Describing Art: The Midway Gallery

When we visited the Midway, I immediately saw a large piece that caught my attention - not just for it's size, but for the medium and subject matter.

The black and white photographic series by Larry Clark is called Tulsa. The photos were taken in 1971 and made into 11" x 14" framed (in black) silver gelatin prints (11" x 14" is the size of the frames, the picture sizes are not listed).



The series consists of 44 images arranged in 5 rows. The topmost and second-to-bottommost rows hold 10 vertical photos each, and the other three rows hold 8 horizontal photos each. Each image pictures a different person (with a few exceptions - a few people are seen in multiple photos).



The photos above are just a few of the photos in the series up close (it was difficult to get pictures without a glare on the glass in the frame - sorry!). As you can see, the photos depict people at funerals, using drugs, posing with guns, etc.

The first photo I have chosen out of the bunch shows a woman in her underwear straddling a man on a bed. The man has long, dark, messy hair and is injecting something into the woman's arm while she holds her bicep. There is writing on the wall and the sheets on the bed that cover most of the man's body are wrinkled and shifted out of where they would lie on a nicely made bed. We can not see the woman's face, but the rest of her body is quite exposed. I also assume that what is in the syringe is some sort of drugs, as this is often depicted in this series and people don't often use syringes outside of a doctor's office. At first glance this photo is purely sexual - until you notice the drugs.

The second photo shows two people. One man is almost center-frame, sitting on the bed, leaning back on his elbow. The blank, empty look on his face appears to be due to a drug or alcohol induced state. His sheets are out of place and he almost looks like he may have recently been in a fight; his hair is messed up and it appeared that there may have been blood on his face. The other person stands with their back to the photographer in the front left, pointing at the man on the bed in what seems to be a scolding manner. The room around them is messy, and tension is obvious. My immediate conclusion was that the man on the bed had done something in a drug-induced state, but we shall never know.

The third photo is an almost bird's-eye-view of an open-casket funeral. We can see an elderly man rearranging or placing flowers above the coffin, and we can see into the coffin as well. In the coffin lays a baby. At first glance, if one just notices the infant (possible, as he or she lays center-frame), they may think he or she is sleeping peacefully - however, the surroundings indicate that this is something more than sleep. The photo leaves you wondering what happened, but absolutely no evidence of what could have been is depicted - just the man arranging flowers, and the baby in the casket.

The fourth image is one of the few that seemed posed. A man sits on a bed, center-frame, taking up most of the picture. He looks to his left with a small smirk on his face, holding a handgun in his left hand. He is almost sitting cross-legged, but his right leg has been brought up and is resting in the crook of his arm that he has wrapped around it. He wears no shirt, but dons dark pants and socks, and his is just the slightest bit of messy - it looks intentional. The look on his face and gun in his hand make you wonder who or what will be hit.

The last image is of two nude women and a nude man. They are in what appears to be a bedroom (it's almost college dorm-like), one of the women and the man seated side-by-side and the third standing and bent over the middle woman. It it difficult to see because of the glare, but it appears that the standing woman is helping the seated woman to inject a drug of some sort while the man sits by and watches. This photo is interesting because at first glance it seems to be girls being silly, and then the drugs are noticed, and then one notices that long hair does not mean female - the figure on the left is a male (it took me a few times of looking at it to notice).



I'm not sure what drew me to this piece but I could have looked at it the entire time we were there, creating stories for each picture.