Artist Post

I couldn’t choose between these two artists because they both eloquently address, in diverging ways of course, what I shared in class Wednesday. The first photograph is from Simone Rosenbauer “Small Museum” series and, in my opinion, is one of three images that exude the idea of childhood vs. adulthood. The second is from Aaron Huey’s “American Portraits” series in which he journeyed across America by foot for 154 days, all the while taking photographs of the people and the places. I shared with everyone that I was most interested in understanding what happens to us mentally between childhood and adulthood. Why we stop imagining and playing when we hit a certain age. Why most of us become boring uncreative robots, content to live meaningless, average existences. While scrolling through both Rosenbauer and Huey’s work, I saw their attempt to respond to my question.

Rosenbauer’s photograph of the old man holding a rusty, out-of-date looking bike for some reason stuck me greatly. His proud body position reminds me of how children often take pride in the littlest things like their bikes or dolls. Even his corky clothing and the environment he stands in scream out to me as something a child would wear while exploring the world around them. With this photo, Rosenbauer exposes that with age life does become difficult, for we have greater responsibilities and worries, but it is not impossible to hold onto some of our childlike charm and happiness.

More so than Rosenbauer, Huey provides a variety of point of views about the descent into adulthood, like the angst of growing up and the loss of innocence. The image I chose is a photograph of a senior portrait handing on what looks like a cheap wood paneled wall. We infer that this young man has just graduated from high school, the world is at his feet, and possibly he is going to attend college in the fall. For some reason, however, I get the sense that even though this young man has so many opportunities and so much to live for, he will settle for the average human experience. Perhaps I imagine this because of the yellow cast of the image and the fact that the rest of Huey’s series seems to concentrate on a lower class trapped in an unfavorable living environment.

When I look at this image and others like it, I believe that Huey reveals the sad truth of our society today, we are stuck on repeat; we continue the patterns of our parents, we settle for mediocrity from generation to generation, we forget to live until it is gone. I hope to avoid this almost inevitable path of life; I hope that when I am old and grey, I too want to ride a bike with tube socks and sneakers.