Martha Rosler - The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems

Martha Rosler is an American artist who originates and lives in Brooklyn, she is an artist that works with video, photography, text, installation and performance. Her work focuses on exploring public issues that occur within every day life.

The bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems 1974-1975 is Rosler’s work created in New York, She went on to win one of the major prizes within Art and Design. She has often employed photographic conventions; Rosler uses a combination of images and texts to respond to earlier documentary photographs of vagrants and alcoholics, doing this through descriptive photography she explains within a short segment how the masses of people who follow up on the work that has been done are often attempting to show a society’s lowlifes.

She explains how she begins to represent the homeless and the mindless victim which is the individual, the basis behind the idea is that she will photograph the area In which they live and integrate and allow the viewer to envisage who lives there and the surroundings they are in. Rosler allows the viewer to think for themselves without objectifying the people that would initially be within the image. Rosler uses juxtaposition to convey an all to in-humane state. She combines these photographs with typewritten words associated with drunkenness. She arranges the works components in a grid style, applied so that she can disrupt the traditional idea being that a work of art, simple has to be a thing of beauty implying that there is more within the depth of an image or piece of art. it opens up to how the work can be seen from a different perspective.

It is a great way to understand how when creating a piece of work the underlying thoughts and opinions on it are so important and that feedback and criticism can and should always be taken positively.