Eye Candy
Eric Klemm “Silent Warriors”
BY David Balzer April 30, 2008 15:04
ERIC KLEMM’S “SILENT WARRIORS” RUNS MAY 1-31. MON-FRI 9AM-5PM; SAT 11AM-5PM. ODON WAGNER CONTEMPORARY, 172 DAVENPORT. 416-962-0438. WWW.ODONWAGNERGALLERY.COM.
Eric Klemm’s new series “Silent Warriors” is informed by one of photography’s most famous attempts at comprehensive documentation: Edward Sheriff Curtis’ Teddy Roosevelt–approved, J.P. Morgan–funded North American Indian, an ethnographic survey done between 1907 and 1930 and consisting of over 2,000 photographs. Curtis has since been criticized for the inaccuracy of the project; he carefully posed his subjects to suit his romanticized, Rousseauvian view of them. (A translator once told him, “You are trying to get what does not exist.”)
Klemm, who is white like Curtis and who also crossed the continent to shoot his work, could be seen as trying to right some of these perceived wrongs. The photographs are frank: Klemm has used only natural lighting and white backgrounds, and has made an effort to be as spontaneous as possible in approaching his subjects, who are alternately dressed in traditional and contemporary garb. Of course, this frankness still bears hallmarks of construction: the work adopts a crisply focused, mug shot–like style favoured by many fashion magazines nowadays. More pertinent is Klemm’s apparent interest in the ways in which his subjects self-construct. Here is ethnic costume at a more varied, personal level than Curtis saw it (the idiosyncratic shadings here may even remind some people of modern sports-game or rock-concert get-ups). The project remains a form of portraiture, however — one intent on detail, and arguably frailty, rather than on majestic homogeneity.
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