Artist as Performer: Tim Roda - Risa Morales

The Houston Center for Photography is currently running a show called "Artist as Performer." One of the artists exhibited there is Tim Roda, whose series of large-scale images is along one of the first walls of the gallery. Each image is composed of the artist and his son and is telling a different story. Many of the images are seemingly chaotic, with many different objects visible within the frame, implying the "moment" of the image. Part of what makes the images so intriguing is that they are all carefully constructed. While they look like it is just a man and his child playing in some sort of garage, Roda actually constructs each of the sets for the photographs before the image is ever actually taken. One of the inital images of the series actually shows the space before he (and his son) creatively take hold of it.

The images are whimsical and skillfully capture that element of being a child and allowing simple, crude objects to become unlimited vehicles of imagination and fantasy. A number of different photographers have attempted to capture this idea, this feeling, and many have employed the likeness of a child in their images to attempt to elicit it. Roda includes himself in every image, not as an impartial observer, or as an adult authority figure, but as a willing participant and implicit co-conspirator of his son's. This inclusion of the adult artist allows the fantasy world that we see captured to no longer exist for only children, but to be a place that all can share in. The artist also intentionally leaves his edges rough or "unrefined," which, in my opinion only adds to the illusory and imaginary effect of the world he attempts to create within the edges of the frame. As with most large-format images, there is a large amount of visual information contained within the edges of each frame, providing the viewer with a photo that you need more than just a few seconds to glance over before you really understand the nuances of everything in the images.

Photographing children (and animals) can sometimes lead to images that are very cliche and I am impressed with Roda's ability to steer clear of that and explore the creative and fantastical. The image above is not the image that is used as part of the advertisement for this series, but it is one of my favorites. It is reminiscent of plays, with the quasi-Greco-Roman background, wrought iron fence, and mismatched "costume" on both Roda and his son. Both are standing with an air of intentionally posed drama. The nearly supressed grin on his son's face and the over-the-top body languge of the artist shows that they both understand that they are being rather ridiculous, but with the attitude that this is really rather unimportant, as they are obviously enjoying themselves.