More than a pretty picture
By Rachel Smeda

Andres Serrano is not a photographer.

“I’m a conceptual artist with a camera,” said Serrano.

Serrano spoke to a packed house at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 29, in Ellis Auditorium.

This artist is not the type of man you can put in a mold easily. He and his art stand out as edgy, bold, borderline sacrilegious and far from safe. Yet Serrano doesn’t photograph his pieces intending to be controversial.

His theme of mixing bodily fluids with religious artifacts, exemplified in the famous “Piss Christ,” does give the impression that Serrano is looking for a reaction. However, he wants only to help people appreciate the beauty of human life in all of its aspects, right down to urine.

“You need the sacred to know the profane, like needing good to have evil,” Serrano said.

Serrano doesn’t mean for his art to provoke some or to rally others.

“I always rejected the idea of being a crusader,” he said.

According to Serrano, getting attention never works when you’re trying. Instead, Serrano just focuses on his art.

“Sometimes the interesting part [of a picture] is not why I took the picture, but the development of the picture,” he said.

With all of his work, Serrano gets an idea and wants to see what it looks like. Sometimes the idea comes first, and sometimes the prop. Occasionally he comes up with an explanation for a picture after he’s taken it.       

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