April 18, 2008
Chris King: The Eyes of the South Side
Bob Reuter's photographs at Jenna Bauer's studio
Friday, April 18
By Chris King
It had been a testy night at the Tap Room. A small group of artists drinking, grousing about opportunities in this frustrating town, and arguing over self-respect. Not the best night in St. Louis.
Jenna Bauer got up to go and said if I wanted to "waste a little time" before driving home, I should come by her loft and see Bob Reuter's photographs.
What did I do? I launched into a self-righteous diatribe to the effect that I would never "waste time" willfully, it's too precious. Not the best night at the Tap Room. Best to go home.
But then I remembered the six years I spent in New York. How I heard from afar about all of these interesting developments among the people I had known and loved (and groused and argued with). I was homesick for years. Had I been in New York still, I would have longed to go to Jenna's studio and look at Bob's photographs.
So I went to Jenna's studio and looked at Bob's photographs. You should do this, too. Jenna is hosting a show of his photos Friday night, April 18 at her loft studio on Washington Avenue, just above Cummel's Cafe. Email Jenna at jensuzbau@hotmail.com for more information.
If you go, the show you will see is one I helped to hang, or tape up, that night. Bob’s photographs are not framed, as they deserve to be. They are just taped up, naked. There is much else naked about them: the emotion in the faces, the power of the compositions, sometimes even the degree of undress of the bodies. Bob has an eye for scary, naked ladies.
Bob has an eye for many things. He has an eye for eyes, for alleys, for guitars, for surprise, for tattoos, for rage, for satisfaction, for children, for spontaneous outbursts of the inexplicable. If you wanted to narrow his work down geographically, and reduce it a bit for the sake of simplification, you could call him the eyes of the South Side. His core subject is the South City grotesque. Calling it "grotesque," of course, is not to suggest it is not often beautiful, at least in and through Bob’s eyes.
I am attaching shitty scans of two photographs I bought from Bob, via Jenna. They are the smallest prints in the show and retail for only $10. If I were more flush with freelance writing funds, I would have bought 10 of these smaller prints (or a few of the bigger and biggest prints, also priced to sell). But, as it was, I settled for two examples of Bob's pet subjects: performing musicians and a ringside scene.
The musician looks to be Sunyatta Marshall, a major muse in Bob's work. Whoever she is, she is feeling some urgent groove, in tight shorts and boots that go the better part of the way up to her ass, which is lost in shadow, like much else in the frame. To me, this is a portrait of the privacy at the heart of performance. It speaks to the mystical fact that you can’t reach anyone else with a song, really reach them, unless you disappear into yourself as you deliver it.
This boxing image, one of dozens, shows a nice sleight of hand on the part of the artist. If you know anything about boxing, you can see, in the foreground, a ringside judge handing up his score card to a blurry hand that must belong to the ring announcer. This clues you into the fact that the burly bald man hurtling down from the ring is simply making a stage exit after having performed some chore in the ring after the previous bout came to a close. But he seems to be barreling down toward another burly dude with his hands on his hips and a sour look on his face. This sourpuss is in center frame, so the eye is likely to see him first, and understand the man coming down from the ring as someone with some unpleasant business to settle with him. Somehow, in this quiet moment between boxing frames, Bob has captured the aggression at the heart of the blood sport.
I have known Bob forever, it seems, and seen him through so many changes. He was one of the first people who ever encouraged me as a musician, and I was among the first people ever to encourage him as a photographer (quite possibly, I was the first to do so in print – in The Riverfront Times, a long time ago, when that newspaper meant something that it no longer means).
I hear this sale of his work is motivated to pay for a surgery, but Bob and I end up arguing when I bring his health up in the context of his work, right, Bob? So, I say just go see his photographs and buy some because they are grotesquely beautiful, not because Bob needs the money. You'll have hundreds and hundreds to choose from. Unless Jenna rearranges her place, you’ll also see works in progress for her show with Wes Fordyce that opens May 9 at Fort Gondo.
Don't forget: Jenna’s studio, Friday night, April 18, on Washington Avenue, just above Cummel's Cafe. Email Jenna at jensuzbau@hotmail.com for more information.