U R Not A *
Portraits by J. Shimon and J. Lindemann

September 5, 2009

This last Thursday I attended a gallery opening at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. The show consisted of portraits by John Shimon and Julie Lindemann, two colleagues of mine at Lawrence University. Reflecting on the title I just wrote at the top of this post, it's now occurring to me that U R Not a [asterisk] and U R Not a [star] are two quite distinct things to write. The first would be to tell someone that they are not unimportant in life.. not a footnote that nobody reads. The second would be to tell people that they are not as important as they might think.. "Don't think you're all that!" Alas, I'm not aware of a star character on the keyboard.

That last meaning is the title for this gallery show but it hardly comes off as an address to the audience. One could imagine attending a show filled with images of real celebrities, and a title like this could be seen as mocking the nobodies in the audience. In this case the title mostly bypasses the audience and clearly has something to do with the relationship between sitter and photographer. Each of the characters in the show has some claim to local renown, or at least personal visions of local renown. Within this group of photographs the title U R Not A [star] should be understood as either the photographers' cool response to the sitters (embodied by the prose descriptions) or the sitters' cocky assertion of their own star-power in the presence of the photographers. This last possibility is the one actually present in the photos, since a detail of the photo "Brett & Nigel with Huber (No. 4)" is the source for the show's title:

Embedded in the photograph, the phrase seems to be a challenge to anyone looking on.. aimed at the photographers first, but then secondarily the audience. But as soon as the image is captured that kind of preening claim to stardom becomes objectified and turned on them. Look at the whole picture to see what I mean:

There is a celebrity aesthetic at play here, hinted at most obviously by the poster of Sid Vicious from the Sex Pistols in the background. Still the audience is most likely to recoil from this.. feeling, if not thinking: "You are not a star."

What I'm getting at is that the title for the show cleverly introduces the viewer to the key dialogue that's taking place in these photos.. the dialogue between the claims of the sitter and the objectivity of the photographers. As Shimon and Lindemann mentioned in the Q & A session, these photos represent people who are artists in some fashion. They are all interested in presenting themselves as creative and unique. It is that sort of character that Shimon and Lindemann have a real knack for engaging in dialogue on film.

This show reminded me of a photo that I recall from their show at Lawrence University last year. One photograph was of two normal looking girls (sisters) with the landscape of their farm spreading in the background (I can't find the photo on their site so I am going from memory here). I remember sympathizing with the photographers: How does one take a successful photo of average people living average lives? In this case there seemed to be no claim or anything beyond two average girls. This new show points out their need for sitters who are engaged, which entails some kind of preening and confidence in self as star. Two sisters on their farm don't make that same kind of visual argument for the camera.

One way that Shimon and Lindemann get around this is to take photos of average people at work, and thus their portraits of someone at a tanning salon or working a drive-thru last in the memory. Something about the workplace stirs up the need for self-presentation.. and thus this visual dialogue. The best part of the gallery show at UWM (curated by Rachel Vander Weit) is this focus on performance.. which turns out to be a key concept that can illuminate much of Shimon and Lindemann's work.

Watch their talk from the gallery opening: