Video Se

The Fulbrighter I've spent the most time with in Zagreb, Willie Osterman, is a professor of photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. He was invited to exhibit his work here in this new year, and asked if he could display some new work, not his past material, but something he might derive from his time here. Once he got the go-ahead for that plan, he invited many of the people he's come into contact with over the past months in Croatia to sit for portraits--but not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill portraiture. His concept, which you will see snippets of in the video below, was to capture a detail of the subject in his viewfinder, and thereby to replicate the dreamlike quality of the furtive and fertile period of his Fulbright semester in Zagreb. He titled his show FROM THE CORNER OF MY DREAMS for this reason, and the exhibit was astonishing to say the least.

First of all, it was held in the Lotrščak Tower, the wicked cool defense structure from which every day at noon a cannon is discharged. Willie's exhibit took up three floors of the tower, and the reception was on the first of these. This is mostly the reason the video pingpongs between boisterous party and quieter viewing.

The second reason I found his work astonishing was the reaction I found myself having to seeing my detail portrait among the selected. Not only was I flattered, but I discovered the real thrill of seeing something so familiar (my own ear) through the artist's eye and lens, like hearing my script performed by someone else for the first time . . . the duality of what I knew and what I had not considered as an objective rendering. It's akin to something I always share with my students about the purpose and power of art: ARTISTS MAKE THE STONE STONEY AGAIN FOR THE AUDIENCE. So much is taken for granted in this life that art can remind people of the simplest object anew, be it a stone, a laugh, a scent, or even an ear.

Third, because of my intimate connection to the exhibit, and to my own portrait, I find the result of his work with me to be beautiful and engaging, and I'm sure all of the others who sat for him with a big camera lens inches away from random body parts feel the same way!

Still, flattery aside, and humility (as usual) dispensed with, I believe my ear to be one of the highlights of the series. This is partly the reason for this entry's punny title: "Video Se" is a play both on the video camera I employed and sounds close to the Croatian for "I Saw myself."

So how did I like the exhibition as a whole? Well, to paraphrase Abe Burrows' review of I AM A CAMERA, "Me Leica!"



[I don't want to infringe on his art by concentrating my commemoration of the evening exclusively on his pictures . . . see his blog for the better renditions of the photos at http://www.willieosterman.com/]