Michael Smith, A Nite with Mike, 1998.
Sears Class Portraits, 1997-
Michael Smith 1951
On The first thing you see is about Sears Class Portraits is that it is a series of 14 photos, framed and attached on the walls, arranged in two rows, seven in each line. The second thing is the overriding similarities of all the photos: all of them are the portraits with almost identical composition and color tones, implying that the photos were taken under similar conditions. Thus, even though each photo portrays a different group of people, the photos look eerily repetitive and similar to one another. Moreover, the subjects are young people, which almost immediately reminded me of a scene in Dead Poets Society, where the English professor John Keating shows the students the old class portraits of the school, portraits of people who once were young students themselves yet died old, preaching the famous Carpe Diem, whose theme powerfully resonates in the quoted poem To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick: “And this same flower that smiles to-day/ To-morrow will be dying.”
However, the author not only touches on the ephemerality of youth, but goes further and makes the work more interesting by casting himself as an actor who performs in his own work. The photos are the portraits of the classes the artist taught, and that at the end of every semester, he had taken them to take a photo which not only means that the artist is in each photo but also means that whom we see on those 14 photos is actually a man over seven years, which adds the eeriness.
The photo revealed more and more as I tried to read the photo. Everyone in the portraits is smiling or at least trying to look good, as we all do when we take portraits: we look nicer and happier than we actually are. In contrast, artist is wearing a mysterious sneer on his face, which is more awkward and out-of-place than mean or cold. He is almost a ghostly figure, bearing a secret, knowing truth that others in the photos don’t.
Another important thing made me not only look at the photos, but actively read, and reread them. At first, the artist alone stands out so much from each photo that everyone else seems to blur into a background. The eerie, self-conscious repetition of the artist was such a strong composition in each photo that my eyes just sought after him. However, then I began to take an opposite approach, and tried to eliminate him from each photo in order to see how much sense and coherence it makes. Through these techniques, the artist wants us to see the awkwardness and ghostliness of self-consciousness as well as the transience of youth.
However, the author not only touches on the ephemerality of youth, but goes further and makes the work more interesting by casting himself as an actor who performs in his own work. The photos are the portraits of the classes the artist taught, and that at the end of every semester, he had taken them to take a photo which not only means that the artist is in each photo but also means that whom we see on those 14 photos is actually a man over seven years, which adds the eeriness.
The photo revealed more and more as I tried to read the photo. Everyone in the portraits is smiling or at least trying to look good, as we all do when we take portraits: we look nicer and happier than we actually are. In contrast, artist is wearing a mysterious sneer on his face, which is more awkward and out-of-place than mean or cold. He is almost a ghostly figure, bearing a secret, knowing truth that others in the photos don’t.
Another important thing made me not only look at the photos, but actively read, and reread them. At first, the artist alone stands out so much from each photo that everyone else seems to blur into a background. The eerie, self-conscious repetition of the artist was such a strong composition in each photo that my eyes just sought after him. However, then I began to take an opposite approach, and tried to eliminate him from each photo in order to see how much sense and coherence it makes. Through these techniques, the artist wants us to see the awkwardness and ghostliness of self-consciousness as well as the transience of youth.
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