WILLIAM COUPON: First nature
Horace Brockington
For more than three
decades William Coupon has produced an outstanding body of photographic works
that defy simple classifications. Having acquired a rich knowledge of the history
of photography, and expressing no limitation towards experimentation and investigations
in the medium, Coupon continues to create works that suggest a multitude of approaches
that speaks to the potential of the photographic within both its high and low
art paradigm. Although Coupon appears concern with notions of the purist in the
medium, and works well within this format, he also create artworks that are reliant
on in the digital media, computer manipulated images and hand altered photographic
works. Similar to fellow photographers Albert Watson, and Dan Winters, he moves
rather comfortably between the commercial and the artistic making little no distinction
between the two approaches.
While Coupon emerged
at the time that photographers such as Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Herb Ritts,
and Timothy Greenfield-Sanders carve out distinct careers in artistic based photographic
work, Coupon has often resisted being seen in specific camp, While his work has
been well known in commercial ventures, his more personal work has been seen
in a more limited context. Coupon has in fact created a body of conceptual photographic
works such as the music-photographic boxes that actually combined images and
audio works. These works that the artist describes as audiographs –are photographs
that talked, photographs that had looped cassettes behind a framed image. Coupon
also created a series of “kinetographs, photographs that were attached to
moving motors. These works were amongst a series of the artist’s works this
author presented in a group exhibition that I curated in the l980s. entitled,
“Process and Sequences: Recent Photography”. At that time Coupon was
part of a young group of artists working with the photo medium such as Benno
Friedman who by manipulating the images and providing radically new structures
for photography proposed pushing the medium further into the conceptual practices.
Coupon has created
a series of photographic portrait for magazines, and commercial ad campaigns
for, Rolling Stone Magazine, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, and Playboy. His cover
portraits of the powerful and timely have appeared on Time Magazine, and New
York Magazine. His works also has involved numerous ad campaigns including work
for Federal Express, Japan Airlines, Ford Motor Company, Apple Computer, Nike,
and Dewar’s Scotch, fashion designer Issey Miyake. A portion of this work
has included television commercials directed by the artist. In addition he images
have appeared on various music album covers. While he has photographed the famous,
boxers, musicians, heads of state, presidents, one of his most haunting images
is a rather weathered Jean-Michel Basquiat.
One the most extensive
series that the artist has worked on over a course of years is his” Social
Studies” series. This body of work concentrates on global ethnic groups
that range form Norwegian Lapps, Australian Aborigines, Tarahumara Indians in
Mexico. He has also created a series of urban landscape images, and a series
of photographic still life set-ups places his work squarely within the context
of postconceptual artistic practices and their reliance on the photographic medium
to extent its theories and directions.
The “Social
Studies “ based on the artist’s travels in China, Brazil, India, Japan
and an assortment of exotic ports of call echoes the l9th century photographic
tradition of using images a type of “travel diaries”. The series composed
of images of Haitians, Australian Aboriginals, Native Americans, Scandinavian
Laplanders, Moroccan Berbers, Peruvian Quecha, The Traditional Dutch, Mexican
Tarahumara, Lacandon, and Huichol, Alaskans Eskimos, Malaysian Penan, African
Pygmy, Turkish Kurds, Panamanian Kuna, and Chocoe, Brazilian Caraja, and Spanish
Gypsies. In Northern Israel he photographed the Druzin who live in Northern Israel,
southern Lebanon and Syria. They are a secret ex-Moslem Arab sect. Coupon says,
“ Because they were religious, it quite difficult to for them to pose for
me. They serve in the Israeli army, and have been caught up in the political
nightmare that has historically prevented peace in the Middle East… I had
always wondered what it would be like to ‘jump cultures ’-leave this
one behind and take on a new life in a new land. For years I followed my vision
and sought out those whose lives were far different than my own…the great indigenous
tribes on earth.”
These images present
the sitter in the classic manner of a Holbien or Rembrandt painting. What extends
this body of work beyond mere photojournalism is the dignity and humanity he
evokes in his subject. The viewer is never meant to interpret their gaze as nothing
more that introspective. They ask nothing of us than common humanity rather than
as the “exotic other”. Coupon has actively moved amongst the inhabitants
of these sites where he sets his photographs and as result he has acquired a
great respect for the tradition and culture of his subjects. For this reason
his works to some respect speaks to the continuation, success and strengths of
traditions—the preservation of culture in the face of modernism and 21st
century technology.
“ I have also said, the only good photograph is a “political “
photograph because those are the ones that make you see things for the first
time”
A related body
of work has emerged from locales a series of exotic landscapes photographic images
of Mexico, China, Turkey, Morocco, New Guinea, Central Africa, Brazil, Peru,
Alaska, Libya, Egypt, and China.
Coupon works interchangeably
on numerous bodies of work. A recent series of still life images that echoed
Netherlandish still life painting that the artists has entitled ”Life Stills”.
The images consist of random, found object and disassociated objects -scissors,
combs, rocks, glasses, etc into constructed Cornell-like wooden boxes, and then
photograph them in a tradition of l easel paintings. He digitally manipulates
the color, not such much to antique the image, but instead to give the work dream-like
quality that places the work in the tradition of the Surrealist objects and paintings.
In another body
of recent work, Coupon photographs a series of street scenes,
deserted gas stations, department store windows filled with headless nude mannequin.
Coupon describes these works as “pop-stops”. The series was evolved
from a group of images that concentrated on vernacular American architectural
images, which the artist describes as ‘combining the sensibilities of Edward
Hopper and Andy Warhol”, but has been extended to include images of diners,
gas stations, and have grown to include images urban scenes of Cuba and Mexico.
This work echoed
the early 20th century photographers, such as Walker Evans. Coupon has deliberately
created a secret pseudonym in order to confuse viewer as the author of these
works. Because they are so different from both commercial work, and the “Social
Studies“ series the works allow Coupon to mover beyond the range of image-types
that has become his signature.
Coupon has photographed his collection of dolls over a period of years. Although
the images might immediately suggested the art of David Levinthal whose intent
are rather clear Coupon’s images are in fact both subversive and humorous
in their intent and presentation. Unlike Levinthal there is no historical or
narrative intent in the images.
Coupon’s “Boxers” series remains a work in progress. It captures
the anxiety of the audience, the serene dignity of the fighters, and when it
completed will offer an engaging image and powerful statement on the nature of
the world of professional boxing.
By creating often divergent and opposing bodies of works, William Coupon’s
aim is to propose a new visual reality.
