A semester of Intermediate Photography wouldn’t be complete without mention of Melinda McDaniel’s work. Upon checking out her online portfolio, it’s immediately interesting to note that the majority of Mrs. McDaniel’s work includes what might be referred to as photographic sculpture. Aside from her Polaroids from 2010, which feature some bizarre developing techniques producing quasi-landscape likenesses, relatively all of her posted work contains some combination of wood, brads (or other fasteners), and unprocessed photo paper. Furthermore, she places particular attention to the dimension of the photo paper that is seldom explored, the sides. In her 2005 piece, Some Kind of Blue the entire presentation is woven together with strips of unprocessed color photographic paper (stacked together to form three dimensional sections) to create an ornate intertwining. Although these at first may send you back to the white cotton doilies on grandma’s end tables, the methods for which the work was created generates plenty of artistic intrigue. In other words, taking elements of the familiar (most viewers may be familiar with Blue’s linear design, or at least objects of similar linear weaving), but twisting the methods of normal construction.
Another piece of particular interest, again implementing her photographic sculpture concept, is Repetitive Self Portrait from 2004. With this piece, Mindy (as with much of her recent work) uses unprocessed color photographic paper. Although the concept behind this particular piece is simple, paper pinned to the wall, the merit again finds purpose through implementation. According to the sculpture’s caption, it uses only C-prints and one pin. As with Blue, the photo paper has been sliced into extremely thin pieces. However, this time it appears that they have been stacked to nearly six to eight inches high. Although the printing on each strip is indecipherable, it can be assumed from the title that several self-portraits were shredded. As a result a double meaning arises as the piece actually contains several pieces of self-portraits and its orientation resembles a human head with the C-prints as hair.
It is interesting to note how Mrs. McDaniel’s work does not fit the stereotypic mold of “photography professor.” After classes depicting the proper film exposure and traditional and contemporary printing practices, it’s amusing to find that Mindy hardly uses any traditional photographic techniques in her recent work. In fact, she seems to purposely seek out the traditions and then break them.
For more info, visit http://www.melindamcdaniel.com/
Mindy's more recent work really is very interesting because of how untraditional it is. Specifically looking at her Repetitive Self Portrait, the concept behind it speaks volumes. Mindy early on in the semester had shown us some of these really grotesque portrays she took back when she was still an undergrad and for some reason this reminds me of those. Maybe it is because it is just another way Mindy has done a portrait of herself or maybe because of the concept behind each of them. Both are portraits of Mindy (or maybe some secret creepy twin she’s been hiding from us) but both are not what we think of as portraits. The title of the work also leaves room for tons of interpretation. Repetitive self portrait? Why chose repetitive instead of some other word? Could it be really obvious and simple because the piece is made out of shredded past portraits? Or could it be because she is trying to say something about traditional portraits in general? I think this would be highly likely considering her style in all of her more recent work (trying to break out of traditional forms of image making).
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