Digital storytelling these days is a thing. I work as a social media strategist, and the language of maker and digital stories and digital storytelling, well, it’s what people are talking about now.
And and but: the idea of the interview and the photograph, however, are nothing new. My first influence was a book called Out From Under – texts from women performance artists in the 90’s. These were raw, unencumbered narratives of the body, rooted in the performance art of Carolee Schneemann, for sure. Then came Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. And before that, as a young kid I remember spooling over Studs Terkel’s red-cover’d Working, a ragged copy of The Family of Man, and that magic gemstones page in the Atlas of the World. I’ll have to get a copy of this so you can see what I mean.
Gemstones, people, stories. The collection, the collective.
In graduate school, I encountered Agnes Varda and the photographic work of Sophie Calle. Varda’s Vagabond: a woman on the road. Sophie Calle’s The Hotel: sifting through a stranger’s luggage, creating a portrait of a person via the objects one toes. I also am totally inspired by Foster Huntington’s work. I see his The Burning House as an extension of Sophie Calle’s work. And yes, gorgeous Humans of New York; there are stories among us. Diane Arbus, too, well rooted into my bones. Arbus: embedding herself within groupings, and telling the story from there, through her lens.
I’m in love with strangers. I find the immediate and fleeting exchange to be full of possibility. We bring ourselves, right here.
Robin Dicker is a Portland, OR based artist who works in photography, performance and video. She received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and has been awarded residencies at at Ragdale in Lake Forest, IL. and the Kitchen in New York.Dicker’s work can be experienced here: a song on Maile Colbert’s record For (07 Golden Chariot Bore Me Away, With Robin Dicker, For Being True) on Intransitive Records, on i heart photograph and part of “The Lament Project” on ViralNet.net curated by Tom Leeser.