July 30
The Death of Photography?
Sandy Skoglund. Revenge of the Goldfish. 1981. |
Major postmodern photographic trend involves staged imagery |
Continues and extends the tradition of staged imagery, seen since photography's inception |
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Postmodernists create photographic fictions as a rejection of modernist notions of finding beauty in the everyday and the confering of importance on the mundane |
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Empasize that photographic images are "made," not "taken" |
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Sandy Skoglund. The Green House. 1990.
Koetzle, Hans-Michael. Photo Icons: the Story Behind the Pictures. Volume 2. Koln: Taschen, 2002.
Sandy Skoglund constructing The Green House
Koetzle, Hans-Michael. Photo Icons: the Story Behind the Pictures. Volume 2. Koln: Taschen, 2002.
William Wegman. Blue Period. 1981.
Fichner-Rathus, Lois. Understanding Art. Seventh edition. Austalia: Thompson Wadsworth, 2004.
William Wegman. Ray and Mrs. Lubner in Bed Watching TV. 1981.
Jeff Wall
1946 -
Jeff Wall. Mimic. 1982.
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/jeffwall/image/roomguide/rm3_mimic_lrg.jpg
Jeff Wall. A Sudden
Gust of Wind (After Hokusai). 1993.
Riemschneider,
Burkhard, and Uta Grosenick. Art at the Turn of the Millennium. Taschen.
1999.
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Hokusai. A Sudden Gust of Wind. 1831. Sayre, Henry M. A World of Art. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003. |
Jeff Wall. A Sudden
Gust of Wind (After Hokusai). 1993. |
Jeff Wall. Dead Troops Talk (A Vision After An Ambush of a Red Army Patrol,
Near Moqor, Afghanistan, Winter 1986). 1991 - 92.
Riemschneider,
Burkhard, and Uta Grosenick. Art at the Turn of the Millennium. Taschen.
1999.
Yasumasa Morimura
1951 -
Yasumasa Morimura. Self-Portrait (Actress)/White Marilyn. 1996.
Stokstad,
Marilyn. Art History. Revised Second ed. Vol. 2. New York: Prentice
Hall Inc., and Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2005.
Yasumasa Morimura. Self-portrait After Marilyn Monroe. 1996.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0a/%27Self_Portrait%2C_After_Marilyn_Monroe%27%2C_--Gelatin-silver_process-gelatin_silver_print--_by_--Yasumasa_Morimura--%2C_1996%2C_--The_Contemporary_Museum%2C_Honolulu--.jpg
Yasumasa Morimura. Self-Portrait (Actress), Red Marilyn. 1996.
Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Selavy |
Yasumasa Morimura. To My Little Sister: for Cindy Sherman. 1998. |
Every image is staged. No image is trustworthy.
Nadar. Sarah
Bernhardt. 1865.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Nadar_2.jpg/482px-Nadar_2.jpg
Alfredo Jaar . Gold in the Morning. 1985.
What is the difference between film and digital modes? |
Thomas Struth. Louvre
IV. 1989. |
In the analogue era, we could assume that the manipulated image was the exception to the rule |
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In the digital era, we must assume the opposite because the digital image is infinitely malliable |
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“People are much more willing to believe that pictures lie than that they can express any kind of truth.” – Laurie Simmons |
Historic Context |
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| 1990 | Germany reunited |
| Kodak unveils first comercially available digital camera | |
| Adobe Photoshop software marketed | |
| 1991 | USSR dissolved |
| 1994 | Advent of World Wide Web |
| 1999 | Camera phone invented |
| 2001 | Attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon |
| U.S. bombs Afghanistan | |
| 2003 | U.S. and Britain launch war on Iraq |
| 2004 | Tsunami in South Asia |
| Kodak announces it will no longer produce black and white paper or slide projectors | |
| 2005 | Hurricane Katrina and massive flooding in New Orleans |
National Geographic February 1982
http://cgi.ebay.com/National-Geographic-February-1982-MINT_W0QQitemZ280112826291QQihZ018QQcategoryZ280QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting
Time Magazine. O.J. Simpson. 1994.
Unknown. John Kerry and Jane Fonda. 2004.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry2.asp
Anonymous. Tourist Guy. 2001.
http://z.about.com/d/urbanlegends/1/0/m/2/missing.jpg
As we move into the digital age we are confronted with a pressing question - Is photography dead? |
Have we entered into a new phase of image history? |
Is the meaning of the photographic image now being mediated by the invention of digital systems in the way that painting was modified by the invention of photography? |
Are the concerns of the digital age different from those of the analogue age? |
“It may be premature to say that we are living now in a ‘post-photographic’ age, despite the digitization of photography, for the illusions that the image can render have not yet been rendered irrelevant by the advancing picture-making technology of the computer. Nevertheless, it is a growing part of our contemporary consciousness that photography’s function within our culture is at a crisis moment whose outcome is not yet certain.” – Miles Orvell |
Thomas Struth. Milan
Cathedral. 1998.
Birnbaum,
Daniel. "Paradise Reframed." Artforum. May 2002. 142 -149.
Thomas Struth. Milan Cathedral. 1998.
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_lg_149A_1.html
Andreas Gursky. Chicago Board of Trade II. 1999.
http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_706_44325_andreas-gursky.jpg
Andreas Gursky. 99 Cent. 1999.
Museum of Modern Art. Postcard. New York: MOMA, 2003.
Andreas Gursky's, 99 Cent II Diptychon (2001) sold for $3,346,456 at auction in February, 2007, making it the most expensive photograph to date |
Yinka Shonibare. Diary of a Victorian Dandy. 1998.
Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
“Art is better than life, you can construct your own history, your own fantasy within a range of artifices. There are no boundaries. It is just like being an alchemist with a power of transformation.” - Yinka Shonibare |
“In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.” - Susan Sontag |
Ken Gonzales Day. Erased Lynching. 2005.
http://kengonzalesday.com/projects/erasedlynching/01.htm
Alexander Gardner. Home of the Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg. 1863. |
Alfred Stieglitz. The Steerage. 1907. |
Edward Weston. Pepper #30. 1930. |
Dorothea Lange. Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California. 1936. |
Joe Rosenthal. Raising Old Glory at Iwo Jima. February 23, 1945. |
Eddie Adams. Saigon. 1968. |
Joel Meyerowitz. World Trade Center, Archive Project. 2001.
Orvell, Miles. American Photography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Flag Raising at Ground Zero. 2001.
John Mccusker. Canal Street, New Orleans. 2005.
Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
And to end with a little joy...
Nicole Cawlfield. Anti-Atkins Thin-Up Girl Lacy. 2005.
Matthew Barney. Prison Rodeo production still from Cremaster 2. 1999.
http://www.walkerart.org/archive/C/B37399BC5B930E186179.htm
