Nietzsche Drager

My conceptual art photography is a type o documenting to explore philosophy

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series : Computer Screen

Computer Screen

10 photo

c – print

20 in x 24 in

2023

I photographed my computer screen, when it was scanning o a computer rius.

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series: Thinking

Thinking

c – print

13 photo

2009 – present

I take photos of people and nudes, to document and study the act of thinking. The naked body is an art staple. It is like the landscape, or still life.

Recently, I have tried to look at photography like painting, where I discover a formalist feel to the photo, like color, or composition, yet like most portrait photography, the facial expression, presents itself as the most important quality. Often, I will use a digital camera, however, I am interested in an analog feel. In this, I use photoshop, to slightly change the colour and to change the composition. I like taking 100s of photos, to find the best photo by chance, like the act of painting.

In terms of documenting “thinking”, there is a direct link to our “humanness” and ” thinking self “, in being naked or nude. Often, being without clothes is a feeling of honesty, simplicity, directness o ourseles and place, which includes the personal, links to ancient ci ilizations, and “the birth of philosophy.”.

uhe, his is a series of randomly photographing life models posing in real space as a simple study of body, form, light, expressions, experiences, relational to the history of the camera documenting people and the body. The mediating of the body, began with the ancients in 50,000 BC simply looking at each other. With the evolution of the institution of art, painting in 20,000 to 14,000 BC , with, for example, the caves of Lascaux, the early humans began to look at their world and themselves in painting. In 10 century BC, the ancient Egyptians began to view the bodies and self via sculpture and writing. In 5 century BC, in ancient Greece, turned sculpture into a mediation on the body and its beauty. This journey of early humans looking at their external body through a medium, brought us through Renaissance paintings, to 1888, when the Kodak camera was invented, where the act of looking at the body became a mainstream mass culture activity. In this, Mediated Modern Self, captures moments of beauty in the process of a mediation of beauty, light, aesthetics, technology, time and space.

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series : Donovan

Donovan

c – print

19 photos

Various sizes

2019

In this series, Donovan, using a digital camera, I photographed the screen of my computer while a Youtube video played a video from the 1970s, capturing the image of a female movie star- Sue Lyon, – a women expressing femininity without “gender politics” ( 1 ) who played in “ Lolita ” and “Night of the Iguana”, ( 1960s films ) . This video, a series of photographs of Sue Lyon, is of the rock band- Donovan, playing the the rock song,- Sunshine Superman, functions like an archive of history- where. people can experience the past, scroll through history, almost like they know it – videos and photographs represent a type of ‘documenting truth’ – even as photoshop can remake photos and video into “fake reality”. In terms of video documentation, however, myth making is the more apt truth. This series, looks at the intent of “truth” finding and photography. Essentially, I am photographing the internet, as a way to document internet history, but also to study the information which comes with this video- such as, the advertisement for women’s bra in the upper left corner, other music videos, and sometimes the “views”, “likes”, and “dislikes” [ Sunshine Superman – Donovan 6,327,423 views •Published on Jun 19, 2007 ( Sept 12 2019 )]. I find it interesting too, in photographing moving videos, how the camera can randomly document moving images in film, delinking my authorship, control, like in abstract painting; the liberate mark-making such as Jackson Pollock drips on a canvas.

1. ” Gender Politics is academically propositioned as expanding the individual self into a greater relations with the self, however, like any discourse or textuality in layers, in discursivity, in power, gender politics distorts and complexifies the individual from their foundational biological seminal connection to their sex- male or female, and is probably a designed process evolving from the birth of institutions,Family,Medicine, Education, State, Military, Government, Military, Religion, Media, Science, Technology,Media, Trade, Economics- where ancient art, language, communication, directed by Royal, aristocratic, religious elites, created and delimited and controlled the middle class. Gender politics, as language and discursivity, in it’s volume and mass, orders the biological self; it coopts from the self a direct relations to nature and the world, where the layers of gender discourse, textuality, ideology, mask, obscure,delimit, foundational seminal organic notions of the self, a self of seminal biology in historical co- relations to existence. So the more gender discourse layered onto the self,with the expansion of institutions, removes gender from the knowing self,- a basic emotive and spiritual understanding of their sex- male and female – where being male and female are part of a primordial human condition. “

Nietzsche Drager, from ” Notes on the Birth of Gender “, 2019

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series: Dutch bicycle

Dutch bicycle, 2006 – 2009

C – Print

7 photos

Various sizes

Digital Camera

Holland

2006 -2009

While living in Holland, I bicycled a lot to the University, and was bored, so I sometimes took photos with my cell phone of women bicycling in front of me. This series became a way of looking at, exploring, revealing, grasping, celebrating everyday Dutch identity, in terms of people, culture, lifestyle, and landscape. I selected women, as most of the students at the University were women and I wanted a repetition in the series. Also, in terms of identity, women’s long hair created a unique composition against their jacket and women’s jackets were often aesthetic- patterns and material, and in portraits of the back of people, the hair and jacket are very important signifies and compositional forms. However, ironically, in terms of basic foundational identity, I soon became more interested in the variety of
landscapes informing the women’s identity, since the subjects’ distinguishing details-, their hair, jackets, bags, bicycles, became less distinct within this collectivity. As I randomly photographed while riding my bicycle in the Dutch landscape, I felt a bit closer to Dutch culture, where the bicycle is greatly part of their every day lives and culture, more than just riding from point A to B – such as carrying large furniture on bicycles, bicycles to transport children, bicycles to share, bicycle for recreation, bicycles to get to the pub, to go on dates, to travel to work, etc and so on. In this, this series structurally continues this use of the bicycle as a point of expanding the dialogue on Dutch identity and culture. I also see this photograph series as a way to play with the camera- there is an art to riding a bicycle and photographing at the same time. Riding and photographing with a cell phone, is an art form. Documenting this everyday moment, was a way to increase one’s daily routine experience with a challenge, as simply riding a bicycle to school was basic routine. In this, finding the art, in the process of bicycling, expands mediation. The medium of photography, portraiture, art design, can be more the textual discourse than the subject/theme/image. Images discovered in the process of living, in an environment, in a culture, in a history, celebrate civilization, as a undefinable process, part of the defined reality of culture, life, experiences.

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series: Movie Star

“Movie Star”

( Amsterdam Central Station, 2009 )

C – Print

10 photos

Various Sizes

Digital camera

2009

At the Amsterdam Central Station, around 2 pm, in October, where buses, trams, taxis dropped off and picked up people, I photographed groups of people. Then, I selected about 20 photos from 100 photos ( digital camera ), and using photoshop, edited/cropped specific individuals from the group, to create portraits of individuals. The effect of enlarging the photos was painterly, which is apt for the Dutch tradition of painting, like Vermeer or van Eyke. Like street photography in today’s context, these photos mime CCTV surveillance video cameras in public urban space implemented by security and police, documenting, observing and analyzing people in public – a contextualization of people as “mice in a lab experiment”, in terms of Data collection and surveillance capitalism. Is this a historical process where art and exploitative political institutions converge, into the Bauldrillard simulacra? I like the facial expressions, as this is what facial recognition software desires to oppress and subjugate- the human face, the portrait, which Van Eyke, Vermeer, Rembrandt ( 1 ), Lenardo, Durer, etc, sought to capture to reveal beauty.

1.) ( Wiki- Rembrandt ) In a letter to Huygens, Rembrandt offered the only surviving explanation of what he sought to achieve through his art: the greatest and most natural movement, translated from de meeste en de natuurlijkste beweegelijkheid. The word “beweegelijkheid” is also argued to mean “emotion” or “motive”. Whether this refers to objectives, material or otherwise, is open to interpretation; either way, critics have drawn particular attention to the way Rembrandt seamlessly melded the earthly and spiritual.[36]

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series: A.I. robot dolls

” A.I. robot dolls “

C – print

12 photos

Various Sizes,

Digital Camera

Holland

2008

When I saw Mannequins in a store window in Enschede, Holland,2009,in a cliche way they looked like “real” people. Art and Mannequins has its own history and is a trope subject, like still life or landscapes. There is a scientific study that suggests generally, most people are uncomfortable with mannequins or dolls that look “real”. However, in the last several years, 2019, sex dolls for males (and females) have been designed to look very “real”, yet slightly exaggerated – very large breasts, thin wastes, very large buttocks, etc. These sex dolls are being designed with A.I. Intelligence, A.I. Emotions, which are testing the boundaries and ethical issues of creating a “new species”. Further complexifying this issue, is that some robot sex dolls as companions are “curing” mental illness, depression, suicide, more than pharmacutical drugs. What will be our relations with “realistic” robot A. I. dolls? Will this divide cis heterosexual male and female relationships and love, or unite? Will life like A.I. emotional robots be better wives and husbands, than human males and human females? (1)

” The personal is only political, if one makes it political, otherwise the
personal is just personal”

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series: Documenting Contemporary Art Lectures

” Documenting Contemporary Art Lectures, Holland, 2009 “

C – Print

12 photos

various sizes

Digital Camera

2009

Documenting an art lecture at De Appel art gallery in Amsterdam, this series explores the ‘performative’ aspect of lectures. This lecture was unique, in that the lecturer was using a slide projector, a rare older media. With each slide, there was an approximately 5 minute discourse by the lecturer. It felt like story telling. Another unique quality to this talk, was that the entire audience sat on the left side of the lecturer, in 4 or 5 rows of 10 plus seats. So we were looking at the slides from an angle. This experience was akin to theatre or a play. Documenting art, in today’s culture, can function as a political act or artistic act, both simultaneously and separately, as ” the personal is not political, rather the personal is political if one makes it political, otherwise he personal is just personal.

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series: The Sahara Desert

” The Sahara Desert ” ( Zandvoort Beach, Holland )

C – print

various sizes

21 photo

Digital Camera

2009

In September 2009, while sitting on Zandvoort beach in the afternoon, I began to view this beach through the lens of a desert. The Sahara Desert.This works explores how one place can mentally transform into another place.

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series: Documenting Art Performance, Art Pie, Amsterdam

” Documenting Art Performance , Art Pie 2008, Amsterdam ”

C- print

34 photo

2008

I photographed a performance with my Motorola Razor cell phone with 2 mega pixel camera. As I walked into the room, the performance started and I decided to see if I could document the entire performance. I was standing about 20 feet away. The quality of the photographs was not important or knowable. In this sense, the photographing was a type of immediacy. It was the act of documenting which was as important as the type of photo. I could not control the lighting, or composition of the photo because of the cell phone’s limited function.

Art Fair- ( Kunstvlaai 7 Art Pie International, 2008, Amsterdam ), A photographed documentation of a performance – 5 to 8 minute; a series of continuous photographs in 30 – 45 second intervals. The performance started with the artist standing in the centre of a small intimate black stage, in white clothes, handling, “playing with”, presenting, a large piece of what seemd to be ‘red’ meat, mostly likely beef. She sometimes rubbed the meat on her body, arms, while in statuesque – Zen – ballet type positions or forms, facing the audience, showing the audience, yet not overtly engaging with the audience. She then moved into a seated form, removed one piece of her white attire- a lace white tutu skirt. Above her approximately 10 feet was a large video screen with various images moving in slow paced slide show ( which included her in a Buddha pose, naked, amid a blueish monochrome background). This video formed a dualism- herself on the stage and herself on the video screen. She then moved into a laying down position on her back and placed the meat on
her stomach, then lifted her body up, her arms arched backwards, making a type of ” human curved furniture table” with the meat, now a squashed ball form, in the middle of her facing- up – stomach, pointing the red meat ball to the ceiling. She held this yoga type table position for perhaps 30 seconds . Then, she returned to a laying down pose on her back. Without the red meat, she laid flat and controlled and muscled, in a semi crucified lower back arched pose in the center of the stage; articulating, shaping, expressing, her body into a meta elongated pointed sculpted pose.

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series: Women walking in Urban Public Space as a study of Privacy and Identity in Urban Space

” Women walking in Urban Public Space as a study of Privacy and Identity in Urban Space”

Ink Jet Print/ C -Print

12 photos

various sizes

2006- present

Holland, Germany, Canada

I randomly took photos of women in public space – ie Street photography. This series explores “Street Photography”, in the contemporary context of the internet, public video surveillance culture, social media, where we have co-opted privacy to the pleasure of domination and subordination by technology to document our daily lives with digital photography, with cameras, phones, watches, drones. No matter where we are, our lives are now ‘performative’- a tragic theatre, we are all movie stars on a stage. This is what Andy Warhol meant by….” Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”. The ultimate question is, why do we want to be famous, why do we want all of our “private moments”, even at parties, or social gatherings, to be documented. Maybe we should make cell phones with out photo or video cameras, and only use cell phones for telephone calls, surfing the internet, texting, but not uploading images.

A second layer to this photo series, is how photographing women, not men, in public space, is a “socially subversive act”, in the context of contemporaneity mainstream 5th wave “marketed feminism” – ie where eminis theorist can not decipher the difference between sexual exploitation and sexual empowerment in he mediate presentation of the female or female body in photography , in mainstream culture and gender politics. One can ask too, historically, in Western Culture, such as Greece 600 BC, Rome 200 BC, Medieval France, Italy, England, Holland, Spain, 1000 AD, are paintings and drawings of females more than that of male. Are women more mediated than men? Is this empowering women?However, delinking the gender question, one can simply ask, why do we mediate ourselves, women or men? Is there a point of “over mediation”. What is the purpose of mediating our image? Essentially, History is a project of mediating ourselves in photos and writing. And History, mediating, creates culture, Art, all of which is immensely important to being human, whereby perhaps the greatest question, is to not question whether any of it is subversive or empowering, and simply create, without self censorship, without art theory, without feminism, without discourse, without institutions, without reflection or dialectics. The agency of creation is more important than meaning or truth of how or why we create these things.

However,with cell phones, everyone is now a tourist/ professional photographer/ artist.So is it “socially impolite” to take peoples photos in public urban spaces, without their permission? Is it even possible to ask every person in public space this question?Another complication here is the following two points, one, legally, if a person is in public space, the photographer does not have to ask the permission of the person being photographed, and further, the photographer can publish and sell their photo. Second, we need to accept our photos being taken in public space, so there are documents – ie photos and videos, of our lives for History. Personally, as an artist photographing people in public urban space, I am both celebrate and partially regret compromising “privacy in public” space, if such even exists, as when we are in public, there is real privacy, it is just an illusion.However, my partial regret is not of the photograph, but rather the internet and social media, which I critique, as these have problematically amplified the simple “street photograph” into a hyper political thing, including data collecting, and illegal A.I research.Further, I love documenting for History.So the bottom line, for myself, and perhaps advice to others is, when you go out of your private home, into public, dress up like you are a movie star, put on your make-up and best clothes, because the “postmodern internet world” is that public space is now a movie set, or theatre stage, and we are all actors for the internet….” Jack Nicholson, Jeffrey Leon Bridges , Peter O’Toole, Elvis, ….Katharine Houghton Hepburn Ingrid Bergman Ruth Elizabeth Davis ,Audrey Hepburn , Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, Sophia Loren “

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series: Surreal T.V. ( Euro Fashion Television, Holland)

” Surreal T.V. (Euro Fashion Television, Holland)”

C – print

7 photos

Various Sizes

Digital camera

Holland

2006

In Enschede, Holland, I was in a hotel, and was watching T.V. There was a channel presenting all fashion shows, model interviews, called Fashion Television. I decided to photograph the television set. With a digital camera, I took 500 plus photos of the T.V. program. This process was like ‘fishing for fish’. I captured many random photos, by chance. The photos I selected for this series are the most ” ether- like”, or “ambiguous”, or ” airy”. Or maybe “ephemeral” – brief glimpses, or captured moments by chance. Chance in photography is important. Often, photographers, “find” a photo. This process of chance is also akin to Surrealism. These photos may be relational to the 1920’s surrealism, in one, embracing the icon female beauty, as a muse- like Dora Marr, and two, chance as a medium, and three, the mood of a moment being also the subject of the photograph.

CONCEPTUAL ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Series: Documenting women in Urban Public Space and Public Space I Document

” Documenting women in Urban Public Space and Public Space I Document “

C – print

44 photo

Various Sizes

Various locations- Holland, Vancouver, Montreal, Germany

2005 – present

Digital Camera

I could discuss this work from a social or political or media or feminist lens. I chose rather to discuss this work, from an art lens. Women, and men, have been subjects for art for 2000 years. I am continuing this tradition. In this, too, the environment, most often urban, is greatly part of this art work. Further, the role of technology, as I use a digital camera instead of cell phone, is part of this dialectical research. With most photos, I am interested in composition and documenting the “everyday”. I like photos that do not look like art, but “mass produced artifacts”. The extraordinary in the ordinary

Further, and a problematic, is this series is “street photography” however , in today’s context of the internet, and social media, street photography is more total surveillance culture than art. I dislike surveillance culture, where cities have many cctv cameras, everyone has a cell phone cameras, cars have video cameras, drones, etc., because We are more like “animals in a la experiment”, than free human beings. Perhaps, some spaces can free of technology, so we are not exploited as “data”, in the 21st century and moving towards.

Further, even more a problematic, is that we can not stop or censor, public photography – ie street photography, because we need to document the present, o utue history, so hte uue can eelec on ou pesen like we elec on photos om he 1950s etc.

Like street photography in today’s context, these photos mime CCTV surveillance video cameras in public urban space implemented by security and police, documenting, observing and analyzing people in
public – a contextualization of people as “mice in a lab experiment”,in terms of Data collection and surveillance capitalism. Is this a historical process where art and exploitative political institutions converge, into the Baudrillard simulacra? I like the free facial expressions, yet this is what facial recognition software desires to oppress and subjugate- the beauty of the human face, of the portrait in a free moment, of freedom which is part of the human body connected to beauty, whereas Vermeer, Rembrandt ( 1 ), Leonardo, Durer, etc ,sought to capture the face to reveal beauty. There is a night and day difference between how artists approach the body/face and how technology approaches the body/face. Art liberates. Technology obscures or differs or subjugates. This is what is being played our in public space, at times, if people buy into it, as people can chose not to photograph people in public and post it, yet we loose something important, documenting our history, and other’s history, so it’s a Modern Catch 22, how to compromise privacy, with the importance of revealing what is private for future conversations. It is question, pre 1888, and the invention of the camera, by Kodak, no one had to ask, so perhaps as long as the question is posed, capturing poses in public space, even at the expense of some type of reasonable privacy is all we can say, and let the future figure out this catch 22. However, it is beautiful, to have both, photos of a party, and no photos of a party, or public event, or public space, and this dialectic between having and not having documentation, is what history is about, the empty and non recorded experiences, in conversation with the documented. History is actually more empty than full, which keeps the narratives of history, safe from being fully known, as not knowing history, or a history that is fragmented, is more important, than a totally documented history, which is currently an impossibility, and hopefully always will be an impossibility. It is the impossibility of knowing, which unites and creates a more stable foundational civilization, because it keeps the “play of humanity” fresh and open to greater possibility.

The effect of enlarging the photos was painterly, which is apt for the Dutch tradition of painting, like Vermeer or Jan van Eyck .

Ulimaely, een houh see phooaphy, in cominaion wih he inene, ansesses ou piacy, and o some deee makes me eel “sel qusionin” , ( as I hae had my phoo aken y people in pulic wih cell phones), documenin pesen, o hisoy, is moe impoan han his “sel quesion in ansessin piacy”
.