letter
from paris : : matthew
rose
what
are you wearing?
Putting
it on and taking it off, we are bound like Prometheus to what we wear. American
photographer James Startt focuses on Uniforms.
We
are--most stubbornly--what we wear. Since the day we jumped down from the trees
in our birthday suits, wrapped ourselves in something warm and began directing
traffic, we have invested our lives in fashion. And in the same leap, we evolved
second skins--uniforms.
Uniforms
are the great signifiers of who and what we are most likely to be about at any
given time; they are designed for such a task: Nikes, Levis 501s, lederhosen,
Burkas, kilts, tattoos or berets reveal our outer and inner beings. On the street,
where we get our best look at culture in real time, these second skins, often
designed to differentiate, just as often signal belonging and ultimately impose
an architecture, or better a currency, on culture.
The
American photographer, James Startt has made a study of uniforms, and on a greater
scale uniformity, in a recent show entitled "Uniforme(s)" at the Paris
gallery, Agathe Gaillard, during the French photo fest, "La Mois de la Photo."
Startt has the
peculiar intractability to place himself and his camera into this vibrant stream
of fabric covered people with a unique, and terribly quick, charm. Traveling the
globe to pursue his vision of street photography, Startt’s people from Tokyo
to Paris to Istanbul are constantly caught in the act of wearing something.
His
book, Uniforme(s) (Seuil, 2002), brings together 60 of these exacting images of
people in the celebrated and banal act of wearing clothes. In these pages three
presumably elderly women in Monaco are caught wearing identical mink coats, stockings
and heels, while in the southern French village of Marciac, three French police
view the eclipse of the sun with special protective glasses made of paper that
layers their authority with adolescence and wonder.
A
uniform most often attempts to signify and manage power through the gesture of
fabric, color and material combined to let others know: I am a member (or a leader)
of this group. Accessories often help punctuate such statements. Medals, hats,
earrings, jewelry, guns, sunglasses, pocketbooks, gloves and even lipstick inform
the uniform. Indeed
it is often the significant and telling detail (known as the accessory) that unifies.
A half dozen Danish soccer fans during the 1998 World Cup show off the dazzling
red and blond sea of their team colors, their flag emblazoned on their faces.
Another from the series shows three (probably drunk) men in drag in hot purple
and orange wigs, dresses and sunglasses lazily rooting for their team--which team,
it’s not clear. In Lisbon, tiny girls in pink coats and red cotton hats could
be the Little Red Riding Hood gang. In Tokyo, women clad in black zippered outfits
face off with a pair of neo-gothic outfits (more black, more zippers, plus chains
and frills) while window shopping: The envy of a more persuasive version of themselves.
Startt began
this series almost without knowing it 14 years ago, capturing an elderly couple
scrutinizing a group of punk rockers at Dunes Park in Indiana, not far from where
he received his Master of Arts at Indiana University in Bloomington. There, Startt,
not surprisingly wrote his thesis on the American photographer William Klein,
who also snapped people in unguarded moments. And while he’s influenced by
Klein, Startt takes his cue from American Garry Winogrand.
"I
have some of Winogrand's books and every picture is a killer," he says. "There's
not a sleeper in it. The real affinity between his work and mine is a sense of
irony. Winogrand's works were virtually all black and white and speak of America
in the 50s, 60s, 70s. Mine are color and address a particular theme as I've seen
it around the world."
Startt
moved to France in 1992 and quickly became one of the top photojournalists covering
Le Tour de France. His book, Tour de France/Tour de Force (Chronicle Books/Editions
du Seuil), has become a cult item, a must have for Tour fanatics.
Startt’s
approach to photography recalls the kingfisher, the sleek bird that dives through
the surface of lakes for his meals. The art in making these pictures is to "react
quickly," echoing Louis Pasteur's often-quoted axiom: "Chance favors
the prepared mind." Such
was the case in one of the oddest of his pictures: a line up of men in a Tokyo
bathroom. Standing at the urinals, the men sling back their
ties protectively
over their shoulders.
"What
really intrigues me is the fact that in a day where we’ve never had so much
choice, we’ve never shown such a need to belong to one group or another,"
says Startt. "Although I often use fashion as a cue, my pictures have a certain
outsider element. I don’t know if I were a fashion photographer I’d
be able to take these pictures. I don’t think so."
It’s
all coded, the semioticians will tell you, and they are correct. And Startt, with
some wisdom and a dose of humor, illustrates the everyday, modern phenomenon of
Uniforms with an awareness of the language our uniforms speak to others--and ourselves.
What are we to make of Startt’s women in Burkas sifting through a street
sale of blue jeans in Istanbul? We might emphasize that it’s what’s
on the inside that counts, but often it’s what’s on the outside that
we end up counting -- and paying for -- with our cultural bankbooks.
For
more information contact James Startt: e-mail: jstartt@wanadoo.fr
Agathe Gaillard: http://www.agathegaillard.com/
To buy the book:
http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/2020512416/402-5836520-9504142
Matthew
Rose is a writer and artist based in Paris. His e-mail:
mistahrose@yahoo.com
For images: http://www.agathegaillard.com/James%20Startt.html
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