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Volume CXXXI, Number 23 |
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Lecture highlights photo work
HANNAH DEAN
STAFF WRITER
Nigel Poor began her lecture entitled "8 Words" with a quotation
by Ambrose Bierce that defined a day as "a period of 24 hours, mostly
misspent." Poor was quick to say that it is each person's duty to
prove this statement wrong.
Although some of her students might say that Poor is "obsessed
with death," she asserts that she is "really obsessed with time."
It is this obsession that has driven her to try to capture, by means of
photography, the passage of time and its effects on the living world.
The result has been beauty in its most simple and pure forms-found in
objects that one might never bother to glance at twice, if at all.
In Poor's hands a scattering of dirt particles is transformed
into the night sky dusted with stars; the hair that one might find in
the drain becomes a delicate thing of splendor and grace on a white page.
As the scholar-in-residence, Poor spent the spring semester
on site at the Bowdoin Coastal Studies Center. Besides working on her
own artistic experiments and works in progress while on the island, Poor
also taught a course entitled "Observation to Obsession: An Exploration
of Looking" (Art 185). The course is primarily concerned with "an
exploration of every day life and how, with careful observation, extraordinary
things can happen."
Her lecture centered on the projects that she has been engaged
in while residing at the Bowdoin Coastal Studies Center. These projects
included a range of themes.
For the first project, which was based upon collections
of dead flies and ladybugs, Poor created photograms-i.e. contact prints.
These are made by placing something opaque or translucent on light sensitive
material and then exposing it to light. This blocks out part of the light
and the result is an outline of the object.
By placing the carcasses on the light sensitive paper and
then, frame by frame, reducing the dead insects to dust, Poor was able
to create beauty out of something that might normally be considered disgusting.
Another project entitled "Evidence of Thought"
involved a wide range of people choosing three objects that described
themselves. Yet another project in progress, non-photographic in style,
is entitled "Tiny Writing." The intent of this project, said
Poor, is to "prove that we can't get rid of the actions in our lives-we
can say the action didn't happen, but we can's take the emotional response
to action away."
To convey this, Poor set up three sheets: the first on which
she wrote the action, the second contained the thoughts that correspond
to the actions, and the emotions that accompany the actions were recorded
on the third sheet. The result was three blocks of tiny writing, the actions
compiling the smallest block and the emotion compiling the largest block
of writing.
The final piece that Poor presented was entitled "The
Lint Piece." In order to "show the passage of time," Poor
collected pieces of lint resulting from the washing of clothes. By tracking
this seemingly mundane activity through the medium of photography, Poor
was able to create something amazingly graceful.
Nigel Poor earned her bachelor's degree in photography and
literature from Bennington College, and her master of fine arts degree
in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art.
Poor's lecture was held at the Visual Arts Center at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday April 24.