Jeffrey Moss is a
filmmaker and freelance photo stylist for Pottery Barn, Target, and other companies. A client of the Artists Gallery, we interviewed him about his own collection, what motivates his choices in collecting and how he displays his artwork.
Can you talk a little bit about how you choose original art and photography to anchor your found collection of portraits?
To speak specifically to the art and photography that are currently presented with the ‘found’ collection, I would say that contrast was the most important consideration. The found collection of portraits contains carefully curated snapshots and formally composed images, is always in flux, and comprises thousands of images, from one-inch squares to 8x10 cabinet cards and other portrait styles. The first rule of the found collection is that the images must be black and white, which of course means that there are black and white and all shades of gray between those two extremes. When I put the found collection on display I tried to allow the images themselves to suggest and direct placement, one aluminum-headed pushpin at a time. In some cases, I felt images wanted to be grouped categorically as a kind of multi-era statement. In others, images that originated from different parts of the world and periods of time seemed to come together in a sort of narrative, and gravitated toward various regions of the display by way of story...these are my favorites.
Once the ‘found’ collection reached a certain critical mass, I began to feel the need for a break in texture and scale. I sought out and purchased three larger-scale works to provide a sort of counterweight to the presentation of so many small and even tiny images.
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Detail of found photo installation.
Photo: Elle Decoration UK, Laura Resen |
The first was a picture by California photographer R. Brad Knipstein; a color image of a modern man with wounds from a street fight, dressed in apparel reminiscent of the 19th century and printed at a huge size, about six feet on the vertical. Once that image was in place, the ‘found’ collection, which is displayed on several walls between two rooms, became a kind of radiation from that central point, and the thousands of migrating images from the found collection were suddenly much more active and alive. And interestingly, that huge photograph of Knipstein’s was small compared to the massive object formed by the thousands of little pictures in the found collection. It was like seeing a city from thirty thousand feet, organized around a body of water. A river, maybe. It also (and ironically) made the whole vintage collection feel strikingly modern and relevant...as the French filmmaker Robert Bresson famously said, “No art without transformation.”
The second was a purchase from the SFMOMA Artists Gallery, a work on paper by Stephanie Dennis. I work as a prop stylist, and had rented the Dennis drawing for a shoot and couldn’t let it go. Pure emotion. I hung it as one might pin a tail on the donkey; and again there was a transformative effect. The drawing provided a stark-white/stark-black point of origin for all the shades of gray that surrounded it. And though the Dennis piece is not strictly a portrait, its lines remind me of a thumbprint. It seemed to expand the language of the portrait collection.
The third piece is a large photograph by Australian photographer David Matheson. The focus of the picture is not on a face but on the subject’s gold-painted hands resting at either side of a sizable silk tassel at the center of his lap. A nice image to anchor a collection of portraits of men.
Give our readers a clue into a collectorʼs thoughts. You are purchasing an Andrienne Defendi photograph - what draws you to this piece?
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Adrienne Defendi, Twilight (Child Ascending), 2008
Photograph, Archival Pigment Print, 11 x 14 inches |
I have a story about the Defendi that I bought: as I said, I work as a prop stylist and was shopping for artwork to present as a collection for Pottery Barn’s Fall photo shoot. I was speaking with Michelle Nye, who mentioned that the Artists Gallery had begun to curate and hang images from its collection salon-style within the upstairs gallery, as I and other stylists will sometimes hang collections in rooms for catalog photography. Michelle and I went into the next room for an example of this approach to hanging, and Adrienne Defendi’s photograph
Twilight (Child Descending) was included in the curated mix of images. I was immediately drawn to the picture, and now find myself evaluating why.
While I certainly appreciate the vast range of subject matter to be found in photography, my principle interest is in figural portraits. I suppose I could probably, if hard-pressed, intellectualize the reasons why this is true, but I prefer to savor the emotion(s) that suddenly take hold when I see a photograph that demands attention... and arouses the lust of acquisition! In the case of
Twilight (Child Descending), the closest I can come to a reason is that it reminded me of a favorite sequence in one of my favorite films, Fellini’s
8 1/2. It’s a relatively quick, transitional moment and begins with the main character Guido (played by Marcello Mastroianni) when he is a child and doesn’t want to take a bath. He’s taken anyway and lifted into the “wine bath,” a vat of grapes being stomped by a crew of wild, spattered, laughing children. From there he is held aloft, wrapped in a towel and taken by his nanny upstairs to a nursery, where a bed is being warmed for him. He’s laid down by the nanny, tucked in by a crone (his grandmother?), and left to sleep with the other kids. All goes dark and quiet. Black bedsteads, white sheets, lingering notes of music. The crone pulls shut the door. One of the children asks if Guido will be afraid and gestures to a portrait of an uncle, who’s “eyes will move in the dark.” The child tells Guido to “just remember the spell...Asa Nisi Masa. Asa Nisi Masa. Asa Nisi Masa.” The sequence ends in near silence, the crone hobbling through a hall of Guido’s home.
That film sequence is a spell, and Adrienne Defendi’s photograph is like a lost frame from it.
Talk a little about “clutter design”. What makes it work?
I did an interview with Chicago writer Lisa Cregan for her piece on “The New Clutter” for CS Interiors magazine
(read the article) and we talked about this. My feeling is that a better handle for this approach to design is “The New Evidence,” because what makes it work is the permission it bestows to place things on display by way of presenting personality...like artifacts of experience from your own life. This rather than working by perceived or established rules that would say you should always frame artwork and hang it over a console, symmetrically flanked by two matching lamps, for instance. This is not to say that any and all sense of beauty or placement just get thrown out the window, but does suggest that placement of objects in an interior space can and should be driven by a personal sense of aesthetic, and that following one’s own quirky sense of what works and what doesn’t can create poetry. And this look can be more or less cluttered, depending on whose space we’re talking about...I mean, someone could live in a loft space and choose to restrict minimal furnishings and decor to one remote corner of the space and this wouldn’t be considered clutter, but would be a potentially unique approach to sorting out one’s personal space.
Another piece of this design trend (if that’s what it is) is the idea that things can constantly be on the move in a space, as new things come in and older things are reassigned places, stored, or sold or given away. I always like to recall a friend of mine in Seattle who has a great eye for little tchotchkes and has so many of them that she’s always got them on the move, from one room or table to the next, and even uses them to decorate the inside of her refrigerator! Todd Selby’s book
The Selby Is In Your Place does a really fine job of presenting designed/decorated spaces that obey few rules save those of the space’s occupant(s), and is wonderful for that reason.
Some of your pieces are framed, some not, and empty frames are used to add a sculptural
element to the wall. Can you talk about how you make framing decisions?
So...case in point. I have rules for framing that I like to think are my own, for instance: if I acquire an image for the ‘found’ collection of portraits (and there are two sub collections here, one of portraits of women, one of portraits of men) then it gets presented as I found it. If it is framed it goes into the collection with the frame it had when I purchased it. If it is an unframed snapshot or cabinet card or whatever then it goes onto the wall with a heavy, aluminum-headed pushpin. No room for variation here, so that the accumulation of identical pushpins adds up to a unifying element that catches light in a certain way and also has a permissive effect on random or chaotic placement.
I’m currently building a collection of fine art photography and, again, there is a framing rule. Every image is framed with a white 8-ply mat with a deep bevel and a white welded metal frame. The only variation allowed is a match to the image with the right white(s). This approach means the final effect will be about the images themselves, not the framing. But then again, the sameness of many frames together makes for a kind of background statement that feels appropriate to the mechanical nature of the process of photography, so I like that.
With regard to using empty frames, this has become a way to present beautiful or interesting vintage frames as objects in themselves and also a way to draw attention to various parts of the found collection of photographs that are especially appealing for one reason or another—and at different times of the year. The empty frames can move around the collection to showcase a newly expanded narrative moment, a favorite new find, a re-discovered and newly relevant image, etc. And in so doing change the compositional balance at large in the room by shifting visual weight around.
Read more about Jeffery and his collection on the blog:
Its Fifty Fifty
Visit Jeffery's website:
Workhorse Production
