uwincoughman
Bubby's house
Kimberly Max, a photographer recently graduated from Pratt (2004), has just completed her first full-length project, entitled Bubby’s House. The Yiddish-inflected title speaks to the intimacy with which the artist regards her subject, in this case, the home of her grandparents, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. It is place and not time, though, that attracted the lens of Ms. Max. Living in Brooklyn for the past three years, Ms. Max has faced the reality of living away from her Michigan home, and family. She has combated this in various ways, none so effectively than in her recent project.
On the surface, Bubby’s House is a documentary project. Invited by her aunt to document her grandfather’s house, Ms. Max seized upon the opportunity to capture an architectural and aesthetic treasure. Her grandparent’s house was decorated in the early 1970’s and has seen almost no renovation since that time. The house has, in fact, been preserved, and exudes a kitsch-ness that is not so often seen in contemporary life.
But again, the documentary aspect in a purely surface matter, because when one looks deeper into the project, we see the cross-section of time and place, of artist and subject even. The photographs were taken in 2003, yet they capture a house that, structurally and aesthetically, is frozen in 1971, before the artist was even born.
At first glance, the images look artificial, contrived, dollhousey. One asks if what they are looking at actually exists. This speaks to the wonderful manner in which Ms. Max dissected her subject. Through her lens, each room lives and breathes within its own borders, disconnected from other rooms of the house. Each room is its own character, another family member, maybe?
This project, though seemingly a simple documentary of a visually stimulating environment, is much more. It is a project about family, about time, and about place. Our family’s change, and yet they remain whole. Patriarchs die, leaving a family to memorialize him. Everything outside this house has changed; inside, little, including taste, has evolved. What must have been the cream of interior decorating in the early 1970’s has become a time capsule of an outdated aesthetic age. This is why we do not believe the photographs are real. We assume they are the product of fabrication.
And the house is a conglomeration of fabricated elements. The range of material to be found on display in Ms. Max’s work is vast; we find shag carpeting, that pinnacle of 70’s chic, we find glass, wood, marble, linen wallpaper, Formica, plastic chairs, vinyl, fur pillows granite, and veined Italian marble. Ms. Max captures these materials appropriately in her series. Each room, each photo, contains a treasure trove of forgotten interior design secrets.
Coupled with these purely formal elements, Ms. Max’s abilities with a camera shine. Her choice of angles is exquisite. She controls each scene in such a way, that behind the formal elements of beds, and desks, and fireplaces, there is something lurking within this antiseptic environment. Behind the straight lines of the mirror, we assume the softer curvilinear shapes of people. It is people, after all, that are the subject of these images. Where people live, to be exact. What kind of environment people create for themselves. And yet it is people that are mysteriously absent. The only family members we see are those trapped in other photos, in family albums put on display, like those in the Den.
This project is all about people. It is about the artist’s family. It is about how and where these people have lived for the past thirty years. It is about the next generation coming of age, outside of this home, where taste have changed, where lives have changed, where a granddaughter grows up, and finishes a project her grandfather started a long time ago.
Bubby's house
Kimberly Max, a photographer recently graduated from Pratt (2004), has just completed her first full-length project, entitled Bubby’s House. The Yiddish-inflected title speaks to the intimacy with which the artist regards her subject, in this case, the home of her grandparents, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. It is place and not time, though, that attracted the lens of Ms. Max. Living in Brooklyn for the past three years, Ms. Max has faced the reality of living away from her Michigan home, and family. She has combated this in various ways, none so effectively than in her recent project.
On the surface, Bubby’s House is a documentary project. Invited by her aunt to document her grandfather’s house, Ms. Max seized upon the opportunity to capture an architectural and aesthetic treasure. Her grandparent’s house was decorated in the early 1970’s and has seen almost no renovation since that time. The house has, in fact, been preserved, and exudes a kitsch-ness that is not so often seen in contemporary life.
But again, the documentary aspect in a purely surface matter, because when one looks deeper into the project, we see the cross-section of time and place, of artist and subject even. The photographs were taken in 2003, yet they capture a house that, structurally and aesthetically, is frozen in 1971, before the artist was even born.
At first glance, the images look artificial, contrived, dollhousey. One asks if what they are looking at actually exists. This speaks to the wonderful manner in which Ms. Max dissected her subject. Through her lens, each room lives and breathes within its own borders, disconnected from other rooms of the house. Each room is its own character, another family member, maybe?
This project, though seemingly a simple documentary of a visually stimulating environment, is much more. It is a project about family, about time, and about place. Our family’s change, and yet they remain whole. Patriarchs die, leaving a family to memorialize him. Everything outside this house has changed; inside, little, including taste, has evolved. What must have been the cream of interior decorating in the early 1970’s has become a time capsule of an outdated aesthetic age. This is why we do not believe the photographs are real. We assume they are the product of fabrication.
And the house is a conglomeration of fabricated elements. The range of material to be found on display in Ms. Max’s work is vast; we find shag carpeting, that pinnacle of 70’s chic, we find glass, wood, marble, linen wallpaper, Formica, plastic chairs, vinyl, fur pillows granite, and veined Italian marble. Ms. Max captures these materials appropriately in her series. Each room, each photo, contains a treasure trove of forgotten interior design secrets.
Coupled with these purely formal elements, Ms. Max’s abilities with a camera shine. Her choice of angles is exquisite. She controls each scene in such a way, that behind the formal elements of beds, and desks, and fireplaces, there is something lurking within this antiseptic environment. Behind the straight lines of the mirror, we assume the softer curvilinear shapes of people. It is people, after all, that are the subject of these images. Where people live, to be exact. What kind of environment people create for themselves. And yet it is people that are mysteriously absent. The only family members we see are those trapped in other photos, in family albums put on display, like those in the Den.
This project is all about people. It is about the artist’s family. It is about how and where these people have lived for the past thirty years. It is about the next generation coming of age, outside of this home, where taste have changed, where lives have changed, where a granddaughter grows up, and finishes a project her grandfather started a long time ago.