Journal Entry #4

Judy Natal

Earth Words #3

www.judynatal.com

This diptych, EarthWords #3, depicts a desolate desert landscape as a backdrop to a large military tank. The two photos show slightly different points of view. The first photo shows several letter forms propped against the tank: a capital B, a lowercase e, and a capital Y. The second image in the diptych shows the same tank from a slightly different angle - it also appears that the letters have changed to capital T, lowercase o, and capital Y. The artist has utilized black and white photography, high contrast, extended depth of field, and an unusual use of the edge of the photo to frame the piece.

The artist, Judy Natal, began this series as a study of a landscape that was alien to her after a move from her home of 22 years in upstate New York. She incorporated old pieces of signs from Chicago and Los Angles and created dialogue between the scenery and her found lettering. She took an interest in they way we view photographs and the ways we view text, drawing inspiration from history, literature, and pop culture.

This image would have been beautiful as a single image, but it functions so much more beautifully as a diptych. The way the artist uses the high contrast in these images brings at once to mind the harsh starkness of both the desert sun and the equally harsh realities of war - represented here by a military tank. This gives the piece an edge before the viewer even approaches enough to understand the message of the image. Adding to this tense feeling is the artist's choice of black and white. The choice to remove color all at once emphasizes the contrast in the image as well as creating an air of the factual - a reminiscence of history books from long ago. Unlike photographs common to the history texts, however, this image has a solid focus and extended depth of field. This extended depth brings even the most minute detail visible to the viewer and the details furthest away sharp enough to realize this is an alien land - a feeling that the artist experienced after moving away from her long-time home in a wet and fertile area.

Even more tension is created by the artist's intentional cropping of the image by using the frame to remove some of the tank. This intrinsically causes tension in the viewer's mind because the rest of the tank is not visible and the viewer is left unfinished. Helping to resolve this tension is the artist's use of the diptych and more importantly her subtle change in the point of view. While the viewer can not see all of the tank in either shot, by looking at the two tanks together, a whole picture is completed. It is through looking at the whole picture that the viewer realizes that it is not only the point of view that has changed. It is now possible to discern that while the first image seems to hold a nonsense word "BeY" (which can be translated into a title of power, respect, or military office in both Turkish and Arabic), the word assembled in the second image on the side of the tank reads "Toy". The distinction is subtle and easily missed considering the similarity of the letterforms. It does however offer a new meaning to the piece, perhaps that a slight change in perspective can reveal the same subject with a radically different meaning.