Sam Taylor Wood (b.1967) graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1990. Her work in
photography and film has won her much international critical acclaim, including the
Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Young Artist at the Venice Biennale (1997) and
a Turner Prize nomination (1998). Taylor-Wood is at the forefront of the new generation
of contemporary British art. Since her first solo exhibition at White Cube in 1995,
she has had numerous solo exhibitions, including being the youngest artist ever to
be granted a solo exhibition at The Hayward Gallery. A contemporary artist working
mostly in video and photography. She has been identified as a member of the young
British Artist group, and is a graduate of Goldsmiths College. She is married to
her art dealer Jay Jopling.
Taylor-Wood's parents divorced when she was a teenager, and she moved with her mother
and step-father to a New Age commune in Surrey. It is commonly believed that Sam's
mother abandoned the family when her daughter was sixteen and she moved into a bed-sit
to live alone, but in reality Sam moved to Brighton to attend fashion college with
her boyfriend at the time (Jake Chapman) before her mother left. Having fared poorly
in exams, it took Taylor-Wood several years to gain the required qualification for
Goldsmiths College to complete a Fine Art degree.
Taylor-Wood’s work examines the split between being and appearance, often placing
her human subjects – either singly or in groups – in situations where the line between
interior and external sense of self is in conflict. In Prelude (2006), for example,
Taylor-Wood filmed a musician playing a piece of cello music by Bach, but the cello
itself has been erased. Likewise, in Breach (Girl and Eunuch) (2001), a girl is portrayed
sitting on the floor in the throes of grief, but the sound of her tears has been
removed and in her languid and in her silent film portrait of David Beckham, simply
entitled David (2004), the artist offers us a serene alternative to this most intensively
photographed celebrity. In the celebrated film Still Life (2001), an impossibly beautiful
bowl of fruit decays at an accelerated pace, creating a momento mori that is more
visceral punch than symbolic association. Taylor-Wood has also explored notions of
weight and gravity in elegiac, poised photographs and films such as Ascension (2003)
and a series of self-portraits that depict the artist floating in mid air without
the aid of any visible support, or balancing on the upturned edge of a tipping chair.
In her film The Last Century (2006), what appears to be a static image of a group
of people slowly reveals itself to be a real, filmed take, timed to the length of
a burning cigarette: the film is entirely static apart from the involuntary blinking,
twitching and barely-visible breathing of four motionless actors, all arranged around
a central figure as if in a group portrait painted by Rembrandt or Caravaggio.
A cellist sits playing a Bach prelude, eyes clamped in pained concentration, absorbed
in the moment. So absorbed, in fact, that he's forgotten to bring his cello. You
stare at this writhing figure wondering what it represents - a convulsive, shamanistic
mime? The fantasies of a cultured kid who dreamed of being Rostropovich while his
mates practised Metallica solos? Or could it be a metaphor for Sam Taylor-Wood's
work in general - smartly produced and superficially arresting, but cradling a troubling
vacancy at its core?
A new piece entitled The Last Century appears to be a still image of a group of revellers
in an East End pub, except the central figure's cigarette slowly burns down to a
coil of ash. The scenario creates the impression of being suspended in a single moment,
it's just that it isn't a particularly interesting one.
These pieces aside, the show is filled with work that has been exhibited before,
notably the film of David Beckham sleeping, about which everything has been said
already, except that what we really need now are images of Wayne Rooney recuperating
in an oxygen tent.
There's nothing outwardly offensive about these works, just the apparent banality
behind their conception.
The enigma of a man with a pigeon on his head tap-dancing on the chest of another
man lying on the floor is hardly enhanced by the artist's comment: "It's the strangest
thing to see a man with a pigeon on his head tap-dancing on the chest of another
man lying on the floor." To which it might be added that the image of a cellist sawing
thin air eventually makes the air seem very thin indeed.
The film of David Beckham sleeping and the series of photographs of crying actors
play with our festishistic fascination with fame, highlighting the voyeuristic nature
of photography itself.
Wood works best when she explores her medium and art history
itself. The Last Century at first resembles a still image of an East End pub full
of a modern version of 19th-century absinthe drinkers. Yet a wisp of smoke forces
you to realise that everyone is staying still and that’s it’s actually a film. Her
speeded-up movies of decaying fruit and animals update 17th-century still lifes to
hyperreality gothic.Yet, at the same time, much of the work fails to connect. Some
of the more recent film pieces have the same Emperor’s New Clothes feel as Bill Viola.
Just as you begin to be annoyed by Wood, however, she forces you to like her. Her
recent self-portrait series, Self Portrait Suspended and Bram Stoker’s Chair, depict
her suspended mid-air like a floating foetus. There’s something innocent and much
more sensitive here than the reputation for fame and excess would like to admit.
Sam Taylor-Wood's photographs and film installations depict human dramas and isolated
emotional instances, such as a quarreling couple and tense social gatherings—people
in solitary, awkward, or vulnerable moments. These psychologically charged narratives
are often presented on a grand scale, in room-encompassing video projections or 360-degree
photographic panoramas accompanied by sound tracks. In her Soliloquy series (1998–99),
Taylor-Wood's cinematic sensibility is coupled with references to the history of
painting. The photographs are structured like Renaissance altarpieces and predellas
(iconographically related panels attached along altarpiece bases): a large-format
portrait is paired with a panoramic image below. Captured in a personal moment of
self-reflection, asleep, or daydreaming, the subjects are often depicted in poses
borrowed from well-known paintings. In Soliloquy I (1998), for example, the languid
pose of the sleeping man recalls that of the dying poet in Henry Wallis's The Death
of Chatterton (1865), and in Soliloquy III (1998), the reclining nude recalls Velázquez's
Rokeby Venus (1650).
Typically, the people portrayed in Taylor-Wood's works are self-absorbed
and seemingly detached from their own environment. The title of this series is derived
from the name of the theatrical monologue during which an actor disrupts the narrative
to directly address the audience with some commentary on the story. That state of
deliberate disengagement is implied by the dual images comprising each work: the
larger photo represents the conscious state of the subject, while the filmic tableau
below provides a register of his or her subconscious fantasies. Sometimes the characters
reappear in this imaginary world—the nude from Soliloquy III sits at the back of
the loft space, dressed in red, observing at a distance the erotic activities that
occur before her. In Soliloquy II (1998), the shirtless male figure, who, in the
large image, is surrounded by dogs (in a pose reminiscent of a Thomas Gainsborough
hunting portrait), appears seated with a dog in the corner of the bathhouse setting
of the “predella.” Reality invades fantasy when a dog's tail or the sleeping figure's
hand crosses from the top image into the panel below, scale unchanged—a grotesque
intrusion into the imaginary realm.
Sam Taylor-Woods is undoubtedly one of the least extrovert members of the Sensation
Generation, a group of British artists who created an international furore in the
nineties. While Tracey Emin (whose work can be seen at the Stedelijk later this year)
thematizes her own life in an unmediafied manner, Taylor-Woods prefers to represent
her experiences by resorting to classical symbols, often derived from (religious)
paintings. Mortality and transiency are the themes of photos like Bound Ram and Self
Portrait as a Tree, images whose powerful symbolism is not entirely devoid of pathos.
But this melancholy self-image is countered by the provocative, erotically charged
Self Portrait in a Single Breasted Suit with Hare. The title is an unmistakable reference
to the disease she overcame but at the same time, viz. the hare she is holding up,
a frank avowal of (erotic) lust for life.
Over the past few years Sam Taylor-Woods work has been shown in several major international
and solo exhibitions in venues around the world, and in 1998 she was nominated for
England's prestigious Turner Prize.
Ten ways to improve family portrait photography
Easy Suggestions that will improve your family portrait photography. Take better
photographs of your children, friends, and family. Great photography hints!
I once heard a photography professor say something like, "I dare you to show me a
bad photograph. There is something good in every photograph." Those weren't his exact
words, but that's close to the sentiment he was trying to get across to his students.
The challenge, I found, was to focus primarily on that "something good" and make
it the entire photo. It can be done! Professional photographers use a lot of techniques
that do not require expensive equipment. All they require is a good eye for that
"Special moment."
Here are ten tricks to getting better photographs of your family, children, friends,
and others.
1. Take lots of photos. If you are trying to capture a natural shot of a child, especially,
take a lot of photos. Get them used to the camera. Bore them with it. Eventually,
they'll loosen up and begin to ignore you. That's when you've got them where you
want them. Once you become a natural part of the environment, your subject will react
naturally in front of you.
2. Take your time. Try to compose the photograph before you click! Is there something
in the way of your subject? Move it. Is there something wrong with the background?
Change it. Take control. Behave like an artist. You are creating a work of art.
3. Try to add a little variety to your photos. Don't stick to the same mundane posing
arrangements everytime you shoot. Professional photographers take chances, you can,
too.
4. Experiment. Cut a hole in a piece of black construction paper. Now, shoot a picture
looking through the hole. Make sure that the construction paper is in the photo.
It will show up as just blackness when your film is developed, and your subject will
be shown in a bright circle in the middle. These can create some dramatic shots.
5. Create a background. Put your children into it. Have them act out a scene from
a play. Yell freeze and ask them to become statues. Take the shot. These can be memorable!
6. Experiment with shooting from different angles. Lay on the floor. Climb up on
a ladder. Be creative.
7. Don't be afraid of action shots. Most automatic cameras do a great job of capturing
motion. Just check your film speed. Be certain that it's correct for your purpose.
8. Check out some tinted lenses at a photography shop. You can change colors, soften
wrinkles, etc. Talk to the expert at your local camera shop for more ideas and information
on this. It's great fun!
9. Look at artistic photography. Learn from the masters!
10. Try taking some black and white photographs. The results might surprise you.
When you are no longer relying on color, subject matter and composition stand out!
You may fall in love with the look of black and white photographs.
You don't need an expensive camera to take good photographs. Most people buy far
more camera than they really know how to use, or need for that matter. The main thing
is getting out there and taking some photos. Have fun. Experiment. Allow yourself
to think like an artist. You'll be amazed at the results!
