by Monika Dziamka
Daily Lobo
In every photograph on display at the John Sommers Gallery at UNM, the people in the pictures seem melancholy, disconnected, tired and bored.
There's another element the photos share: Graphic pornographic images shine strikingly in each shot.
The project, "Transforming Sexuality: Pornography and American Culture," is the work of student Meaghan Danielson.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
"The point of this project is not to pass judgment on something that is ultimately inescapable during this day and age," Danielson wrote in her show's introductory statement, "but rather to simply call it into question and reveal its often physical presence within daily life."
The show, which is her undergraduate honors thesis show, opened Oct. 22 inside the second-floor exhibit space of the UNM Art Building, west of Popejoy Hall.
Seventeen digital inkjet color prints make up the show. The photographs are titled with the first names of the people in the pictures. Each person is shown doing mundane things, such as reading a book, staring into a TV screen, sitting on a couch or lying in a hammock. But in each picture, some kind of sexually explicit image is projected near the person, who is seemingly unaware of it.
"Pornography is so popular because it is a symptom of a larger problem in our society," Danielson said. "It is not actually pornography that is the entire issue, but rather the destruction of intimacy and true human relation have led to a society that bases the idea of affinity off of physical proximity, i.e. sexual interaction equals true interpersonal intimacy."
Danielson sees an inherent hypocrisy in American society's
treatment of sexuality.
"There is an aspect of suppressed sexuality, particularly in American culture, where the entire public becomes enraged at the sight of Janet Jackson's breast on national TV," Danielson said. "I think that is the contradictory nature of society, which constantly promotes sex in the media and then denigrates it in actual practice."
Student Daria Lindsey, an
undergraduate student at UNM, is in one of the photographs. She said this was the first time she worked with Danielson.
"It (the show) is scandalous," Lindsey said, "but I think Meaghan is a really amazing artist."
Lindsey said she has not received any negative comments about her participation in the exhibit.
Danielson said she has been working on the exhibit for more than a year, and there has been positive reaction to her work in general.
She has her critics, though.
"I think that the work makes people somewhat uncomfortable, and they want to categorize it into an academic realm, but it won't go that easily," Danielson said.
The images she chose to project in her photographs, which are mostly of women doing sexually explicit acts, are a reflection of the availability of those types of images, Danielson said.
"Most of the pornography I have come across is directed at a heterosexual male audience, and that means naked women or naked
heterosexual couples or naked lesbian couples," Danielson said.
Student Ada Blair doesn't find the exhibit offensive.
"It (the show) is exciting," she said. "It doesn't strike me as pornography, just nudity."
The images celebrate the human body, Blair said.
Danielson will graduate in December with a bachelor's degree in studio art with an emphasis in photography. Her minor is in women's studies.
Danielson's work was featured in three group shows in the last year, and she has another show planned for the spring. She has had her work published in Santa Fe's Camera Arts magazine.
John Sommers Gallery is open Monday through Friday from 8:15 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. There will be a closing reception Thursday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. The exhibit concludes Saturday.
