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Read the ART IN AMERICA review by Leigh Anne Miller, February 2005.






Read the Professional Photographer Magazine Collaborators, PHOTOGRAPHER + PRODUCTION AND PRINTING EXPERT by Jeff Kent, 2007.






MASTERING DIGITAL BLACK AND WHITE: A Photographer's Guide to High Quality Black-and-White Imaging and Printing
This book by the printing wizard, Amadou Diallo of Diallo Photography, features a chapter about our collaborative working process printing Tall, Slim & Erect.
Click here to Listen to the Interview



Posing (Group Show) — Curated by Andrea Cote & Joelle Jensen

September 18 - November 12, 2007 Henry Street Settlement|Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street New York, NY 10002

Opening reception: Wednesday, September 19 | 6-8 pm

Posing is a multimedia group exhibition of works by eight emerging artists. Utilizing mimicry, repetition, and imitation, the exhibition looks at various approaches to the act of posing from historical portraiture to contemporary snapshots. The artists in this exhibition examine the relationships between artist, model, viewer, history, culture and media.

View the catalog: Posing by Andrea Cote




Click on thumbnails to view installation photographs
         

DAVID KRUT PROJECTS
October 29-December 18, 2005
Click here to view the invitation designed with Anna Schuleit.

Legions of paid professionals try, and fail, to get underneath the gloss and myth of the presidents of the United States. Alex Forman has done it with a view camera and a cast of toy miniatures. The irony is that, through the very kitsch that represents our distance from these men, she opens the door into something truthful about the human beings who have been our presidents and about the country itself: humble and boasting; vivid and mysterious; plain and regal. Alex's images do not sneer, or crow, or shout. She opens her eyes and looks, and you won't be able to look away. — Joshua Wolf Shenk is author of Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness (Houghton Mifflin); a former fellow at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia; and member of the advisory council to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.


Tall, Slim, & Erect: Portraits of the Presidents is unique its inception, its scope, its playful yet pointed irony. Life-size photographs of dolls represent the American presidents. Alongside each photograph, Alex Forman includes quixotic and unexpected information about these men's lives. Hers are not official portraits, nor are they official histories. Alex's position within the US as a dual citizen — she is both an insider and an outsider — provides her an unusual understanding of the American presidents and of their various representations in text and image. ...Traditional history may label these men as heroes and leaders, thereby stamping their legitimacy as unquestioned and untouchable. Critics of this history may instead see these men -- rightly, but reductively -- as mere representatives of America's unequal distribution of rights and money and power. Yet these photos tell an exuberantly more muddled story. The images with their accompanying text are a study in the public and personal construction of entitlement. Alex explores what attributes of public office we choose to fetishize and what qualities we must erase in order to preserve our fetish.

— Erin Soros, author. Her honors include a Fulbright Fellowship, the Governor Generalšs Gold Medal, and the CBC Literary Award. Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry have appeared in various international journals and anthologies.

In Speak, Memory, Nabokov wrote, "There is, it would seem, in the dimensional scale of the world a kind of delicate meeting place between imagination and knowledge, a point arrived at by diminishing large things and enlarging small ones, that is intrinsically artistic." In photographing this set of presidential figurines and rendering them life-size, Alex Forman performs both operations, making her giant miniatures reveal both the particularity of personality and the imprecision of symbols. The staging of these photographs is essential. Through Forman's lens, not all of William Howard Taft, the fattest president, will fit in the photograph's frame, Woodrow Wilson is in a fit of giggles, Franklin Delano Roosevelt looks ready to dash Heathcliff-like about the heath, and Nixon's suit looks suspiciously shiny. If you've ever wanted to peer through the keyhole into the Oval Office, now's your chance.

— Matthea Harvey, poet. Author of Sad Little Breathing Machine (Graywolf) and Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (Alice James Books)

ARCHIPELAGO 8.4
The photo/artist Alex Forman found a collection of little plastic figurines of the American presidents. "They had been collected individually, hand painted, and lovingly stored together by some unknown person. One thing that struck me about these souvenir objects — my 'models' — was how even in miniature, their gestures belied attitudes of entitlement; their poses, perfect public bearing. Intended to glorify the men, they symbolize the way that presidents lose their individuality as they become defined by an institution. James Madison was five foot two inches, our shortest president. Lincoln was six foot four, our tallest. But both men, here, are two-inches tall." Her series Tall, Slim & Erect, from which we show five chief executives, puts all in perspective.


JUBILAT 9
Based on the premise that, to poetry, everything is relevant, JUBILAT delivers the best in contemporary poetry along with art, interviews and prose. Work from recent issues has been selected for inclusion in the Best American Poetry 2001, Best American Poetry 2002, The Pushcart Prize XXVII: Best of the Small Presses 2003 and for re-print in Harper's Magazine.
JUBILAT has been featured in Poets & Writers, The Chronicle of Higher Education and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, and was shown in the New York Public Library's 2002 exhibit New American Literary Magazines.



From the Jubilat archives interviews that Alex conducted with some of her favorite artists:
From JUBILAT 2 ACROBAT OF EXTREMES : A Conversation with John O'Reilly
from JUBILAT 7 Interview with Marjorie Wellish


Tall, Slim & Erect: Portraits of the Presidents is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. Click here to make a donation.  
   © 2004 Alex Forman