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Transcription: [00:28:18]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
Mhm. [[crosstalk]]
{Audience Member}
when I first walked in, I was sort of put off a little bit by, y'know,

[00:28:21]
the camera angle and the angle in which the photograph was taken.
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
Yeah.

[00:28:24]
{Audience Member}
But the more that I look at it
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
uh huh
{Audience Member}
especially these two photographs side by side,

[00:28:28]
and I've forgotten if you've said when they were chosen - that's sort of interesting to me -

[00:28:32]
my own personal read on it, is so much about, like,

[00:28:35]
how he's really captured these very quintessential, nuanced expressions of these two different people
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
uh huh.
(Audience Member)
[00:28:40]
and I was, like - from my point of view,

[00:28:43]
it's sort of like in McCain - I see that there's a pain and there's understanding,
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
Mm-hmm.

[00:28:47]
{Audience Member}
there's idealism --
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
Mm-hmm.
{Audience Member}
--and resignation.

[00:28:49]

In Obama, I see like, sobriety, realism, practism, but optimism.

[00:28:56]
And - these are two ways that I view these two different people
[00:28:59]
throughout the campaign, and it's interesting the outcome.

[00:29:05]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
Yeah, it- it is interesting. And when you say when these images were chosen

[00:29:08]
did you - in what context did you mean?

[00:29:10]
{Audience Member}
Chosen for this like, exhibition.
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
Oh, they were chosen for this exhibition in the spring of 2008.

[00:29:15]
{Audience Member}
So [[crosstalk]] way in advance of the outcome of the election?


[00:29:17]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
Oh yes, we did not what the outcome of the election would be-

[00:29:20]
- al-although it's important maybe, to note that we knew that it would go up after the election

[00:29:26]
and you know we love to reflect on history but we see ourselves as people who reflect on history,

[00:29:32]
not as people who try to influence certain outcomes.

[00:29:36]
But when we were selecting these images, Martin and I had an inkling that this is how the race would shape up in the fall

[00:29:43]
and so..so we just made an educated guess. Now had Hilary Clinton been the nominee

[00:29:51]
maybe we- I don't know how we would have rejiggered things,

[00:29:54]
but it did occur to us and that was actually a question

[00:29:57]
um that we had in our minds um about how the whole installation would be shaped

[00:30:02]
and of course that eventually was resolved when Obama became the nominee for the democratic party.

[00:30:08]
One thing that people say about Obama - or maybe I shouldn't be too general -

[00:30:12]
a comment that I heard made during the course of the campaign is that there's something about his face

[00:30:17]
that enables lots of different people to read lots of different things into it,

[00:30:21]
and I-sort of-kept that comment in my mind, and it's again something that I like to ponder I don't--

[00:30:28]
{SPEAKER name="Unknown"}
Maybe it's symmetry

[00:30:29]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
But yes, that somehow - I think there does seem to be-

[00:30:33]
but it's very interesting. Um there, you know, this is just a question I-I have to ask myself.

[00:30:39]
Have I been primed to see his face in that way by things I've been hearing,

[00:30:43]
more so than being primed to see McCain's - um, yeah - McCain's face in that light?

[00:30:48]
Ah, so again I think one of the values of this exhibition is that it raises all these questions.

[00:30:54]
And I think that's part of the reason that Schoeller finds it so important to have this

[00:30:59]
deliberately uniform approach to making photographs and I'm so glad, David,

[00:31:05]
that you pointed out that this is an image made out of film,

[00:31:08]
and there's no attempt t-to correct sort of, quote on quote, correct for things like the ears going out of focus,

[00:31:17]
but I loved your point about the eyes and the mouth being the features that Schoeller obviously chose to focus on,

[00:31:23]
and so now I'm gonna have to go around and ask myself,

[00:31:26]
is that the case in every single image? And I suspect that we'll find it is

[00:31:31]
but, once again that will be another really important um question to look at.

[00:31:36]
But I think Schoeller wants us to be aware that we're bringing our own uh--
[[crosstalk]]

[00:31:42]
our own ideas to these image that he is not by virtue of framing things slightly differently,

[00:31:49]
by virtue of having slightly different colored backgrounds behind the people,

[00:31:53]
trying to deliberately influence the outcome of the reactions that we have to these pictures.

[00:32:00]
{Audience Member}
Even into the reflections of their own eyes
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
Yeah!
(Audience Member)
it's just a studio
[[crosstalk]]

{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.
[[crosstalk]]

[00:32:07]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"}
I think he wants us to kn- to have the pleasure of reflecting on our own responses to these images.

[00:32:14]
I'll take one- one final comment, thank you.

{Audience Member 2}
Do you think there's a--