McCallum and Tarry at Marvelli Gallery
By Erin M. Scime
Fish (August 5th, 2002; 9:01pm-10:00pm), 2003. C-print + DVD, Ed. of 6. 50 x 40 in.
According to the City of Seattle, there are an estimated 2000 homeless youth aged twelve to twenty-four wandering in King County on an average night. With a somewhat hospitable year-round climate, strong activist community and a steady supply of heroin, the network of homeless individuals in the Northwest has become a vibrant example of a subculture that has moved far beyond a fashion or political trend, into a community that is socially and politically self-governed.
This phenomenon has lead New York based artists Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry to present a project which captures the stamina of this unconventional community while preserving the integrity of each individual member of the community. Set up in two parts, Endurance exists as a series of life-size portraits and 60-minute performance/videos in which each participant stands on a street corner for one hour in order to tell his or her story.
In its Chelsea exhibition space, the subject matter of this work may seem somewhat out of place. To the New Yorker it is quite difficult to describe the intensity of the homeless youth scene in the Northwest, but the artists bridge this gap well. By centralizing the youths’ naked autobiographical narratives, Endurance moves beyond the static qualities of documentary photography and creates an intimate dialogue between the viewer and artifact.
In1983, photographer Mary Ellen Mark completed a photo essay that similarly illustrated the reality of Seattle’s homeless scene. Looking back, Mark’s subjects are portrayed in more traditional photographic manner in that they objectify and romanticize the subjects [the fact that her spread was featured in Life Magazine substantiates this presumption]. This of course, was not wholly intended by the photographer, but becomes inevitable as the mechanics of the photographic lens exert a power of gaze over the subject. We only have to think of the Farm Security Administration photographic project of America’s great depression era to be reminded of this tradition. Unlike these previous modes of photo documentation, the camera escapes an objective eye possesses a nurturing role, warmly fostering a sense of worth and voice to an otherwise ignored existence. Beyond the fact that it is overwhelming that such an undesirable (in the eyes of the mainstream) alternative culture managed to persevere so vigorously through the area’s dot.com, Microsoft and Starbucks years, the remarkable aspect of comparing Marks’ Streetwise photo essay with McCallum and Tarry resides in the fact that their approach to documentation has matured into a new mode. By involving participants into the performance aspect of the work, Endurance recalls the activist spirit of the 1960s. Yet at the same time, the life-size detailed portrayals are reminiscent of Richard Avedon’s fashion portraits. Removed from the visual complications of street life and posed against a deep sea of black, McCallum and Tarry’s portraits starkly contrast the busy atmosphere of the video—and it works. It is not often that we see such serenity juxtaposed against upfront and raw narratives.
In addition to the aesthetic dimension of Endurance, the issue at hand is equally essential to the work. Seattle’s homeless community persists outside state or federal mandates of formal education or child rearing, which lends to an important aspect of McCallum and Tarry’s work. The resistance of these youth against the dominant culture there emerges as a psychological level of adolescence that immediately cuts childhood short and thrusts each individual into an unexpected psychological state of adulthood. Consequently, as a video work and series of portraits, Endurance does not sensationalize the pathological. Rather, it operates as a vehicle that demands the viewer to acknowledge that American familial, social and political systems have violently thrust these youths into premature adulthood. As a complimentary operation of portraiture and personal account the composition stretches beyond the perimeter of activism and the traditions of the photo-essay to create a truly notable artwork that reminds us that even after the video work is over and the portraits have been relished, the narratives of these youth persist days and months after we have gone on with our daily routines.
