singly in isolation? There's nothing at all wrong with photographing Weimaraners all your life and making a trademark of it—but it's possible that every great collection of late-20th and early 21st century American photography needs no more than one Wegman!

Mike

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Comments

[Jeff]

Friends and family called him N.C., according to my readings.

[Joe in L.A.]

Ah, a phenomenon also known as the Huey Lewis and the News effect.

[Andrew Sheppard]

It is a nice chair, though...

[Herman Krieger]

Bodies of work: churches
"Churches ad hoc: a divine comedy"
https://hermankrieger.com/church.htm

[MikeR]

Interesting perspective.

My own "body of work" comprises tens of thousands of snapshots. Nothing worth printing or framing.

Except, every so often, there's a bit of accidental magic.

My prints tend toward dark tones ... with intention. Maybe those comprise a true body of work, but I consider each a standalone.

[Albert Smith]

Regarding the chair, I studied drafting in school before I moved into the direction of my primary area of studies. I was surprised upon reviewing a large amount of my photographs taken over decades, to see that I have applied the standard isometric projection principles to many of my inanimate object photos. That is a front, top or side view (one of these) taken with no distance induced perspective effect.

I take very few vanishing point type images or oblique angle shots because I was trained to render objects within that protocol from drafting. This was subconscious and only obvious upon examining a large volume of work.

Yes, I like the chair.

[Omer]

OK, so an artist who achieves making great and diverse work is cool, is making art a state and church supported endeavor?

[James McKearney]

But churches have a diversity that Weimaraners may not.

[Kye Wood]

I was offered a show at a gallery many years ago. But the curator, who'd seen a handful if prints of mine, said that I had to have a themed collection.

I declined, saying that I find random to be interesting and themed to always feel contrived.

My girlfriend at the time, who arranged for the meeting with the curator, never understood it.

[William Lewis]

I am a landscape photographer. I have a number of locations I return to regularly - I call them my "usual suspects". Sometimes I even get good shots from them; ironically it is often the first shot that is the best.

Still I go back, day in, day out, as the seasons change. There are a few of my sites that have turned into multiple shot images of 4 seasons beauty thanks to this bit of ADHD...

YMWV 🤣

[sebastian]

Not related, but coincidentally of interest: how do xyou correctly deal with the case of rare characters, that are not easily accessible from your keyboard?

In this case, it's the ligature of "o" and "e", which happens to be used in the french word œuvre (body of work, especially artistical).

I'd simply use the single characters the ligature originates from - making it "oeuvre".

But, not being native speaking english, I may be missing alternative correct spelling variants.

Cheers!

(oh, and it's an interesting topic, this bodies-of-work discussion)

[robert e]

This kind of thing is why wall calendars were invented.

[Guy Perkins]

Regarding the Tom Burke comment about Jane Bown's work being the same portrait with different people - if he means she took a beautifully lit portrait that shone a light into the sitters character (and sometimes soul) under random conditions and time constraints, well yes, she took the same superb portrait time and time again.

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

I think a body of work (an oeuvre, if you must use the proper French), should not be confused with a series, or a shtick.

If you take the Bechers, you could say that the water towers are a body of work, because it's all the same photograph of different objects, but the idea of an oeuvre is that it unites apparently disparate works. Their oeuvre should at least be ALL the "anonyme skulpturen".

Filmmakers insist on the coherence of their production, even if they do wildly different genres over the years. Kubrick, Tarantino, Bergman, Varda, all have claimed some kind of overall statement to their entire production.

I have no patience either for one-trick ponies: the first fifty sunflowers may be fine, but you gotta stop at some point, and go back to your ideas, not just your preferred motifs.

[Mark Sampson]

This post has been great food for thought. It's an important subject for me, but don't (yet) have anything coherent to add.
Thanks for keeping my brain working!

[Soeren Engelbrecht]

I am currently putting together a "30-year retrospective" book of photographs (just for the myself and the family, so less than ten copies).

It's really, really interesting to look through your own "body of work" to decide which "body parts" should be included. So far, I have narrowed it down to "people pictures", because those are the pictures that mean the most to me by far, and I don't want the book to become a hodgepodge of people, landscape, food, sunflowers, etc. But it's hard to decide on sub-themes/chapters (if any) and so on.

My question to you, Mike, is: Given your vast experience with photo books, which approach would you take to create this type of retrospective book (or any photobook, for that matter) ? A blog post/article of this would interest a lot of readers, I am sure :-)

[Sharon]

Sally Mann knows how to do a photography project. She goes beyond a theme into a study. Just to do a project about, say poverty in the south and having the same dolorous family with skinny dogs and only shooting what you see around the yard and never going past that initial idea IS boring.

Sharon

[Herman Krieger]

Admiring bodies of work-

[John Krumm]

Some photographs, like Wegman's, work best in a very limited series, no more than, dare I say it, 12 photos in a calendar. Any longer and the joke is stale.

[s.wolters]

Frans Hals and Jane Bown worked on commission. That’s a different ball game than what Wegman and Kerstens are playing. In the case of Bown the portraits for the Observer had to fit in a tight concept. They were never meant for showing them together in a book or exhibition but had to support an article! I love her approach. Always very respectful to the ones she photographed and at the same time looking deep into their soul.

Couldn’t you find a better example than Catharina Both van der Eem, bride of Paulus Beresteyn? This kind of stiff formal portrait is of course not typical for the work of Frans Hals and why he became such an important and influential figure. He was one of the great innovators in Dutch 17th century painting. He painted people in a very loose, almost already impressionistic style and was far ahead of his time. Many of his pictures show cheerful, smiling people. Even a no go area for many portraitists nowadays.

[Oh, come now! Look at that EXPRESSION. It's hilarious. Nobody but Hals would dare put that much personality--and that mood--on the face of a highborn lady in a painting. Just because he wasn't free with the paint in this one doesn't mean it's not a real Hals. --Mike]

[Oh and by the way, apropos of nothing, Jane is one of my personal favorite photographers. --Me again]

[AN]

How do you feel about typologies?

[Ben]

"You must release as much of this hoard
as you can, little by little, in perfect time,
as the work of the body becomes a body of work."

William Matthews, from Mingus in Diaspora

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42928/mingus-in-diaspora

[Timothy Auger]

A now-long-departed relative (through various marriages) of mine was a successful society portrait photographer in the 40s/50s era - the National Portrait Gallery in London has quite a lot of her work. Early in career she hit on a lighting and pose formula that worked, and never changed it. Sort of Karsh-ish. You could have unplugged one face and plugged in another. Tom Burke is dead right about Frans Hals - at a recent exhibition in London you could see that he had about (say) three standard setups. Within each formula they were pretty interchangeable. The Laughing Cavalier just happens to be the one we know.