{"id":428,"date":"2004-01-14T08:56:45","date_gmt":"2004-01-14T12:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/2004\/01\/14\/meet-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2004-01-14T08:56:45","modified_gmt":"2004-01-14T12:56:45","slug":"meet-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/2004\/01\/14\/meet-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a604'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.edelmangallery.com\/parke.htm\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ion\/Theguardian.jpg\" height=\"405\" width=\"350\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n<i><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Much has been written about Robert &amp; Shana ParkeHarrison, the husband and wife team whose photographic tableaus took the art world by storm more than six years ago. Creating a genre unique within the photo world, the ParkeHarrisons construct fantasies in the guise of environmental performances for their Everyman &#x2013; a man dressed in a black suit and starched white shirt &#x2013; who interacts with the earths landscape. Tapping into their surreal imagination, the artists combine elaborate sets (which can take up to &#x2013; months to construct) and an impeccable sense of wit and irony, to address issues about the earth and mankind&#x2019;s responsibility to heal the damage he has done to its landscape. <\/p>\n<p>Consistently dressed in a his trademark outfit, this Everyman is earth&#x2019;s protector, healer and communicator, using low-tech implements as his aid. This Everyman then takes shape as fabricated props for theatrical performances, which are staged to be photographed. Like a production reserved for the cinema, the ParkeHarrison invent their settings, which tend to look more like scenes from Metropolis or Blade Runner rather than the family photo album.<\/p>\n<p>In their most well-known works, the artists built oversized objects to perform improbable acts: a huge needle repairs the cracks in the earth&#x2019;s surface (Mending the Earth); a gear and propeller flying apparatus carries a man over the land so he can feed it (The Sower). In Reclamation&#x2013; one of five new gravures on view &#x2013; we see the suited man dragging the earth as if it were a blanket, providing a new layer for its continued existence. In Burn Season, Everyman comes upon a field of flames wearing a suite of water balloons, ready to save it from extinction. In Rain Dance,we see Everyman multiplied by four, each one carrying a branch, forming a human Stonehenge, empty water jugs on the ground ready to rescue the impending storm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/i><\/p>\n<p>\nAqu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Much has been written about Robert &amp; Shana ParkeHarrison, the husband and wife team whose photographic tableaus took the art world by storm more than six years ago. Creating a genre unique within the photo world, the ParkeHarrisons construct fantasies in the guise of environmental performances for their Everyman &#x2013; a man dressed in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1458],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ionstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/240"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}