Finding Her Difficult Balance The Portraits of Carrie Villines
by: Arin Black | posted: Apr 2, 2009
Photographer Gary Winogrand has described picture taking as “a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing it as it is.”
In creating her art, 35-year-old photographer Carrie Villines understands that relating the subject “as it is” can be a difficult balancing act of both letting in and leaving out. She also understands that, as one who constructs the parameters of the frame, she holds a lot of power. That’s a responsibility she doesn’t take lightly.
“I have a lot of respect for the people I photograph,” she says, “even if I don't always agree with their beliefs.” Villines’ attitude translates into carefully set images that both codify and defy stereotypes. “My work is really about looking at how people get through the day,” she says. “What they choose to believe and how they express [those beliefs]; how they decorate their homes, their bodies; how they fit in or stand out; how they connect to other people. On a personal level, by exploring these things I’m able to find some common ground with each of my subjects. And I hope viewers can do the same.”
In her ongoing series, Members Only, Villines takes portraits laced with unintentional ironies. In the medium and large-format photos the close compositions feel invasive at times, photojournalistic in style, and they invite the viewer to consider the individual realities of the subjects, to come to know their stories. For Villines, who started out as a writer covering the Los Angeles music scene, narrative still matters. That’s why she says she’s drawn to portraiture. “Writing was always a labor for me,” she says. “But I picked up a camera and it was kind of instant gratification.” Despite putting down the pen in favor of the camera, the Brooklyn-based artist didn’t leave storytelling behind in her artistic work. Instead, her images attempt to stop her subjects in a space of identity, and in that moment, to define something essential about them.
As to her own story, Villines began making pictures professionally in a distinctively Californian way. She took headshots of actors. “Taking headshots was strangely influential,” she says. Villines adds that she never realized the job would teach her so much. “I think I didn’t have very much respect for headshot photographers…but it was very instructive in the way I work.” While doing headshots, Villines often spent several hours with her subjects, and she found that their individualism would naturally emerge during the sittings. “Everyone had such a different story,” she says. “You spend two hours with someone you wouldn’t normally… you can find out some really interesting things without trying.” Villines says that Members Only felt a great deal like working with headshots. In the series, she sought out members of groups she either couldn’t or wouldn’t be a part of, and then intended to capture them within their honest habitats.
The result is often disconcerting, an example of truth being stranger than fiction. A Freemason sits in a dining room, walls tiled with plaques and awards, a children’s toy kitchen off to the right; a bodybuilder poses in a frilly, fussy living room, his muscular torso in stark contrast to the femininity of the furnishings. In the past, Villines’ work has drawn comparisons to Diane Arbus, and although she’s flattered, Villines says she never wants to commodify her subjects, or to turn them into freaks. “I never want to use irony,” she says. “I’m drawn to it, of course, but I try to temper it and not focus on that aspect, instead just to portray people in their homes, in their environments. Most people do look at my photos and say, ‘that’s so crazy,’ but I feel like I have a lot of respect for different situations. I’m always impressed by someone who’s so different from me.”
Perhaps even more so than Arbus, Villines’ work feels aesthetically more like August Sander. Villines says that Members Only was partly influenced by Sander’s People of the Twentieth Century, portraits of German citizens grouped by profession or societal standing. Like those images, Villines’ portraits have a quality of arrest. “I like the idea of creating a snapshot of a time and place by photographing the types of people who live in it,” Villines explains. “I don’t consider myself a documentary photographer per se, but documentation does play a large role in my work.” That’s evident in the way Villines composes her photographs. Even though she says she desired to open up in Members Only, the picture plane in those images is ultimately focused, flat and straightforward. “With Members Only I wanted to include more of the environment, but I was kind of limited with the space...I think the intimacy is the essential key to the photograph,” Villines says.
While in graduate school at Parsons in New York, Villines’ work was often criticized for not being personal, but she disagrees with that assessment. She says that all her pictures are a form of self-reflection through negation. “I think that artists are always telling their own stories,” she says. In an effort to go even deeper, however, Villines has begun photographing her own journal—“that’s a difficult process,” she admits. But it is a process.
And as she works through it, people are taking note. Villines was one of 25 artists selected to participate in Geisai Miami, a juried art fair put on by Takashi Murakami’s company Kaikai Kiki and hosted by Pulse. “It was an amazing experience and an honor to be there,” Villines says.
Up next, Villines will have a solo show at the Gawker Media offices this April. It’s just another step, another way to share her vision. She says, “At the very least I hope [my work] gives people an entry point into the lives of people they might not otherwise encounter.”
