Artist Lecture: Shimon Attie

Shimon Attie was born in California, and lived there for his childhood. He originally started studying psychology, however, moved towards photography and art after a short period. He graduated from San Fransisco State University in 1991 with his MFA. Shimon has some Jewish heritage in himself, and because of that, he first started his focus in Germany, and Europe, thinking of the Holocaust, as well as much more recently, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. He moved to Germany to work on these concepts and thoughts he had in his mind. His first series focused on what was in Germany, mainly East Germany, after the wall was torn down. His piece focused alot on the issues of pre-World War 2 history, as well as the dark years after the war. There are remeniscents in his pieces, as well as from reactions of people around the area towards his work when he had it. His experience was truely unique in this project, and his use of sometimes multiple projectors and historic imagery really played well together. His pieces remind me of issues in my own work, and the thoughts of the past and how it is different now to the present. This work i most connected to, and i actually would like to try using projectors in similar ways that he did in his imagery.


His later work dealt with pieces of time, the first being in Aberfan, and the second being about a raceway here in the U.S.A. His work dealt alot with movement, in being that the characters in the video stayed still for a few minutes, while the platform they were on moved. This was a video, and he did not use stills to benefit his work. I found less of a connection between this work and my own, however, his work did open my eyes to the numerous tools and techniques that an artist can use time to affect both the viewer and the piece itself.

http://www.matthewlangley.com/blog/uploaded_image/Shimon_Attie_Untitled_Video_Still_Racing_Clocks_Run_Slow_Archeo_1221_73-742525.jpg