If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

Sorry for the obscure title. Recently I saw an exhbition that seemingly had everything. Graphically beautiful, impeccably executed, sound conceptual basis. I met the photographer who is clearly respectful of the people photographed and has gone to extreme lengths to execute the work.  I should have swooned. But I didn't.  Well I did but, was bugged about it.  No matter how much I knew better, I could not get out of my head that I was looking at a butterfly collection. The work even had Latin series titles. We will not say who this is because the point is not a criticism of the work. Frankly, it is admirable work. The question is why did it still bother me and, is it important that it did.

There was a similar problem with The Album Project. I shrugged it off as the viewers not taking the time to get past their superficial impression and to learn why things were the way they were.  I was asked (more than once) why he was cut out?  I stole the idea of the blank backgrounds after seeing Jeffrey Milstein's terrific images of the bottoms of jumbo jets. One of the points of The Album Project is how Isaac's emotional state seems to come from nowhere. He has great difficulty telling you why is happy or, conversely, why he is upset.  Removing the background was intended to show the difficulty of being with him, he gets upset, and you have no idea why. One person asked why it looked like product photography. That had never occurred to me. But,  the comment is not unlike me thinking "butterfly collection."

One reviewer took the time to dig into my other work and into autism and completely "got" the project. Another reviewer was troubled by not being able to see the father/son relationship in the work. He wanted context.

Which brings me back to the initial question. If a group of portraits (the work at the beginning) looks like butterflies on pins, has the artist made a mistake? If a group of portraits (The Album Project) looks like the latest wrenches in the Sears Catalog?