Neeta Madahar

quote from http://www.purdyhicks.com/display.php?aID=16#8

The photography and film practice of Neeta Madahar (born 1966, London) explores the beauty and unexpected drama found in familiar surroundings, representing the physical world in unusual ways enabling the viewer to immerse themselves in the acute details. Her series, Flora, consists of 17 of Madahar's female friends photographed in a style reminiscent of 1930-50s celebrity glamour images alongside plants whose names have been adopted as women's names. Like earlier bodies of work, Flora functions within the inter-relationship of nature, artifice and perception.

quotes from http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/neeta-madahar/

She says: “I’m attracted to the high level of construction and theatricality present in the work of these photographers. Another common strand is the pleasure in materials, textures and shaping of light. For example, many of Beaton’s images contain sparkling, shimmering surfaces that are so bright they caused areas of his photographs to become blown out. The exaggerated, excessive flamboyance evident in the portraits of many of these photographers is also something I embraced in Flora.”

“My interest in the fantasy, feminine projections that constitute Flora was to see what kind of images could be made in the present day, when an aging female photographer and sitter that share a friendship – inherently entailing some history, intimacy and trust – collaborate on an equal, non-hierarchical footing. Our awareness of gender, identity politics and how the vast array of images that are in circulation, portraying idealisations of women, operate on our subconscious was embedded in the process of making the work.Flora has given me greater insight into perceptions of beauty amongst my peers and how these impact upon self-esteem and confidence. Given the regular frequency with which articles about beauty, aging and sexuality appear in the media, I am also increasingly angry at the blatant way the visibility and career trajectories of women are thwarted by current prejudices.”

from my hetero male perspective, these arent concerns i have thought about or have wanted to delve into.  suppose i worry when i explain to my partner why she is the prettiest and she doesnt believe me

“I don’t think of myself as enjoying some kind of power to marry the natural with the artificial, although clearly I am interested in the construction of images rather than purely documenting what I have found without intervention. The blurred boundaries between nature and artifice and how the interaction of the two is interpreted through perception fascinate me.”

i think her approach to making images is very different from mine. she likes to create things before hand and carefully craft things, which she then carefully photographs. i guess i miss out that careful construction of tiny things and go straight to the documentation. i try to be careful of my framing and of what i am photographing. i hope the creativity in my work is the framing and playing with the camera, the processing of the paper and the playing with it and thinking about it afterwards. 

i suppose the marrying of artificial and natural is the marriage of the image of a flower on photographic paper, the flower being the natural thing, the plant pot being the man-made thing, the soil being cultivated, the paper being of natural material processed by mankind, the silver being what was natural mineral ore, taken and manipulated and changed to create something to be made use of, and the process of the chemicals as well is the act of man meeting the natural world. 

so to sum up:

the plant is the beginning natural
the plant is put into a plant pot and changed a little bit

the silver is mined and changed completely
the tree is cut down and processed to paper
the silver and paper are added together
the somewhat natural flower is imprinted onto the paper, the natural dies in this moment

the paper with  is processed in chemicals, the dead natural flower, mutated, died and is now embalmed in chemicals to keep it in that state forever

“My use of photography came after I had worked in painting, drawing, installation and video. I love the elegance, problem-solving logic and language of mathematics, but my route to photography came through the exploration of fine art. There are a wide range of artists that influence me including Tacita Dean, Ed Ruscha and Fischli/Weiss. The art I love makes me lose my breath. I never tire of experiencing it and of course, wish that I had made it first.”

i might be awful at maths, but i love logic solving, i am addicted to sudoku puzzles, being able to finish the logic i guess just feels great for me, and logic and reasoning is something that usually comes naturally to me, not always. i think i struggle a lot with fine art too, a lot of times i see it as circumstantial, one can take any old shit, and apply knowledge to it; one can polish a turd, but its still a turd. not that i see neeta madahars images like that, much the opposite! they are creative and wonderful, full of life/ however if worry if this is what is happening to my images by myself, that i am taking shitty boring pictures, that have some aesthetic quality, and applying background and research to them and trying to call it art, worth something? as they say context is key, hopefully this much is true.

Quote from http://www.db-artmag.com/en/56/on-view/back-to-the-garden-at-the-60-wall-gallery/

Neeta Madahar, who scatters origami flowers on photographic paper and exposes it for the photograms of her series Cosmoses (2006). The delicate floral shapes on monochromatic backgrounds give the viewer the feeling of gazing into a kind of endlessness.

I was wondering how she made these pictures, but if anything this statement has left me with more questions about the technical side of the project

Quote from http://www.saulgallery.com/works-by/neeta-madahar/show:statement

Madahar continues to work with nature in her second project Falling (2005), tapping into associations with childhood and dreamlike states of the imagination as she documents the each stage of the flight and landing of a sycamore leaf.

yes i definitely got the feeling of dreamlike swirling from her images in falling. the origami flowers even if they are still are swirling and moving and dancing, its like she took a several second exposure of ballerinas from above in a pure white place, i dont know like an empty place like how purgatory is depicted in cartoons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbPeGqjH7sA interview of Neeta Madahar

she says she likes photography for the fleeting moments she likes to shoot, because it invites you to look and look and look

she talks about the construction of her flowers in cosmoses and how the construction and the handmade-ness is important

is this important for me? well the stretching out of time of something that will wither and die is important, to say about loss and disapearing