Miss Aniela Photography

On 9th July I gave a presentation on my work at the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit in Redmond. I had been invited to talk about photo-sharing and how it has impacted on my work and opened up some doors for me. During the presentation (20 mins with 10 mins for questions) I did as best I could to give a general introduction to myself and to describe my ‘journey’, as well as analyse what I think might be the elements to the way I work. I did this by breaking myself down into four factors, factors that may constitute ‘Miss Aniela’ but are also interesting and relevant to photography and art more generally, as we move with technology and try to think where these changes might lead us in the future. The four factors were:
1. Digital photography
2. Digital processing
3. Photo-sharing online
4. Self portraiture

1-3 are topics at the heart of the Pro Summit’s debates and discussions, photo-sharing being the newest factor which has been mentioned more than ever this year at the Summit as the popularity of sites like Flickr proliferate. Number 4, however, was the ‘Miss Aniela’ crux: the colour to my presentation and the selling point which made my presentation different to anything else during the event. Combined with 1-3, I was positing the whole process of ‘Miss Aniela’ (an alter-ego I began two and a half years ago at first without intention of creating ‘art’ or being an ‘artist’) as essentially offering control, complete independence and privacy over the whole image-making process.

I illustrated the presentation with many pics, describing along the way my exhibitions in 2007, 2008, various press I have had and where I think it was all going. To make my words as relevant as I could to other people, other artists, to the general photography scene and their speculation of the future of the art, I mentioned how last year Tate Britain had not only decided to put up digital photography in its gallery for the first time but actually collaborate with Flickr to invite members of the amateur photo-taking audience to submit their pics themed on Britain. (One of my own images was selected as one of the final 40 to go on display.) It is extremely interesting how this move by a prestigious institution suggests a blurring between traditional or established art, and the modern photo-sharing public. It maybe attempts to make the bold statement that amongst the hoards of photo-sharers, there are some ‘artists’.

I contrasted that attitude to how the press coined the term the ‘flickr photograph’ (The NY Times to be precise, re: a previous blog entry of mine, but I used their words not to rant, but to point out something interesting). The term suggests that photo-sharing and digital photography/enhancements go hand in hand, which I have likewise suggested in my own presentation. However, my stance is that this shouldn’t necessarily be to separate those photographs from the ‘real’ art world. By using examples of how my own work has been welcomed as part of art magazines, art galleries, and the homes of art collectors who traditionally buy paintings (well, at least one buyer I heard about) I wanted to show how maybe things are changing, that digital photography is being accepted. I also wanted to share the idea that although modern digital accoutrements may make the creation of photographs easier, as a consequence it makes it more difficult to be unique or interesting. Bringing the theme back to the predominant one of photo-sharing, I concluded that the viewership artists accrue on sites like Flickr rewards the hard work they put into their craft, strengthening the idea of democracy and that art is ‘made by ordinary people’. I wanted to show how the figure of ‘Miss Aniela’ can encourage the modern artist to celebrate the control digital photography offers and to have their say over what ‘art’ should be.

–Hmm, I’ve blabbered on a bit there but that’s the gist of my presentation. I think it fitted it nicely to other discussions going on during Day 1, such as Lise Gagne’s story of success on i-Stock and the general talk of the blurring between amateur and professional.

Some reviews of the 2008 Summit here:

Recap by John Harrington

PDN Pulse: Microsoft Targets Pro Photographers With Summit: Who Is Listening?
PDN Pulse: Is The Amateur The New Professional?
PDN Pulse: Pirates and Money and Bears, oh Microsoft!
Thomas Hawk: Microsoft’s 2008 Professional Photgraphy Summit and What Microsoft is Up to With Digital Photography (scroll down for that one - a few nice pics with it)
The mesmerised audience by Scobleizer

I can’t yet find a video of my presention though I heard the whole Summit was streamed live on Scobleizer’s (above) video site. If anyone finds one please let me know, thanks!

Above: nice pic taken by Matthew!

Before the opening of my exhibition on Thursday evening I was interviewed by two TV channels, TVE2 and Atena 3. The first one was aired on Wednesday night (16th) at midnight on La 2 Noticias, which I am sure will be on the net at some point, so I’ll put a link here as soon as it appears, unless someone has taped it and can somehow transfer it to YouTube. The other interview is a pilot for a new programme that will be on in a few weeks and I haven’t seen the finished edited article yet.

Above: interviews

I fully enjoyed the TV interviews, it’s watching them back that is slightly painful, as is normal for people to feel!

My brainwave whilst I sat on the transfer coach on the way back, is to have a go at making a film of myself! A professional (but informal) one with an interview structure, edited and soundtracked to a good standard (made with a proper film camera) but one that I have as much control in as I do in my self portraits. Maybe I want to show a bit of the real silly me. I don’t know when I will do this but I want to do it soon, and there’s always the new Flickr video feature waiting for it ;))

My exhibition ‘Self gazing’ opened on Thursday night (17th April) at Camara Oscura in Madrid.

The publicity for the event was excellent; there has been coverage by El Pais, Yo Dona (in El Mundo), and I was interviewed by two TV channels - one, La 2 Noticias, which aired on Wednesday night (16th) on TVE2, and the other which will be Antena 3 at some point. As soon as I can find out how to show these interviews on the internet I will post the links in a blog entry, along with some candid pics and a bit of reflection on the experience.

The press coverage has served to bring my Flickr photostream an aggregation of 100,000 views in only three days, and my website views have quadrupled this week. On Wednesday, my feature in El Pais brought 3000 unique visitors to my site (the usual is an average of 400!)
However, each press feature has varying degrees of what some viewers have interestingly highlighted as a misrepresentation of my work. I’ll leave that to the individual to decide. I just find it very interesting how one’s interpretation of my images, the focus they put on detailing the ‘nudity’ and if indeed they emphasise the notion of ‘nudity’ (my strongest supporters/friends don’t seem to identify categories across my work according to the amount of clothing I wear) says more about that person, that journalist, than necessarily me. This can be applied to the work of any ‘artist’, female self portrait artists I think in particular. Perhaps.

Anyway, here are images from the evening! All images taken by my Mr Lovely. Thank him for the excellent shots!

Above: ‘Self-gazing!’

Above: excitement building..? or something!

Above: The visitors on the evening

Above: To my right - Teresa Lugo (from the gallery), and her friends

Above: Teresa again (on the right)

Above: By ‘The Chase’

Above: By ‘The deaths’ with a journalist from art mag LaPiz

Above: a viewer…

Above: Ligeia Scabbia (Eva) and Patricia Ossietta from Flickr! We all met for the first time that evening!

Above: me with Eva and Patricia!

Above: unruly bra strap. i signed two autographs - autographs! haha.

Above: looking on at Sea View…

Viewers by ‘Stretch’.

Above: poser shot by ‘South by southeast’ (my fave print of the exhib)

Above: Camara Oscura Director Juan Curto and journalist from LaPiz.

Above: wine, people, ‘Memoirs of a woman of leisure’

Above: Visitors

Above: and… had to share this funny random shot!

Thanks to all those who came along, and if you live in Madrid or are visiting, the exhibition is open until 31st May, so come and visit. Prints are available in editions of five and if you are interested get in touch with the gallery or myself to find out more. The exhibition has only been open a day and already has sold work. Pretty good going!

The article in El Pais! (see online here).

Some viewers told me that they disliked this article. I’ll discuss it in my next post when I also share some pics of the exhibition launch from Thursday night. For now I’d like you to make your mind up for yourself. Is this article a misrepresentation of ‘Miss Aniela’?

Translation (below) thanks to Eva (title quoted from Patricia Ossietta’s translation)

—-
“Photographic Self-Eroticism”

“A British artist’s success in the net posting intimate self-portraits.”

Beatriz Portinari - Madrid.

“Like other music bands and artists, her fame was born in Internet, via her Flickr-page, where millions of potential admirers share photographs. The enigmatic name Miss Aniela (www.flickr.com/photos/ndybisz/) had everything to become successful on the Net: she was a lolita who got naked in front of of her camera, with a sexy pose and flash, a bit of Photoshop, oniric light, clones … and the internet users at her feet.

“Her images made clear pictoric references to Balthus, sometimes even as a cinematographic recreation reinvented by herself. There is the excited woman on the coach, the relaxed and naked on the sofa, another one without clothes and in front of the window or cloned among the rocks. Behind the 477 photographes, seen by three million people since she opened her webpage two years ago, hides the British student Natalie Dybisz (Leeds, 1986), who opens tomorrow Self-gazing, her first exposition in Spain.

“In spite of the polemic her images usually provoke, criticised by feminist movements, Miss Aniela assures that each photograph has a reivindicative message, started in her youth with tricks of photos where she appeared kissing herself. “In that moment I started to read feminist literature and I wanted to express a certain kind of self-erotism, associated to what I felt in those moment. I wanted to celebrate being with myself”, explains the young woman, accused by some sectors of being narcissistic and by others of being pornographic and exhibitionist. The thing that started as a online diary where she wrote her thoughts with her daylife images became a more risky and daring work, with the danger of being censored loads of times, in the one where the illumination and the scenification are her allies. After participating in the collective exposition ‘How we are now’ last year in Tate Britain in London and becoming a reference of the main trend publications, Miss Aniela assures she wants to continue with her photographic nudism: “Everything comes from my passion to create powerfull and intriguing images, using the first model I have closer. So, why should I do something different now?”

“Self -gazing. From tomorrow in the gallery Camara Oscura. Alameda,16. Till 31st May.”

I said I’d upload any publicity from the upcoming exhibition that I can get my hands on, so here is some..

This article was in Yo Dona magazine inside a well known Spanish newspaper yesterday. Published as an ‘exclusive’, they used a previously unpublished pic, At White Rock, as the main image.

To see bigger, click here. Oh no - not showing up big at all. I’ll get Delarge to help out with a onsite version ASAP…

Here is a translation (only for amusement really, at the misquotations and slight misinformation regarding Tate Modern - it was actually Tate Britain, and my inclusion in the exhib was due to a Flickr competition, I didn’t exactly have my own exhibit!)

“MISS ANIELA
Portrait of a lady 2.0.

“She started showing her photographs in internet and inmediately she jumped to the first row. Now this young british launches her controversial work in our country. By Sandra F. Molina.

“There is a reserve of young artists prepared to follow the Young British Artists that Saatchi sponsored in the 90s. In that situation is placed Natalie Dybisz, coming from Leeds and just hit her twenties, who one day decided to change her diary written with ink for a digital camera and upload her self-portraits in internet. Suddenly, she became an artist. ‘People liked my work, they said I had a own-style and they wanted to interview me. But that wasn’t my plan. I didn’t even study photography! 12 months after uploading my first self-portrait I did my first exposition’. It was on Flickr, the photography - interchange online community, a new example of the future navegation web 2.0. which is used by 25 million people everyday. On the net, Miss Aniela (pronounced Ann-yella). ‘Everyone needs to be protected by an alter-ego’, she argues. ‘On the right hand, I wanted to pay tribute to my polish origins and, on the other hand, I wanted to use the Miss label. It was a way to represent myself as a single and independent woman, young and feminine’.

“In her self portraits, she uses narcissist dreams to clone herself continuously and exaggerate the sensuality and the erotsim, a style that has made her one of the most controversial photographer on the internet. Because there are no few people that have brand her work as pornographic. “The fact that people don’t still assume that the image of a nude woman doesn’t mean sex makes me angry, it doesn’t have negative connotations nor has to become a part of masculine fantasies. With my shots I try to express my sexuality, but no with the presence of a spectator but as an active desire entity, with my rights. What I am.” The work of Miss Aniela has opened an interesting debate about the female nudity and its place in art history.

“The references to Cindy Sherman’s work are obvious, but Natalie feels overwhelmed with that comparison. “My work is less obvious , I am not able to parody with so much style as she did. But I agree with the ideology of her images.” With such a direct speech, its not weird that Natalie has reached the recognition short time. Last year, the London Tate Modern opened its doors to her work, in a retrospective about the new photography, and now she comes to Madrid to show her work in Self-gazing, a exposition she defines as “An opportunity to show the diversity of my style, to show my my most risky side and, at the same time, most sensual”. But this is another step more in the World Domination Plan of Miss Aniela.

“Self-Gazing can be seen from 17th april till 31st May in Cámara Oscura Gallery, Madrid. (More info: www.camaraoscura.net)”