persuasion
55 | Persuasion
Alec Soth
Grand Palais
2007
from series Paris / Minnesota
Courtesy Magnum Photos
Soth’s Grand Palais conveys subtle messages on several levels. It is, of course, ‘about’ the theatre of Parisian fashion, which still manages to maintain its gold-standard position in the global fashion world. It is also a portrait of someone for whom the word ‘icon’ is – for once – appropriate: the late Karl Lagerfeld, who understood Soth’s game and played his part in it. But, by pulling back and including another photographer, peeking in from the side, Soth is willing to puncture our assumption of exclusivity, showing that he is not alone, merely another pawn in the construction and maintenance
56 | Persuasion
Brian Ulrich
Chicago, IL
from series Retail
Courtesy the artist
Brian Ulrich’s picture of an American family in a vast electronic cornucopia speaks to the seductive powers of mass media, and mass marketing, its seductive messages multiplied and amplified. His framing takes in this gigantic building, which might be called a factory of consumption: it is literally producing consumption. The family stares spellbound at a white-clad figure (a ‘celebrity chef’?) making a heroic gesture; cloning turns him into an army, a thought reinforced by the ordered march to infinity of the lighting fixtures. Only thousands of dollars stand in the way of this family’s enhanced visual pleasure!
57 | Persuasion
Andrew Moore
Al Meena Mall, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2009
from series Abu Dhabi
Courtesy Yancey Richardson Gallery
Until late in the 20th century, the mall seemed to be a quintessentially American thing, like fast-food and motels. All were the logical outcome of the rise of both suburbia and automobility. Malls were often built on urban fringes, and were inward-facing, cleverly designed to focus everyone’s energies on consumption. Today the mall is a global phenomenon – at least for the moment, for on-line shopping is taking it’s toll. Andrew Moore’s Al Meena Mall could be almost anywhere, save for the gigantic banners of Abu Dhabi’s elite, and possibly the taste for bedspreads. A lone human seems to be guarding the outflow from this economic oasis.
58 | Persuasion
Patrick Weidmann
on the left
USA0161-2017, 2017
in the center, from the top
JAP5011-2016, 2016
DSC1230-2016, 2016
on the right
JAP5096-2016, 2016
2016
Courtesy the artist
Patrick Weidmann is not interested in simple documentation of the landscape of persuasion: billboards and signs: Free! Improved! Or in racks of luxury goods on the shelves of trendy boutiques. His interests lie in the deeper structures of consumer psychology – the visual language of persuasion. What principles draw us to consume en masse? Why are we drawn to certain products? The glitter of light on plastic and metal, the seduction of sinuous form… Weidmann’s close croppings obscure scale and confound meaning. He warns us: blind materialism leads only to a dead-end
59 | Persuasion
Robert Walker
from left to right
Times Square, New York, 2010
Times Square, New York, 2009
Times Square, New York, 2004
2004
Courtesy the artist
Marketeers, promoters, politicians … Almost everyone is bombarded daily with messages encouraging people to buy this or that product, adhere to this or that ideology. For many years, Walker has focused his camera on that epicentre of incessant, strident messaging – New York City’s ever-pulsating Times Square. He keenly observes the interplay between monumentally scaled flashing signs and their moving targets – the tiny human figures of the tourists constantly streaming through this glittering playground, spellbound. Do they not recognise that, for a brief moment, they are actually part of the spectacular tableau? Walker suggests that people are complicit in the theatre of persuasion.
60 | Persuasion
Dougie Wallace
Harrodsburg
2016
from series Harrodsburg
Courtesy the artist
In his series Harrodsburg, Wallace looks at the excessive wealth and consumerism that can be found around the Knightsbridge area close to the world-famous department store Harrods. From the mid 1970s onwards, Gulf millionaires began coming to the area, later joined by the Oligarchs and the Hedgies. Wallace intends the work as a stark exposé of the emergence of this ultra- affluent elite who are changing the face of the city and, in Wallace’s view, ‘pricing out not just ordinary people but even the upper middle class natives of Central London, and marginalising old wealth from their time-honoured habitats’.
61 | Persuasion
Eric Thayer
A test card pattern on a Jumbotron above the Quicken Loans Arena as preparations were underway for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
2016
Courtesy New York Times e Redux
Thayer’s reportage at the Republican National Convention in 2016 was extensive – made for the moment, as is all good photojournalism. But this image transcends its immediate time frame. It stands for the current media-saturated civilisation and could just as easily be the product of a Chinese, Arab, European or South American propaganda machine. In the oft- quoted words of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, ‘the medium is the message’. Here the all-important video imagery technology is being fine-tuned, its vibrant colours and rapidly morphing shapes soon to seduce and cajole not only the participants in the great hall but also the millions tuning
62 | Persuasion
Andy Freeberg
Sean Kelly
2010
from series Art Fare
Courtesy the artist
Freeberg prowls the galleries of New York, along with contemporary art fairs in Basel, Miami and New York, in search of unguarded moments that reveal that the surface glitter of the art world hides a more mundane reality: the high-stakes game of the six- to eight-figure hard sell. Freeberg has described the way in which borders seems to melt away in the contemporary art world – as he notes, ‘This gallery was founded in Switzerland, its owner is English, its director is French and the artist, Kehinde Wiley, is of Nigerian and African-American descent – and has a studio in Beijing where Chinese painters assist him’.
63 | Persuasion
Shigeru Takato
Cologne V
2004
from series Television Studios
Courtesy the artist
Over twenty years, Takato has photographed more than two hundred television studios. Television portrays the world through reporting and storytelling, influencing people’s perceptions of the world. Television studios are places where an enormous amount of energy converges from many different corners of our planetary civilisation. This is why they often have a circular structure, implying that they are at the centre of the world. In Takato’s work, these studios remain silent, although they are primed to tell their stories. A muted studio is deprived of its basic function – ironically, this allows us to see it more clearly.
64 | Persuasion
Nick Hannes
The Persian Court at the Ibn Battuta Mall, Dubai, 2016
2016
from series Dubai. Bread and Circuses
Courtesy the artist
Bread and Circuses is a three-year documentary project on leisure, consumerism and market-driven urbanisation in Dubai. It showcases the city as the ultimate playground of globalisation and capitalism, while raising questions about authenticity and sustainability – a Persian Court cum Starbucks? Dubai’s rapid transformation from a dusty fishing town in the 1960s to the ultra-modern metropolis of today fascinates supporters and critics. With its prestigious shopping malls, artificial islands and iconic skyscrapers (not to mention hordes of migrant workers), the little emirate on the Persian Gulf may prove to be a future model city or a short-lived playground for the fortunate.
65 | Persuasion
Andrew Esiebo
God is Alive
During the monthly Prayer service called “Holy Ghost Night” of Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries, pastors knelt down to seek forgiveness and prayers from their leader after they controversially left the church.
2011
Courtesy the artist
In Esiebo’s eyes, God is at the heart of life in Nigeria. Religious spaces are found in every nook and cranny of the country. The current wave of Pentecostal and Charismatic movements arose in the 1970s from the literate environment of Nigerian colleges and universities. These movements expanded their reach to form linkages with similar movements in the United States. They have since grown into mega churches, boasting a hundred thousand members or more. The late 1980s also saw the adoption of media technologies to propagate their evangelical messages, enlist new members and advertise themselves to the public.
66 | Persuasion
Sato Shintaro
from the top
Kabukicho, Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo / Kabukicho, Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo
Dotonbori, Chuo Ward, Osaka / Omori-Kita, Ota Ward, Tokyo
1997-1999
from series Night Lights
Courtesy PGI, Tokyo
Entertainment districts in Japan are full of places that cater to human desires for food, sex and amusement. The myriad billboards create intriguing rhythms of colour, light and shape. When shooting, Sato eliminates human figures in order to accent the physical texture of the city. At a certain moment, he opens his lens, then, when people arrive, he quickly covers it with a sheet of black paper. By repeating this procedure several times, he accumulates the necessary exposure time of between thirty seconds and one minute. Gaudy billboards remind Sato of ‘flowers that bloom while breathing the air of obscenity’.
67 | Persuasion
Priscilla Briggs
Happy (Golden Resources Mall, Beijing)
2008
from series Fortune
Courtesy the artist
Briggs imagines civilisation as a teeming organism in which cultures overlap and intermix, constantly evolving into new forms. Global economies of manufacturing and trade shape the fate of people around the world, not to mention the future of the environment. Her photographs of the retail and manufacturing landscapes of China reveal a specific historic moment of rapid economic growth when ‘mega’ shopping malls became symbols of economic progress. Here, within the burnished marble halls of Prada, Louis Vuitton and Gucci, the influence of Western culture and its preoccupation with wealth and luxury find fertile ground in a rapidly modernising China.
68 | Persuasion
Natan Dvir
Desigual
2013
from series Coming Soon
Courtesy the artist
Dvir’s urban spectacles, where gigantic advertising billboards dwarf the people below, offer a stinging critique of unbridled consumerism. However, the photographs are not without irony and, indeed, humour. The passers-by unwittingly feature in the tableaux, mimicking poses and postures, or act as counterpoints, drawing attention to the absurdity of the advertisers’ claims – ‘Happy Ideas All the Time’ or ‘Better & Better’. Dvir’s pictures suggest that modern urbanites take this messaging in their stride, ignoring the chirpy slogans, paying attention instead to their mundane, immediate needs. Or so they think: the advertisers know
69 | Persuasion
Mark Power
The funeral of Pope John Paul II broadcast live from the Vatican. Warsaw, Poland
2005
from series The sound of Two Songs
Courtesy the artist and Magnum Photos
At first glance, this image perplexes: what is that gigantic technowall? – Power actually illuminates two distinct parts of a contemporary event: a funeral crowd, squeezed into a narrow band at the base of the picture; and, taking up eighty-five per cent of the space, a wall of gigantic video monitors. It takes a moment to work out that the crowd is actually in the background, looking at screens, not in the foreground. Power’s subject isn’t really the Pope’s funeral; by amplifying the importance of the monitors, he highlights the power of media in our lives – dominating, controlling, overpowering.
70 | Persuasion
Valérie Belin
all the works
Untitled (Models II)
2006
from series Models II
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Parigi/Bruxelles
The Models II series from 2006 comprises twelve photographs of young models – six boys and six girls – chosen from catalogues proposed by various modelling agencies. A selection of four is shown here. In contrast to the ‘anthropometric’ method Belin chose for her earlier series of portraits, on this occasion she worked from a preconceived idea of the subject in order to create a stereotype. What emerges from this series is a particular aesthetic, which brings to mind the avatars used to represent humans in virtual worlds. One could also say that this is a series of portraits of chimerical beings.
71 | Persuasion
Andreas Tschersich
peripher 1827 (Detroit)
2010 / 2011
from series peripher
Courtesy the artist
Many photographers are drawn to the central cores of big cities, where crowds, buildings and signs jostle for space. Andreas Tschersich is drawn to the quieter life of suburbs, and has been travelling the world for the past fifteen years to focus on what he calls ‘periphery’. However, the photographer resists being categorized as a documentarian. The places really do exist, and there is no manipulation, but his vision is highly subjective. It’s a feeling for the place he’s after. In the case shown here, a ravaged post-auto-era Detroit, that feeling is essentially one of pathos. As the dominating billboard suggests, escapism is the only answer.
72 | Persuasion
Lauren Greenfield
Selena Gomez, 17, at an album cover photo shoot, West Hollywood, 2010. After landing the lead role in the 2007 Disney Channel hit Wizards of Waverly Place, Disney groomed her to be a multiplatform star with a huge social-media following.
2010
from series Generation Wealth
Courtesy the artist
Greenfield’s terrain, as we have seen earlier, is the surplus of American wealth, glamour and fame that seems to enthral the entire world. Here, she notes, is a singer who has been carefully groomed for global success. Greenfield shows one small part of the less-than-glamorous process in a kitschy tableau structured like a religious painting – an apt treatment for the almost-religious cult known as Celebrity.
73 | Persuasion
Han Sungpil
Duplication
2010
from series Façade
Courtesy the artist, Art Space Ben di Seoul e Blanca Berlín Galería, Madrid
Sungpil has travelled the world contemplating the oddity of temporary façades used to conceal construction sites and ‘unsightly’ building renovations. Sometimes these monumentally-scaled images are simply straightforward renderings of the buildings that existed beforehand; after renovation or modernisation has been completed, they will be removed. Sometimes the imagery is more romantic, in the form of a trompe l’oeil or a work of pure phantasy. The global prevalence of this increasing practice seems to betray our civilisation’s desire to hide from us the rough, messy aspects of our built environment in favour of a smooth, glossy ideal.
74 | Persuasion
Andreia Alves de Oliveira
from left to right
Lobby, Advertising agency
Lookout room, Brand consulting firm
Open space, Hedgefund
Hot-desking workspace,
Audit, tax and advisory services firm
Accountant’s desk, Law firm
Breakout space,
Transportation finance bank
2014
from series The Politics of the Office
Courtesy the artist
Andreia Alves de Oliveira is interested in the modern arts of persuasion but prefers to go behind the scenes to see where the strategies are conceived, executed, refined and evaluated. In her series The Politics of the Office, shot over three years, she accesses the workspaces of advertising agencies, financial institutions like specialised banks and hedge funds, law firms and brand consultants, appropriating the catchy terms they have devised for their trendy spaces – a ‘lookout room’, a ‘breakout space’, ‘hot-desking’ and the like. Individuals are immaterial – they will come and go. The ‘persuasion industry’ will remain.