Limited Visability

The photograph above is taken from my cell phone at the CAM and a I do not think I captured the entire piece.

This piece immediately caught my attention because there were so many individuals but none of them were actually facing the camera. This piece is called 89 Huicholes and was created by Santiago Sierra in 2006. The medium is ink because these are printed photographs in black and white. The size can vary depending on which part of the piece is carried to the museums. However, this particular piece was very large and stretched about 12 feet wide and 5 feet tall (there are no specific measurements online).

Santiago, the artist, was born in 1966 in Spain. This piece was published in 2006 and since then the piece has helped contribute to the problems with identification. The subjects of this piece are the heads/portraits of the people. Santiago says in an interview that "in presenting the persons with their backs to the viewer, there is a connotation of guilt and shame." In my personal experience, this was correct. When I first saw this piece I started making up personal stories for each individual represented and most of them were sad because they did not want to show their face. When you see a persons face and their eyes, you are able to connect with them and share an emotion with them. Here, you feel like you are unable to connect with the person.

This artist also added a layer of depth to this piece by printing the photographs in black and white. The light in the photographs are dim and and fairly concentrated on the upper part of the photograph shining down on the person, casting a shadow. The composition is harsh since there is little background and the back of the people are in the center of the photograph, all lined up symmetrically. Since there are so many individual portraits put together it makes it hard on the eye to see the full picture because our eyes want to focus on smaller individual pictures. Printing these images in black and white influences the audience to perceive the individuals to be in shame. The black and white causes certain emotions to arouse that contribute to this perspective. Most pictures are printed in color which allows for the audience to perceive emotion in a different way than that of black and white. However, in this case, if all of the pictures were printed in color than the composition would be hard to analyse because of the many different colors and shapes. In black and white the audience is allowed to focus on the bigger picture better.

I think the meaning of this piece is that every individual has an important and unique story and it is hard to connect to these individuals to get a glimpse into their story without seeing their faces. I came to this conclusion because of the emotion that this piece provoked and the thought process I used when I FIRST saw this piece. When I first saw it, I immediately wondered why they were ashamed to get their picture taken. If you notice that all of the individuals are different you start to think about all of the different stories. Some of the individuals have on hijabs, some hats, some bandannas, some ball caps, and some no head coverings. Each were dressed in different clothes and some had slings over their shoulders (probably a bag of some sort). This variation caused me to think a lot about the different stories each individual carries with them and what they had done to make themselves feel shameful. All of these aspects help to touch on another theme: individuality. Each person is different in their own way. This also helps to confirm the human nature of connection. People feel the need to connect to each other and try to force the connection; that is why I feel distant from these people because I am unable to connect to them. This piece was important to include in "Limited Visibility" because it reinforces multiple themes that are presented throughout the collection while still being unique.
This piece reminds me of the time I spent in South Dakota. When I was a freshman, I went on a mission trip to Pine Ridge Reservation. We spent a week connecting and working with the Native Americans there and we learned a lot about their culture. One things that I found interesting is that the Native Americans believe that if you capture their face as the focus point of a photograph, then you have captured their sole. They asked us not to take pictures of them individually but allowed us to take pictures of them as a group. This applies to this piece by Santiago in that these people are not fully captured because we are not allowed to see their face. Thus, we are only allowed to see a limited part of this persons personality.

My sketch