Very interesting that it was set up. So the image in all it's randomness is actually carefully designed and constructed to look the way it does, so that a dialogue is set up with the viewer... The viewer is challenged by the image to make commentary and thus (At least on this list) a very successful work.
From the perspective of one who makes a living out of "Faking reality" in photographs I have a new appreciation of what a great photograph it is... Totally believable...
Advertising photography relies very heavily on pictures that look UNconstructed. Like a random snap. If you look at it and say "Great composition" then the photographer has failed. The photographic work needs to be totally invisible. This means taking a huge amount of gear to a shoot and doing a lot of construction. Paradoxically.
I took a long lunch and revisited the Kemper hoping to find a docent available. I was told that docent visits are by appointment only.
The woman at the desk asked if she could help me and I was only too happy to let her know I had some questions about how two particular pieces of art came to be hanging in the museum.
She asked which two and when I told her she agreed that the woman with the red face was a piece she didn't care for at all, either.
But HOW did it land here, I asked.
It ends up that the creator, Jaimie Warren, GIFTED it to the museum.
Jaimie lives in Kansas City, is more of a performance artist than a photographer (as I think of the term photographer) and does workshops in collaboration with the museum, especially programs aimed at interesting children in art. As best I understand it Jaimie does her 'performance art' by setting the stage for herself then hands her camera off to someone else who takes the photograph. Is THAT a being a photographer? Hmmmmm.
The very helpful woman at the desk further informed me that the Kemper Museum has a team who recommends what purchases to make to the the acquisitions team who in turn make recommendations to Mr. Kemper who writes the checks and buys the art. The Kemper is privately owned and open to all, free of charge.
Desk Helper completely understood my interest in how something so unarty (my words) could be hanging in a museum.
She assured me that many voices and many sets of eyes look at each piece acquired.
Gifting. That answered a lot of my questions.
So far as Tina Barney's wedding photograph is concerned, I sent an email to a friend who is a docent at the Kemper and she wrote this in reply:
That's a piece by Tina Barney. Love her or hate her. Anyway, she takes photos that are posed to look as if they're NOT posed--sort of a huge snapshot. She chooses the clothing (bridesmaid ca. 1965?) and hair, and then goes for a story telling shot. When I've toured it with kids, I've asked them to tell me what's going on--who's mad at whom, etc. They love it. Great photography? I'll let you be the judge of that.
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Knowing it's a staged photo completely changes my perception of it. It doesn't move it to the level of art in my mind but I can appreciate that the photographer was striving to say something, get a rise out of the viewer, that it wasn't an accident blown up really, really big and hung on the museum wall.
These pieces, by the way, are part of the exhibit called Make it Strange, Developing a Medium which presents images curated in order to show photography's ability to represent things for 'what else they are', the distanced approach to reality that offers viewers an alternate mode of seeing. It hopes to demonstrate how photography disrupts perception with a defamiliarizing effect.
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