Love this series! The little girl originally from China was my favorite.

I work with an organization called First Person Arts, and we're looking for documentary photographers to help spread the word about our nationwide competition First Person America: In These Hard Times. We're a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization dedicated to memoir and documentary art in all forms, and this year our goal is to attract essays, photos and films from all 50 states documenting how individuals and communities are coping with economic challenges. You can find out more about the competition, prizes and judges at http://firstpersonamerica.org

I recently came across Laura Domela’s portrait photographs from Alaska and was immediately intrigued (by the subject matter and location of Domela’s project). Domela’s pictures however are more than disappointing. As Lens Culture’s website puts it, “The characters seem like they could have stepped right out of a TV-sitcom.”

I am surprised that Lens Culture praises the images for being “hyper-real” with captions that “are personal and often hilarious.” I agree with these statements but don’t find them flattering, very sage, or worthy of praise. Additionally, and misleadingly, Lens Culture calls Girdwood, Alaska a “small gold-mining town” when it is in fact just minutes from Anchorage, Alaska (met population 350,000) and known not for mining but for tourism, Alaskan yuppies, and skiing (as the Alyeska Resort, the largest and most expensive ski resort in the state, is located in Girdwood).

I am mostly off-put by the nature of this kind of portrait photography: images taken by a tourist or outsider with final portraits that infer stereotypes, create much distance between subject and audience, and make viewers scoff at people’s life choices, expressions, and appearances. Conversely, Richard Avedon was an outsider who found glamour, drama, life, death, and spirituality in his subjects of In the American West.

Domela might disagree with my opinion, and maybe others and those photographed find the project amusing, but I am both an Alaskan resident and a portrait photographer and I do not appreciate the work. The blatant use of clichés and untrue cultural inferences is unfortunate, and the overly lit and “hyper-real” qualities of Domela’s photographic execution leave much to be desired.

Adam, Everyone is entitled to a personal opinion, and personal biases. No problem at all. For the record, however, Girdwood is a small town. According to the Alaska State Commerce website, the population of Girdwood is estimated at 1,794. "Girdwood is located on Turnagain Arm, in the Municipality of Anchorage, 35 miles east southeast of downtown Anchorage. The area is accessed by the Seward Highway. Girdwood is bordered on three sides by the Chugach State Park and Chugach National Forest... The community was named for James E. Girdwood, who staked a claim at Crow Creek in 1896."

Adam, I respect your opinion and appreciate your feedback. Though you may scoff at these people's life choices, expressions, and appearances...most others don't.

I was born in Anchorage and most of my family has lived in Anchorage, Homer, and Girdwood all of my life...so I don't really consider myself an outsider or a tourist to Alaska. My goal in this project was to paint a portrait of my brother (a warm, kind, eccentric, unique individual) by making a portrait of everyone he knew (around 300 portraits)...through his eyes and mine (as well as his sense of humor, his love of life, and his openness). I feel I accomplished this. If the project feels humorous, that's because it is, but it does not poke fun at anyone. I love these people and I love Alaska.

Yes, Girdwood is largely a skiing town now...but its roots in mining precede the tourism there (and so does my family).

(I find your reading of "overly lit" odd though...I lit these using just one light.) :)

Also (to Adam): Didn't Avedon pose most of his subjects, often art directing how they wore certain items of clothing, and very often instructing their body language? And don't you think this method of capturing "glamour, drama, life, death, and spirituality in his subjects" is less a capture and more a slight modification of a subject through his personal vision of what they stood for by the way they appeared to him? I'm not dissing Avedon in any way, just making a point that I set out to capture a very natural reality in this series with virtually no direction of my subjects.

You are the first person who has noted a "distance" to the subject, rather than an extreme feeling of closeness and familiarity...and that's interesting to me. Again, thanks for your thoughtful feedback.

Dear Laura,

Thank you for visiting my blog, reading the review of the Girdwood project, and for writing a thorough reply.

There is one part of your reply that is incorrect. I should clarify. I personally do not scoff at your subjects. Rather, as I wrote in my review, it is likely that some viewers deride the portraits due to the way in which each person was photographed and/or due to the title given to each image. The titles especially seem very objectifying to me.

To correct Joseph’s comments above, Girdwood is exactly 38 miles from Anchorage and one can drive to and fro in a matter of 45-55 minutes. I have done it before. Scenery aside, it feels similar to driving from a suburb to its major city.

Some friends of mine have criticized my review for comparing your project to Avedon’s In the American West series. I admit it is an unfair comparison. Avedon was working with an impressive resume, a talented crew, 8x10 inch film, and a large budget. Additionally, Avedon made his project over the course of many years and with 1000’s of sheets of film. His projected outcome was also quite different. It was meant for and received by a vastly different audience. In the American West is almost beyond comparison.

I respect your Alaskan upbringing and roots and would like to correct my review. You are not a tourist. The portraits however SEEM to be made by a tourist or outsider given the superficial notion and digital rendering of each image. This is how I initially received the work and still do.

You mentioned your goal was to paint a portrait of your brother through these images, that these are pictures of people he knows, and to which he was involved in giving titles. Was this goal obtained? I wonder if it’s a correct representation of your brother? The titles suggest to me he doesn’t know many of these people intimately, or at all outside of the bar, since each person is identified by a material possession, a fleeting moment, or an occupation (the exception being the picture of Bethany M. who offers the only moment of reflection). Then again, maybe I am misguided. Here I am expecting portraits that illustrate relations and humanity. The Girdwood portraits to me, and many others, do not touch on this feeling of affinity. Maybe the Girdwood portraits are funny and light-hearted pictures that are more theatrical than sincere, more commercial than virtuous. And if so, there is nothing wrong with that. Not all photographs are meant to be earnest.

Again, thank you for the reply,
Adam

@Adam: Several years ago I was working on a project where I did portraits of people as adults that were recreations of childhood photos that they supplied….same pose, same wardrobe, similar setting, and I put the two side-by-side in before-and-after diptychs. The idea was fun and the results were quirky. I was excited and inspired about my project. I was maybe five pieces into the project when I discovered some work (via the internet) that was very similar. It really messed up my feelings and my motivation about my project. Of course I didn’t like the other artist’s work because it didn’t fit my vision for that project, and honestly, it made me a little angry. She was messing up my idea because she wasn’t doing it the way I thought it should be done.

It seems you are having a similar experience in discovering my project while working on your own project, Portraits from Alaska. In my situation, I did not choose to go post a “review” of the other artist’s work, pretending to be objective when my emotional involvement with my own project would have obviously made that impossible. It appears that you haven’t exercised that same level of restraint.

To be clear, I'm not trying to convince you to like my project. It’s just that the critique you’re posting feels not much above the level of playground insult. Anybody who knows even a little bit of photography history could obviously look at this project and compare it with Avedon (white background) or Chuck Close (extreme detail), or Thomas Ruff (shots of his fellow students on a clean background), or, or, or… None of these comparisons are very useful or interesting. You have no trouble comparing your own project to Avedon, but then flip around and say it wouldn’t be fair to compare my project to Avedon because “Avedon was working with an impressive resume, a talented crew, 8×10 inch film, and a large budget.” So apparently what the reader is supposed to get from this is that you are doing your Alaska portraits with an impressive resume, a talented crew, 8x10 inch film, and a large budget, and asserting that my crew was not talented, and that I don’t have an impressive resume. Critiquing the “digital rendering” of images that you’ve personally only ever seen on a computer is pretty silly. You claim your images were taken with an 8x10 view camera, but when I look at them online, of course I’m seeing “digital rendering.”

The other things you seem to be critiquing—the nature of my brother’s relationship to the subjects, who has more of a right to reflect an “insider view” of Alaskans (you, having lived there for 3 years, me, born there with my entire extended family there since at least the 50s), the distance between Anchorage and Girdwood, whether there are gold mines, ski resorts, yuppies, or hippies in Girdwood—don’t seem to have anything to do with the work. The other thing that seems to really bug you, the captions (which are mostly the subject’s own answer to the question “tell me a little about what you do”) are not even in the original body of work, and they are not in the book I made (“Everyone My Brother Knows in Girdwood, Alaska”) which contains all 285 portraits. The captions were provided to LensCulture at their request for a little more information about the images.

I see that you’re a first year MFA student. If Portraits from Alaska is your thesis project, I encourage you to stick with it and keep your passion and try not to get distracted by other artists’ work that is in any way similar to your ideas. Particularly with portraiture…you could so easily say it’s all been done before, right?

Hi again Laura,

I fear that our conversation has become too personal. My interest in critiquing your Girdwood project stems from my interest in portraiture and Alaska and from studying photography and enjoying writing about photography. Yes, I am also making portraits in Alaska but I would not compare my photographs to yours. I do not liken myself to Avedon either as I am a novice photographer just getting started. Lastly, I did not intend to attack you but merely voice my opinion about your portraits from Girdwood and how people may view them. I encourage you to welcome reviews and critiques of your work and not be so defensive. An artist makes work and displays it, not knowing what various audience members may think. I learned years ago that it's best not to attack those who criticize your work but to embrace the attention.

All best,
Adam