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Born in New-York.
Lives and works in Paris and New York.
Artist Website : www.rhonabitner.com
Gallery Website : www.xippas.com
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What were your beginnings as a photographer ? Where did you start ?
You begin to think about photography by reflecting on the ways in which you look out at the world, how you see what is around you at once as a whole and in parts. In the beginning a camera is a way for you to jot down those thoughts, like a notebook, and only gradually are you able to make something coherent, clear, and particularly separate from what you see.
Your images seem to take on the theatricality of their subjects. Certainly timing is of the essence of theatricality. Can you tell me something about how you went about making those pictures ?
Yes, they can take on the theatricality of their subjects. However, the process of making the photographs is straightforward. I am an anonymous member of the audience. I do not manipulate the image in any way. What is presented in front of me is what I photograph. The lighting is the lighting of the circus ; the resulting picture is what it is. I suppose when I decide to snap the shutter that I do, to an extent, control the timing of the moment recorded, but that is simply a selection process.
The pictures reveal a directness in that what is being observed is not being manipulated. (The performers are engaged in various acts of choreography and manipulation, not the observer.) The directness and anonymity of my role as observer reinforces a rather simple act of « looking. » The matter-of-fact nature of this process allows for the resonance of the image (or the subject), not the picture making.
It may seem a fine point, but reducing this act of seeing to its essential process allows the viewer to perhaps be affected by the theatricality of the image. But this essential process is not in-and-of-itself theatrical ; it does not create it. To be impressed or amused by the image is not unwelcome, but I am not interested in guiding anyone to a sense of awe. The awe is there.
What you’re staging is viewership as such – an activity that is essential to the structure of theater as performing is. How did you come to your new projetc of photographing empty theaters ?
I like the activity of performance – as it is perceived on both sides of the curtain. The large clown portraits I made between these two series allowed me to explore the experience and perspective of the performer as well es that of the spectator – each equally active and passive. That led me to consider the precise moment that preceded the start of whatever is being presented. That absence (or gap) was as interesting to me as the performer or the act.
These new images, much like my earlier work, are quite direct – theatricality is certainly there, but again, I don’t create it, it is simply observed. In much the same way that you noted the performance as inherently theatrical, the moment when everything in hushed, when the illumination of the spotlights on the curtain or through its opening generates a certain palpable electricity ; absence, expectation, and anxiety resonate much like the performances that follow them. It is en extraodinary moment that is highly personal and subjective, yet universal.
Perhaps these images further distill this idea of « looking » for me. Take away the actors, the clowns, and there is still a shared experience arising from these matter-of-fact inanimate subjects.
« Rhona Bitner : Theater Magic», interview by Barrry Schwabsky, Art Press, n°307, Décember 2004, pp. 41-44.
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