Contemporary Photographer Arthur Tress

http://www.arthurtress.com/

Arthur Tress was born in 1940, in Brooklyn, New York. Tress spent his growing-up years in Brooklyn, and attended Bard College in New York where he studied painting, art history, world culture, and philosophy under Heinrich Bluecher from 1958-1962. Yet his first photographs were taken while he was attending high school, and he continued to take photographs throughout his college years. In 1962, Tress moved to Paris to attend film school, and spent the next 4 years traveling around the world, documenting different cultures. In 1968, Tress returned to New York and became a professional photographer, and had his first solo exhibition. From 1968 on, Tress continued to exhibit and explore the medium, producing such series as The Dream Collector, Fish Tank Sonata, the Hospital series, and his series of male nudes. From 1995-1999 he began work on a series entitled The Male of the Species, and he continues to have his work published in books or be exhibited around the world.

Arthur Tress is well known for his "staged surrealism" and his portrayal of the human body. His photos are dream-like; both anthropological and surreal, uniquely addressing humanity as something both real and constructed. While he was first known for his cultural documentary photographs, he brings an artistic perspective to the documentary concept, imbuing each image with a psychology beyond documentation.

I will provide a link to the photo, since it seems to be unavailable to post, and I didn't want to choose a different photo of his to write about, because this particular photo has everything that I like about his work in it. This photo was created in 1968, as part of his documentary photo series Appalachia. A man sits on a wooden chair turned slightly askew from the photographer, on a rustic porch, with green and almost ornamental vegetation beyond him. Both porch and chair come out at odd angles from the frame, and the subject dominates the central area of the frame. The lighting is natural, and although the subject's hands are worn and veiny, there is a softness in the man's features, and a delicacy in the way he holds the bird to his shoulder. The subject gazes directly at the viewer, and confronts us.

This particular image, one of many documenting life in Appalachia, shows a land and people dedicated to hard work--a people eking out a living in the mountains, but also a people with surprising vulnerabilities. The angle of the chair almost makes it appear unstable, as if mimicking the balance the people of Appalachia must strive for in order to preserve their way of life. The man himself, for all his rough-hewn appearance, has a sensitivity to the delicate bird, seen in the way he handles it--calmly, confidently, and almost protectively.

For this particular series of images, Tress relied on the documentary style he most likely learned from the film school he attended in Paris. The subject almost always takes center stage, directly confronting the viewer. Despite the preparation that probably went into each photo, there is a sense that the images were simply "caught," and are a snapshot of a life or a way of life.

Tress does not seem to say much about his work on his website, but then, his work speaks for itself. Tress sought to document and record various cultures, and chose to shoot images that most reflected the many cultures he encountered while on his travels. These photos had an anthropological use, in that they captured a moment and documented a culture in such a way that a part of the culture became preserved. His photos are of the past, and it is a beautiful, raw, and real one. But more than that, the photos take those moments beyond mere observation.

This is probably why I like his work so much. A history and anthropology buff myself (I was almost an anthropology major), I am fascinated by the way he can condense an entire culture into a few images. His surrealist work is also interesting in that I can't figure out he created these photos--especially his Fish Tank Sonata series (although these are not portraits). He has come up with some very creative ideas, and an avid fish enthusiast myself, I find the concept of the fish tank in some of his photos to be especially interesting and relatable in the symbolism it imbues.