Putting Our Eyes to Work

Mikiko Hara is a young (born 1967) Japanese photographer currently having her first American exhibition at the Cohen Amador gallery. The exhibition is titled “Blind Letter,” the same as the photo book from which the pictures are taken. When I asked Paul Amador what the title referred to, he told me it was a nonce phrase, and that it was not unusual for Japanese photographers to make up such meaningless titles for their work. Absent the clues a more significant title might provide, the viewer approaches her work with caution, scanning the pictures tentatively, hesitating before coming to any fixed conclusions.Ms. Hara studied philosophy at Keio University before doing graduate studies at the Tokyo College of Photography, and her snapshot aesthetic belies a sophisticated visual sense. The 25 untitled pictures are all 14-inch-by-14-inch C prints, a modest size that draws one in to examine them. Most are candid portraits of one or a few people, although several are not. Picture no. 3 (1996) is a cat, but a very odd, complex image.No. 3 was shot outdoors with the camera close to the ground and the lens pointed up so that the top half of the frame is filled with blue sky and benign white clouds. Green shrubs with yellow berries in sharp focus make up the midground. In the lower left corner is a gray metal disk or small wheel of some sort, and the white head of the cat is next to that. The head is slightly out of focus, and the bright sunlight causes the white fur to be over-exposed so that the details of the face are blown-out, making it seem that the cat is eyeless. But the exposure lets us see past the two little fang-like teeth deep into the cat’s open throat. An ordinary domestic animal suddenly takes on an aspect of the demonic, like one of the dramatically shifting creatures in a Noh play.No. 23 (2001) is a middle-age woman seated in an antiseptically modern subway or railroad train. Her figure is in the lower righthand corner, and much of the rest of the picture is a window through which we see the blurred image of what is probably another train. But which train is moving, the one the photographer is on or the one outside the window? Can’t tell. The woman wears a haute couture tailored pants suit in a rich khaki fabric, and sits with her expensive (and simple) black pocketbook on her crossed legs, her pale hands clasped around the handle. In contrast with the motion visible out the window, she is preternaturally still, her eyes shut, the downcast expression on her intelligent face as set as a Kabuki mask. What she might be thinking is an enigma.Many of Ms. Hara’s photographs work the in same manner; apparent off hand simplicity gives way on reflection to troubling complexity. The bluish overcast in no. 16 (1998) means to tell us something about the anxious schoolgirl, but it is not specified. In no. 10 (2001) Ms. Hara pokes the lens of her venerable Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 521/16 medium-format camera into a field of wildflowers so that the bright orange and yellow blooms seen up close are out of focus, and the stalks further down are sharp. Are we looking for something that fell on the ground? Mikiko Hara’s photographs put our eyes to work.***Photographers have been badgering their families to pose for them at least since William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877). Imogen Cunningham and Harry Callahan took notable family pictures, and several contemporary photographers — Nicholas Nixon, Tina Barney, Andrea Stern — have made chronicling their families long-term projects central to their careers. To me, anybody’s family album is interesting, but only an artist’s can be art. There are critical differences between an amateur souvenir from a day at the beach or of baby’s first Christmas party, and an image calculated to engross strangers. Some of Gillian Laub’s family pictures in her “An American Life” exhibition at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery do that.Ms. Laub’s family is a wealthy Jewish bunch that divides its time between Westchester and Miami. The folks and the grandparents are getting on, and — judging by the middlebrow titles in a picture of their bookshelf — no one votes Republican. “Dad’s bear, Chappaqua, NY” (2005) is a 20-inch-by-24-inch chromogenic print of a mounted brown specimen in a corner near a period end table on which are crystal candlesticks, a gold medallion in a block of clear plastic, and small family pictures in ornate oval frames. The flash used for the exposure casts dark shadows on the wall. The incongruity of the hunter’s blood trophy and the delicate antique furnishings, all thrown in sharp relief, are clues to the family’s identity, and make an interesting picture.“Mom’s pillow, Chappaqua, NY” (2004) is an image of the same size of a pink satin pillow with the motto “The best gift a father can give his children is to love their mother” in its central panel. The pillow hangs by a pink chord from a modern chrome door handle. There is a matching chrome lock beneath the handle. The door is slightly ajar so we see the latch bolt sticking out. As much as I endorse the sentiment on the pillow, it does not make a very compelling picture, especially not at this size; the content is too thin.“The Golden Girls (Aunt Dorothy, Grandma, Aunt Doris), Mamaroneck, NY” (2002) shows the three women comfortable with one another and with the photographer. Reading their clothes, jewelry, hairdos and makeup, and seeing what time and life have done to their faces, as well as seeing their delight at the prospect of being imminently transformed by Ms. Laub into works of art, brings us closer to the heart of the family.Hara until July 21 (41 E. 57th St., 6th floor, between Madison and Park avenues, 212-759-6740);Laub until July 7 (41 E. 57th St., between Madison and Park avenues, 212-888-6007).

Putting Our Eyes to Work

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