{"id":30632,"date":"2015-11-25T16:50:22","date_gmt":"2015-11-25T22:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=30632"},"modified":"2015-12-03T20:21:01","modified_gmt":"2015-12-04T02:21:01","slug":"obscura-modified-photographs-by-stefan-lesueur-at-umoca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/obscura-modified-photographs-by-stefan-lesueur-at-umoca\/","title":{"rendered":"Obscura: modified photographs by Stefan Lesueur at UMOCA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stefenleseuer\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art has become one of Salt Lake City\u2019s most reliable venues for the art of our time, and its ambitious program, combined with the number and variety of its galleries, can challenge the capacity of the local art press. As this is being written, four small shows have been shoehorned into the spaces between UMOCA\u2019s Main and Street Galleries. While they could easily be overlooked, each presents an artist of international scope that Utah\u2019s art community should be grateful to see.<\/p>\n

Stefan Lesueur\u2019s Obscura<\/i> hangs in the hallway near the back of the upper floor, juxtaposed with the view, through the glass wall opposite, of Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler\u2019s monumental (in subject matter as well as scope) retrospective, Grandma\u2019s Cupboard <\/i>(see our review here<\/a>). Not in the least coincidental, this placement of Obscura <\/i>draws attention to the relation between these two bodies of work. Lesueur\u2019s photographic perspective essentially reverses Ericson and Ziegler\u2019s lifelong look at America\u2019s monuments\u2014Washington, D.C., the national parks, Mount Rushmore, the battlefields of Texas, even Old Glory\u2014and gazes back at Americans while they behold these spectacular sights through the viewfinders of their cameras. Unlike, say, Robert Lakstigala, who toured the country 30 years ago, standing at the back of packs of tourists and photographing them as they photographed the Statue of Liberty and similar sights, Lesueur has meticulously removed the context of each of his large prints, so the details that surround his tourists become negative space, white paper that shapes the figures in their touring attire and backpacks, holding cameras through which they don\u2019t so much see their country\u2019s monuments as accumulate proof: \u201cI was there in person. I saw this myself.\u201d Indeed, what differentiates their photos from any other, often far better shots of Canyonlands, Cannon Beach, or Yellowstone, is who took them, which is what they exist to prove. In essence, Stefan Lesueur has captured the historical moment between the post-Kodak Brownie democratization of photography during the digital age, and the onslaught of the selfie, when everything, even the most imperishable monuments, became mere background to our selves.<\/p>\n

Stefan Lesueur: Obscura, part of the Youth and Family Program, is at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City through December 19.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art has become one of Salt Lake City\u2019s most reliable venues for the art of our time, and its ambitious program, combined with the number and variety of its galleries, can challenge the capacity of the local art press. As this is being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":30633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-15-bytes","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/stevenleseuer.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-17 22:00:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30632"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30651,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30632\/revisions\/30651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}