resfest and Charlie White's Artist Talk

Two weeks ago, I finally managed to do something I have been meaning to do for the last three years: I bought a guest pass for resfest, the short film, video and animation festival that has been launched in Toronto nine years ago. Among four days of screenings, I also had the chance to learn about the California based photographer Charlie White, and listen to his keynote speech on Saturday (October 29th).

White's work is one of the first examples of a new approach to photography: post-photography. The images he creates are constructed, and digitally modified to reach the desired effect. Visual effects, computer generated imagery, prosthetics are just a small part of the methods he uses in his art. During his speech, he talked about three series of work he completed over the last five years. To me, the most interesting one was the Understanding Joshua series, which were photographs of a half human, half alien character called Joshua in different scenes.

White's interest in science fiction, the modern Hollywood culture and our fascination with visual effects is apparent. But he is also a really good speaker, and has very specific views about his work, and about their content. I had the impression that this was a necessity on his part, because the meaning of these strange scenes can be quite obscure at times. This can be problematic in some cases, however, once I saw the images from his point of view, I was fascinated by what he was trying to tell the viewer through this weird creature, Joshua.

According to White, Joshua is not an alien life form that is trying to settle down among humans. He is a guy who, like most people, has a very distorted self-image. He is reflected in the photographs just as he sees himself in the mirror. In contrast, all the people around him appear as he sees them. For instance, in Cocktail Party, the first photograph in the series, every person in the room is perfect, because he sees them like that. And Joshua's imperfection is in stark contrast with their appearance.

The photographs in the Understanding Joshua series don't follow a specific timeline according to White. But when I was looking at them, I couldn't help creating a story around the poor guy. I am not sure how women respond to these images, but as a male, I almost identified with his self-loathing. I think most people go through such stages in life. Joshua is the epitome of that state when we don't even want to see ourselves in the mirror.

Another fact that interested me was that Joshua was not actually a computer generated character. Apparently, he is a life size puppet who actually was in the scene, among the actors. I believe this makes these images much more interesting for me, because I didn't find White's previous series, which involved placing computer generated aliens in real life scenes. Although he tries to create a conceptual background behind these images, I think White's approach was directed more by his interest in visual effects and his desire to experiment with computer graphics.

Nevertheless, White's approach to photography offers a new area of possibilities to artists who are lucky enough to have the budget to use Hollywood's professional tools in their work.