Snap Judgments: Desouza Focus

This exhibition was organized by the International Center for Photography, which is both a school of photography, and a museum. The show includes over 200 works and exhibits 35 different artists from dealing with African themes. The result was a mix of fashion, collective work, installation, video, but mostly large scale photography.

Because the aesthetic and conceptual angels varied so much between each artist, it was a bit overwhelming. I read all the information on the wall, and yet it was difficult to navigate. All the artists are of considerable fame, according to their resumes, and they all deal with the same continent. However, the transitions weren't smooth, or intentionally disruptive. Fashion photography was in the same room as feminist issues, which was cause for pause, while memory/time based work was along side work about over populated cities.

After some thought, I though it was best to focus on one particularly compelling series, that of Allan Desouza. Allan Desouza's resume is lengthy and impressive, he has had numerous literary works, fiction and nonfiction, published as well as fifteen years of exhibitions. His work displayed here represent a sample from his group of works call the Lost Pictures, where he uses technique to further the content and aesthetic of these "found" pictures.

Perhaps it’s my bias as a painter, but the surface quality of these forced you to stop, and look. It is not apparent what was done with these at the beginning; I detected some digital tampering, which made my heart sink. This is an example of what photographs can really be: frozen memories, or reminders of the absence of memory, and how we live with that, how we deal with the past.

Desouza used photographs that had been taken by his father during his childhood in Kenya. He used a scanned copy of the photographs and taped them within private places in his own home in Los Angeles: the kitchen, the bathroom, so on. Hair, food and other remnants of daily activity accumulated, creating the surface on these enlarged prints. What I don’t understand is the need to digitally work the photographs. Personally, that construes the authenticity of the experience, both on our part and on the artists.