The New Connection

Have you ever found yourself tooling around the Craigslist personal ads just for fun? Well, I'm not ashamed to admit that every couple of months I end up there, and inevitably I find it difficult to stop reading once I've started. Personals in general are fascinating—they allow us to glimpse other humans at their most vulnerable—and with all the internet has brought them in the way of searchability and sheer volume, they are now a nearly limitless entertainment resource.

Jeffrey Aaronson's new show at the Kashya Hildebrand Gallery uses such online personal ads as a starting point for a series of multimedia portraits—and Aaronson gladly does not fail to recognize their innate human appeal.

For his "Maybe It's You" show, Aaronson began by contacting people in Denver, Dallas, Chicago, and Las Vegas who had placed online personal ads that piqued his interest. He asked them to sit for a portrait, but before capturing their headshots with a 20" x 24" Polaroid, Aaronson asked his subjects to read their ads into a voice recorder. These recordings accompany the portraits on iPod shuffles mounted on the gallery walls and accessed by wireless headphones.

These personal ads are alternately eloquent, poignant, despairing, and, more often than not, very very funny. Headphones were in short supply during the Sept. 7 opening, and I had several people walk up and ask me what I was hearing. Undoubtedly they wondered what I was laughing at, and what was so enthralling.

Aaronson talked at the opening about the discontinuity his project makes us aware of, between the faces we see and the words we expect to come out of them. In this way, he goes to the heart of what is both tempting and unsettling about the internet: It allows us to show only certain facets of ourselves while hiding others. By uncovering the people behind these personal ads, Aaronson forces us to confront how often the words and pictures don't match up.

But what I also find intriguing is how this multimedia viewing manipulates the gallery experience. The headphones isolate you from the other viewers, and also tether you to a specific image. You are required to stay there for a determinate amount of time—as long as it takes to listen to their personal ad—and as you hear their words, new details of their face or expression seem to light up and come to life.

Thus the personal ad stops serving as entertainment and starts serving its true purpose of connecting people. Because, in some small way, you are given the chance to fall in love with each subject, to watch their face intently and listen to their sincerest desires. It is no wonder that several of the project's participants asked Aaronson to pass their contact information on to interested viewers.

I also have to praise the gallery for its online component of the show. Every portrait appears in high quality with its accompanying personal ad, and another full gallery of Aaronson's "Subconscious City" series is also available. Galleries and museums everywhere need to start recognizing that the internet can be a wonderful visual medium, and, with their aesthetically conscious audience, they should be leading the push to make it moreso.

For more on the "Maybe It's You" project, see our interview with Aaronson in the January/February issue of American Photo.
--Miki Johnson

(Photo: "It's different for nice ladies on here...some don't care...I do..." © Jeffrey Aaronson/Courtesy Kashya Hildebrand Gallery)

Comments

[sharon]

this is a blast to be a part of this...thanks Jeffery!

[cory]

great post!!!