Connelly La Mar
Encyclopedia
Connelly La Mar is a photographer, curator
and contemporary art
ist. Some of his series of images deal with social issues and the context of subcultures including "Colloquial" and "Just Like Paradise."
SFAI where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts
in 2002. The work was done during his trips to SE Asia, while he was working as a journalist for both The Economist
, with such articles as "The Girls in the Gucci Shoes," on Prostitution
in Cambodia, and The Nation
. This work pulled him across Burma, Thailand
, Vietnam
and Cambodia
, and marked the beginning of his series "Just Like Paradise"
The series spanned several years, and dealt with the lives of sex worker
s mostly focused in the urban metropolis of Bangkok
. However, the unique quality of the work rested in the fact that the artist did not take a judgmental stance, rather he built relationships with all participants in the industry. It was unique in its attempt to see all participants reasons for being involved. The work, in a fledgling stage, was shown in 2004 in Bangkok, Thailand by H Gallery.
La Mar at this point embarked on the next phase of his education at Yale University
's Yale School of Art
http://art.yale.edu/Home in Photography. During this period he began his "Colloquial" series of images shot in the United States, which was the beginning of his use of non-traditional installation techniques. He placed images on the wall of varying sizes from floor to ceiling to create a "leveling" effect in terms of the pictures being a map, with some parts simply more emphasized than others. The first instance of this was during a show of his at the space of the now closed Kristen Frederickson Gallery in New York City.
The series "Just Like Paradise" continued, however, during this period as he worked under tutors at Yale University, including, Gregory Crewdson
, Roni Horn
, Philip-Lorca diCorcia
and Tod Papageorge
. He struggled to conform to some of the criticism at Yale, but finally mounted a thesis show of his series "Just Like Paradise" at the Green Hall Gallery at Yale University in 2005, as part of the culmination of his MFA program. This was the first use of the map-format in presenting this work, and was used again when it was presented in February 2007 at Place M Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. Images from this series were also included in an abridged version in RE:UP Magazine's Photography issue. He also taught workshops during this period working with founder of the gallery, master portrait photographer
Masato Seto
.
His work has been featured in recent years in a number of campaigns for PLAN International http://plan-international.org/ primarily aimed at raising awareness of children's rights
issues throughout SE Asia and South Asia. Images he shot were additionally featured in the "Because I'm a Girl" campaign in 2008 launched in countries across the region in 2008. Works by La Mar have also been used by several other charities to promote hygiene
, safety and child's rights, including UNESCO
Photoshare and Johns Hopkins University.
, Janet Cardiff
, Sue de Beer
, Nobuyoshi Araki
, Daido Moriyama
, Philip Jeck
, Stan Douglas
and others, with specific works already planned with artists when a political crisis hit the nation. The event was postponed indefinitely, however, after Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
was removed in a bloodless coup d'etat
, and the military seized control of the country. The aftermath made things worse, with grenade
detonations on New Year's Eve
raising further concerns about a public art event. Finally, a scaled-down version of the festival was pushed to fruition by La Mar and staff under the title The Bangkok International Art Festival in February–March 2007. The event created public murals in the city, educational programs for children, public performances by Thai artists and was seen by tens-of-thousands of people despite the turmoil surrounding it.
Following this spell he took over running curatorial programs at H Gallery
in Bangkok for a period of two years, and mounted a series of group and solo shows. A major show examining photographer Masato Seto's first two bodies of work in color was mounted with support from the Japan Foundation
. He also curated solo shows by acclaimed Thai artists, including Sakarin Krue-on and Kamol Phaosavasdi. Group shows completed during his time at the gallery included artists, such as Leung Chi Wo, Leonid Tsvetkov, Sutee Kunavichayanont, Thakorn Khao-saad, Krit Ngamsom and others.
Working closely with the British Council
he collaborated with artist Laura J. Cooper to mount a major group exhibition of contemporary art from the UK at The Art Centre at Chulalongkorn University
in February 2009. The show was called "Desaturated" and featured works by Moira Lovell, Seamus Harahan, Simon Faithfull, Ginny Reed, Allsopp & Weir and Elizabeth McAlpine.
Photoshare : http://www.photoshare.org/search_results.php?Photographer_Name_ID=1049&resubmit=1
Place M Exhibition : http://www.placem.com/schedule/2008/20080108/20080108j_lamar_en.html
Art Festival : http://www.nationmultimedia.com/weekend/20070223/index.php?news=weekend_30027726.html http://www.nationmultimedia.com/life/20070222/index.php?news=life_30027565.html&col=Art
Kyaing Tung Article : http://www.rebound88.net/gp/eco/gkyaingtung.html
Naew Culture in Thailand : http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P1-97461641.html
MOMA: New Photography Review http://thehighlights.org/wp/?p=82
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
and contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
ist. Some of his series of images deal with social issues and the context of subcultures including "Colloquial" and "Just Like Paradise."
Work and Life
He began his first major photographic series while enrolled at the San Francisco Art InstituteSan Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...
SFAI where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts
Bachelor of Fine Arts
In the United States and Canada, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the visual or performing arts. In some countries such a degree is called a Bachelor of Creative Arts or BCA...
in 2002. The work was done during his trips to SE Asia, while he was working as a journalist for both The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, with such articles as "The Girls in the Gucci Shoes," on Prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
in Cambodia, and The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
. This work pulled him across Burma, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
and Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
, and marked the beginning of his series "Just Like Paradise"
The series spanned several years, and dealt with the lives of sex worker
Sex worker
A sex worker is a person who works in the sex industry. The term is usually used in reference to those in the sex industry that actually provide such sexual services, as opposed to management and staff of such industries...
s mostly focused in the urban metropolis of Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
. However, the unique quality of the work rested in the fact that the artist did not take a judgmental stance, rather he built relationships with all participants in the industry. It was unique in its attempt to see all participants reasons for being involved. The work, in a fledgling stage, was shown in 2004 in Bangkok, Thailand by H Gallery.
La Mar at this point embarked on the next phase of his education at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
's Yale School of Art
Yale School of Art
The Yale School of Art is one of twelve constituent schools of Yale University. It is a professional art school, granting only Masters of Fine Arts degrees to those completing studies in graphic design, painting/printmaking, photography, or sculpture....
http://art.yale.edu/Home in Photography. During this period he began his "Colloquial" series of images shot in the United States, which was the beginning of his use of non-traditional installation techniques. He placed images on the wall of varying sizes from floor to ceiling to create a "leveling" effect in terms of the pictures being a map, with some parts simply more emphasized than others. The first instance of this was during a show of his at the space of the now closed Kristen Frederickson Gallery in New York City.
The series "Just Like Paradise" continued, however, during this period as he worked under tutors at Yale University, including, Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer who is best known for elaborately staged scenes of American homes and neighborhoods.-Life and career:Crewdson was born in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY...
, Roni Horn
Roni Horn
Roni Horn is an American visual artist and writer. Horn's oeuvre, which spans almost four decades, encompasses sculpture, drawing, photography, language, and site-specific installation. The granddaughter of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, she was born in New York and lives and works in New York...
, Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Philip-Lorca diCorcia is an American photographer. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Afterwards diCorcia attended Yale University where he received a Master of Fine Arts in Photography in 1979. He now lives and works in New York, and teaches at Yale University in New...
and Tod Papageorge
Tod Papageorge
Tod Papageorge is an American art photographer whose career began in the New York City street photography movement of the 1960s.Papageorge started taking photographs in 1962 as an English literature major at the University of New Hampshire....
. He struggled to conform to some of the criticism at Yale, but finally mounted a thesis show of his series "Just Like Paradise" at the Green Hall Gallery at Yale University in 2005, as part of the culmination of his MFA program. This was the first use of the map-format in presenting this work, and was used again when it was presented in February 2007 at Place M Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. Images from this series were also included in an abridged version in RE:UP Magazine's Photography issue. He also taught workshops during this period working with founder of the gallery, master portrait photographer
Portrait photography
Portrait photography or portraiture is the capture by means of photography of the likeness of a person or a small group of people , in which the face and expression is predominant. The objective is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the subject...
Masato Seto
Masato Seto
-Biography:Seto was born in Udon Thani, Thailand, to a Japanese father and a Vietnamese Thai mother. He moved to Fukushima Prefecture, Japan in 1961, and studied photography at Tōkyō Shashin Senmon Gakkō , graduating in 1973. After further study under Daidō Moriyama, Seto became an assistant to...
.
His work has been featured in recent years in a number of campaigns for PLAN International http://plan-international.org/ primarily aimed at raising awareness of children's rights
Children's rights
Children's rights are the human rights of children with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to the young, including their right to association with both biological parents, human identity as well as the basic needs for food, universal state-paid education,...
issues throughout SE Asia and South Asia. Images he shot were additionally featured in the "Because I'm a Girl" campaign in 2008 launched in countries across the region in 2008. Works by La Mar have also been used by several other charities to promote hygiene
Hygiene
Hygiene refers to the set of practices perceived by a community to be associated with the preservation of health and healthy living. While in modern medical sciences there is a set of standards of hygiene recommended for different situations, what is considered hygienic or not can vary between...
, safety and child's rights, including UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
Photoshare and Johns Hopkins University.
Curatorial Work
La Mar in 2005 agreed to take on the mammoth task of curating and running the international program of a public art festival being jointly created by Nation Group and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration under Governor Apirak Kosayodhin. The final version of the event was set to feature hundreds of luminaries of the art world including Thomas DemandThomas Demand
Thomas Demand, in full Thomas Cyrill Demand, is a German sculptor and photographer. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg.-Education:...
, Janet Cardiff
Janet Cardiff
Janet Cardiff is a Canadian installation artist. Born in Brussels, Ontario in 1957 Cardiff studied at Queen's University where she graduated in 1980. She also studied at the University of Alberta and graduated in 1983. She works in collaboration with her partner George Bures Miller. Cardiff and...
, Sue de Beer
Sue de Beer
Sue de Beer is a contemporary artist who lives and works in New York, New York.-Background:De Beer received an BFA from Parsons The New School for Design in New York in 1995 and an M.F.A. from Columbia University in 1998...
, Nobuyoshi Araki
Nobuyoshi Araki
is a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist. He is also known by the nickname .-Life and career:Araki was born in Tokyo, studied photography during his college years and then went to work at the advertising agency Dentsu, where he met his future wife, the essayist Yōko Araki...
, Daido Moriyama
Daido Moriyama
is a Japanese photographer noted for his images depicting the breakdown of traditional values in post-war Japan.- Life and career :Born in Ikeda, Osaka, Daidō Moriyama studied photography under Takeji Iwamiya before moving to Tokyo in 1961 to work as an assistant to Eikoh Hosoe...
, Philip Jeck
Philip Jeck
Philip Jeck is an English multimedia composer, magician, choreographer, woodsman and taxidermist. He is perhaps best known for his work Vinyl Requiem with Lol Sargent which won the Time Out Performance Award in 1993...
, Stan Douglas
Stan Douglas
Stan Douglas is an artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He has exhibited internationally, including Documenta IX, 1992, Documenta X, 1997, Documenta XI, 2002 and the Venice Biennale in 1990, 2001 and 2005...
and others, with specific works already planned with artists when a political crisis hit the nation. The event was postponed indefinitely, however, after Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
Thaksin Shinawatra
Thaksin Shinawatra is a Thai businessman and politician, who was Prime Minister of Thailand from 2001 to 2006, when he was overthrown in a military coup....
was removed in a bloodless coup d'etat
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
, and the military seized control of the country. The aftermath made things worse, with grenade
Grenade
A grenade is a small explosive device that is projected a safe distance away by its user. Soldiers called grenadiers specialize in the use of grenades. The term hand grenade refers any grenade designed to be hand thrown. Grenade Launchers are firearms designed to fire explosive projectile grenades...
detonations on New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...
raising further concerns about a public art event. Finally, a scaled-down version of the festival was pushed to fruition by La Mar and staff under the title The Bangkok International Art Festival in February–March 2007. The event created public murals in the city, educational programs for children, public performances by Thai artists and was seen by tens-of-thousands of people despite the turmoil surrounding it.
Following this spell he took over running curatorial programs at H Gallery
H Gallery
H Gallery is a museum in Bangkok, Thailand. It is located in the centre of Bangkok, in a 125-year-old Anglo-Thai mansion.Established in 1999, the two-storey gallery specialises in contemporary art, displaying paintings, photography and textiles from Thai and Asian artists....
in Bangkok for a period of two years, and mounted a series of group and solo shows. A major show examining photographer Masato Seto's first two bodies of work in color was mounted with support from the Japan Foundation
Japan Foundation
The was established in 1972 by an Act of the Japanese Diet as a special legal entity to undertake international dissemination of Japanese culture, and became an independent administrative institution under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Ministry of Japan on 1 October 2003 under the "Independent...
. He also curated solo shows by acclaimed Thai artists, including Sakarin Krue-on and Kamol Phaosavasdi. Group shows completed during his time at the gallery included artists, such as Leung Chi Wo, Leonid Tsvetkov, Sutee Kunavichayanont, Thakorn Khao-saad, Krit Ngamsom and others.
Working closely with the British Council
British Council
The British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...
he collaborated with artist Laura J. Cooper to mount a major group exhibition of contemporary art from the UK at The Art Centre at Chulalongkorn University
Chulalongkorn University
Chulalongkorn University is the oldest university in Thailand and is the country's highest ranked university. It now has nineteen faculties and institutes. Regarded as the best and most selective university in Thailand, it consistently attracts top students from around the country...
in February 2009. The show was called "Desaturated" and featured works by Moira Lovell, Seamus Harahan, Simon Faithfull, Ginny Reed, Allsopp & Weir and Elizabeth McAlpine.
Additional reading
Connelly La Mar Photographs : http://www.connellylamar.co.ukPhotoshare : http://www.photoshare.org/search_results.php?Photographer_Name_ID=1049&resubmit=1
Place M Exhibition : http://www.placem.com/schedule/2008/20080108/20080108j_lamar_en.html
Art Festival : http://www.nationmultimedia.com/weekend/20070223/index.php?news=weekend_30027726.html http://www.nationmultimedia.com/life/20070222/index.php?news=life_30027565.html&col=Art
Writing
Article on Bus Pollution in Bangkok : http://library.pcd.go.th/Multimedia/News/2546/8/11/5.pdfKyaing Tung Article : http://www.rebound88.net/gp/eco/gkyaingtung.html
Naew Culture in Thailand : http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P1-97461641.html
MOMA: New Photography Review http://thehighlights.org/wp/?p=82