Richard Orjis "More photographs in the world than their are tricks"

When I think of high culture, the first that comes to mind is money, and that in order to have a piece of high culture art you need to be so filthy rich that you do not know what to spend your money on anymore. Stereotypically, a bald, dumpy man. Smoking a cigar. With his cosmetically enhanced trophy wife latched on to his left arm. I believe that High Culture arts are usually literature and visual arts, mostly paintings. The older works, that date back to the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians et cetera, seem to be the most sought after works in High Culture. The ideas of ancient art works and wealth seem to go hand in hand with one another.

Pop culture on the other hand seems to be the art that fits in with the times. To me pop culture is a never ending, ever changing cycle. When I was ten the pop culture was the Backstreet Boys, Tights with a foot strap and a fluorescent pink scrunchy, now its the skinny jeans, hip-hop music and sleek straightened hair. Pop culture is also what the person finds interesting to their self. In today's lecture, Richard Orjis spoke about a magazine, I believe it was by Andy Warhol called Interview magazine. This magazine focused on pop culture. Basically made for you to rip out the pages you wanted, and to dispose of the rest.

The pages being ripped out would change, depending of the movement of pop culture at the time. Also by ripping out the page that attracted you makes the piece of art personal to you as you are singling it out from all the other works in the magazine. this is a representation of what you enjoy and take inspiration from.

With the work that we saw from Orjis' collection i would think of his work at popular culture. I think this because of the photographs he has taken look like they belong in a fashion editorial or used for advertising in a magazine, in saying that I do not want you to think his work is of a poor standard, because it truly is not. His photographs has a darkness about them which are truly exquisite and really show off his talents as a "photographer who likes to be fictional" Orjis' works have a certain darkness to them, which stems from his Roman catholic background. He works with Religion mixed with Pop Culture, which reiterates my idea of relating Orjis' art to pop culture. Grant spoke about how the materiallity of the images is important. Orjis' work is dominated with black, which absorbs all light, so everything is present but invisuble. Which is a rather intersting thought. What is in the work that we do not see? Intricate deatiling? Hidden Meanings? Subliminal messages?

Even though I see Orjis' work as pop culture, and think it would work well in an editorial magazine. I also think it would fit well into a gallery, and could be regarded as High Culture because of the dark feeling it has to it.