Jill Corson Artist Statement

JILL CORSON

Images CV Statement

Artist’s Statement

The Way I See

I look for and find the fantastic in our urban environments. I peer into stores and restaurants, through buildings, to other streets running perpendicular. I see fragments of others and myself behind me. I watch movies of pedestrians splash across windows moments before the principles pass behind me, engaged in conversation. Mirrors show me their tricks, and I see deeper and deeper inside, beside, behind.

I began to see in a new way in 1997. That year, I made a photograph, “Earth Angel I,” that changed the way I looked at the world. I saw the inside and the outside at the same moment. The green gown displayed in the window of an Atlanta shop blended with a building and trees across Highland Avenue. This photograph captured a moment in a manner that I felt mirrored human personality – revealing multiple layers, depth and mystery.

Two years later, I began making other photographs similar to Earth Angel I. Using reflection in store windows, I juxtaposed objects on display inside windows with buildings, pedestrians, vehicles, signage and vegetation on surrounding streets. These photographs became the See Through City series. Since 1999, I’ve made photographs for this series in pedestrian shopping districts in Amsterdam, Atlanta, Boston, London, Miami, New York and San Francisco.

I’m fascinated by found beauty -- things we pass by without noticing in ever-changing city streets. With the interaction of light, glass, mirrors and the movement of pedestrians, cyclists, cars, buses and trucks, kaleidoscopic forms rapidly appear and dissipate.

Color

I’m a colorist. I’m attracted to saturated color in a completely automatic manner that’s unconscious. It’s pretty simple. Color makes me happy; I like to wear it and I like to look at it. Color is an integral component of my life and my photographs.

Simultaneous Realities

I employ photography in the See Through City series to illustrate the convergence of myriad takes on reality in a moment. Each image in this series provides a photographic core sample of a moment.

I watch people in crowds pass by one another on sidewalks. Each person is engaged in his or her personal mission of the moment. They’re together in the same spatial plane, yet they experience reality separately and differently from one another. In the moment that I photograph a crowd, pedestrians’ minds are occupied by their individual beliefs, dreams, fears, memories and takes on reality. Each of these realities is valid; all of them exist simultaneously in the moment.

Our Connection to One Another

Another idea I try to express visually in the series is urban dwellers’ simultaneous connection to and isolation from one another. I’ve always been drawn to cities, perhaps because I was born in Chicago. I’m interested in the tension between anonymity and being known in the city.

I live and work in a city with millions of residents. I sit and stand in close physical proximity to other individuals in subway cars, buses, trains and elevators. While people appear to travel in packs on crowded city sidewalks, they’re often solitary, introverted and isolated from one another. Yet it’s only through cooperation with others that we accomplish anything in life.

I wanted to create photographs in the See Through City series that illustrated our connectedness and responsibility to one another as human beings. In December 2003, I was walking north on Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village and saw what I’d sought for so long. I made the photograph “We Walk Alone Together.”

To me, this photograph illustrates the connectedness between two strangers – a man sitting in a booth in a restaurant and a man walking on the sidewalk. They appear to be holding hands in the photograph. This isn’t a trick of double exposure or a photo montage made using Photoshop. This is what I saw on that afternoon, with the help of a pane of glass.

The Role of the Publicity Image in the American Quest for More

My artwork also explores a paradox of life in a capitalist society. Publicity images and store displays line city streets, seducing the haves and have-nots with equal opportunity come-ons. In Ways of Seeing John Berger writes:

Publicity as a system only makes a single proposal. It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer – even though we will be poorer by having spent our money.

Publicity persuades us of such a transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable. The state of being envied is what constitutes glamour. And publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour.[i]

The pursuit of the American Dream propels individuals to succeed or at least acquire the veneer of success. Many of us do see through the façade of the con. We know we can’t actually improve life by buying certain products. Yet we yearn to acquire more material possessions, often recklessly going into debt. In American Mania: When More Is Not Enough, Dr. Peter C. Whybrow says:

. . .Americans are addictively driven by the brain’s pleasure centers to live turbocharged lives in pursuit of status and possessions at the expense of the only things that can truly make us happy: relationships with other people.[ii]

My photographs blend the fantasy of carefully designed store window displays with the reality of life on the surrounding street. They express both my swooning romantic feelings for the city and my distaste for the shallowness and hollowness of the whole enterprise of marketing goods to spur consumer acquisition. My simultaneous attraction to and revulsion by the material world is schizophrenic. I admit I’m fascinated by the shiny and pretty and by sleek design. I’m embarrassed by how easily I can be seduced by advertising and store displays and how I quickly I can justify my desire for something hawked by a store or magazine. We’re all susceptible to the carefully crafted messages of advertising, because as Berger writes:

The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It offers him an improved alternative to what he is.[iii]

It's my hope that my photographs lead individuals to view our lives within cities in a new manner.

[i] John Berger, Ways of Seeing, (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972), p. 131.

[ii]Irene Lacher, “In New Book, Professor Sees a ‘Mania’ in U.S. for Possessions and Status,” The New York Times, 12 March 2005, p. B1.

[iii] Berger, Ways of Seeing, p. 142.

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JILL CORSON Images CV Statement Artist’s Statement The Way I See I look for and find the fantastic in our urban environments. I peer into stores and restaurants, through buildings, to other streets running perpendicular. I see fragments of others and myself behind me. I watch movies of pedestrians splash across windows moments before the principles pass behind me, engaged in conversation. Mirrors show me their tricks, and I see deeper and deeper inside, beside, behind. I began to see in a new way in 1997. That year, I made a photograph, “Earth Angel I,” that changed the way I looked at the world. I saw the inside and the outside at the same moment. The green gown displayed in the window of an Atlanta shop blended with a building and trees across Highland Avenue. This photograph captured a moment in a manner that I felt mirrored human personality – revealing multiple layers, depth and mystery. Two years later, I began making other photographs similar to Earth Angel I. Using reflection in store windows, I juxtaposed objects on display inside windows with buildings, pedestrians, vehicles, signage and vegetation on surrounding streets. These photographs became the See Through City series. Since 1999, I’ve made photographs for this series in pedestrian shopping districts in Amsterdam, Atlanta, Boston, London, Miami, New York and San Francisco. I’m fascinated by found beauty -- things we pass by without noticing in ever-changing city streets. With the interaction of light, glass, mirrors and the movement of pedestrians, cyclists, cars, buses and trucks, kaleidoscopic forms rapidly appear and dissipate. Color I’m a colorist. I’m attracted to saturated color in a completely automatic manner that’s unconscious. It’s pretty simple. Color makes me happy; I like to wear it and I like to look at it. Color is an integral component of my life and my photographs. Simultaneous Realities I employ photography in the See Through City series to illustrate the convergence of myriad takes on reality in a moment. Each image in this series provides a photographic core sample of a moment. I watch people in crowds pass by one another on sidewalks. Each person is engaged in his or her personal mission of the moment. They’re together in the same spatial plane, yet they experience reality separately and differently from one another. In the moment that I photograph a crowd, pedestrians’ minds are occupied by their individual beliefs, dreams, fears, memories and takes on reality. Each of these realities is valid; all of them exist simultaneously in the moment. Our Connection to One Another Another idea I try to express visually in the series is urban dwellers’ simultaneous connection to and isolation from one another. I’ve always been drawn to cities, perhaps because I was born in Chicago. I’m interested in the tension between anonymity and being known in the city. I live and work in a city with millions of residents. I sit and stand in close physical proximity to other individuals in subway cars, buses, trains and elevators. While people appear to travel in packs on crowded city sidewalks, they’re often solitary, introverted and isolated from one another. Yet it’s only through cooperation with others that we accomplish anything in life. I wanted to create photographs in the See Through City series that illustrated our connectedness and responsibility to one another as human beings. In December 2003, I was walking north on Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village and saw what I’d sought for so long. I made the photograph “We Walk Alone Together.” To me, this photograph illustrates the connectedness between two strangers – a man sitting in a booth in a restaurant and a man walking on the sidewalk. They appear to be holding hands in the photograph. This isn’t a trick of double exposure or a photo montage made using Photoshop. This is what I saw on that afternoon, with the help of a pane of glass. The Role of the Publicity Image in the American Quest for More My artwork also explores a paradox of life in a capitalist society. Publicity images and store displays line city streets, seducing the haves and have-nots with equal opportunity come-ons. In Ways of Seeing John Berger writes: Publicity as a system only makes a single proposal. It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer – even though we will be poorer by having spent our money. Publicity persuades us of such a transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable. The state of being envied is what constitutes glamour. And publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour.[i] The pursuit of the American Dream propels individuals to succeed or at least acquire the veneer of success. Many of us do see through the façade of the con. We know we can’t actually improve life by buying certain products. Yet we yearn to acquire more material possessions, often recklessly going into debt. In American Mania: When More Is Not Enough, Dr. Peter C. Whybrow says: . . .Americans are addictively driven by the brain’s pleasure centers to live turbocharged lives in pursuit of status and possessions at the expense of the only things that can truly make us happy: relationships with other people.[ii] My photographs blend the fantasy of carefully designed store window displays with the reality of life on the surrounding street. They express both my swooning romantic feelings for the city and my distaste for the shallowness and hollowness of the whole enterprise of marketing goods to spur consumer acquisition. My simultaneous attraction to and revulsion by the material world is schizophrenic. I admit I’m fascinated by the shiny and pretty and by sleek design. I’m embarrassed by how easily I can be seduced by advertising and store displays and how I quickly I can justify my desire for something hawked by a store or magazine. We’re all susceptible to the carefully crafted messages of advertising, because as Berger writes: The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It offers him an improved alternative to what he is.[iii] It's my hope that my photographs lead individuals to view our lives within cities in a new manner. [i] John Berger, Ways of Seeing, (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972), p. 131. [ii]Irene Lacher, “In New Book, Professor Sees a ‘Mania’ in U.S. for Possessions and Status,” The New York Times, 12 March 2005, p. B1. [iii] Berger, Ways of Seeing, p. 142.