Appreciate Your Hands
By questioning how to capture a ‘portrait’ through performing daily exercises, Macal heightens our attention to subtle variation. She was not interested in gender, age, or race – but more engaged with broadening the scope to our similarities as a whole. She learned to appreciate the weight that we carry with us daily. This weight can be defined as something immediate or as something we deem as important related to our wants, needs, and desires. The way we carry ourselves, including our possessions, is representative of our inner being.
She is much more interested in the action taken in order to produce the images. Influenced by art made in the 1960s (such as Lee Ufan, Robert Ryman, and Agnes Martin), she adopted a similar systematic process to art making. To examine the series methodically, she imposed limitations on the series: she used only a 50mm lens and removed herself from the subjects by only shooting from the hip.
Working within these constraints, Macal demonstrates the wide range of portraiture possible by presenting the viewer with a catalogued inventory of visually charged objects.
From the Eye to Brain
“Visual communication is universal and international; it knows no limits of tongue, vocabulary, or grammar, and it can be perceived by the illiterate as well as by the literate.” -György Kepes
Upon observing an image, the viewer wonders, “What is it?“ and “What is the meaning?” The mind needs to make sense of the world. In order to understand, one must call forth associations and use what is already known to gain meaning of the unknown. The viewer experiences competing perceptions when viewing an image. A person’s age, beliefs, culture, educational background, experiences, expectations, interests, memories, religious background, and values all drive perception and will create a bias towards what one sees. By creating a visual for words, the observer is forced to challenge their preconceived perceptions and provide their own conclusion.