Sheherazade | Lynda Kuit Photography

Grahame Weinbren was born in South Africa and studied in London and Buffalo, New York. Currently he teaches in the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York and specialized in interactive cinema.

I first became aware of his work while researching for assignment 2 when I viewed a still image of a woman putting on her eyeliner and her face seemed to be emerging from behind that of a wolf. I was very intrigued by this image and tried to figure out whether it was a montage or double exposure. I do have to admit I’m really bad at reading captions, so it was only today when coming back to do this write up that I actually took note of the caption and noted that it was a still from one of Weinbren’s videos.

However, this was not a lost exercise as I came across a video trailer of his entitled “Nights” which is a wonderful blend of documentary and narrative, containing three stories based on Sheherazade and her stories and her world of 1001 Nights. The first story is The Merchant and the Djinn which comes from the original 1001 Nights, the second is The Gassing of the Kurds in the 1980s and the final story The Incubator Baby Story of the 1990s. Even though it is just a trailer, it remains immensely powerful and contains so much artistry blending the fictional with the real and political. Sheherazade narrates the story from the very beginning and this lends both a surreal and documentary effect to the video. The overlays or double exposures (I’m not sure what the correct terminology is in film parlance) is wonderfully executed and very evocative. I really would like to see the entire video.