Is Photography Over?

In response to the incredibly broad question, "Is Photography Over?", titling the symposium organized by SFMOMA, I will begin by questioning the definitions of "photography" and "over", which most panel members questioned as well. The question can relate to a number of interpretations. The photograph is understood by the majority to be a still, visual representation of a part of that which exists / existed that is used for a number of reasons. A photograph is primarily used for functional, utilitarian purposes. The photograph recognized by the art world is an incredibly small minority within the larger phenomena.

What needs to be recognized, which Phillip-Lorca diCorcia addresses, is how the photograph effects the emotions of the consumer based on the idea that it is the most accurate visual representation of reality. While photography does not, and has never, held a 100% indexical trace to reality and has always been prone to manipulation, to the consumer, it does have that indexical trace. When the photograph is in accompaniment with the general consumer's memory of the person or event documented in the image, the photograph becomes entirely indexical because manipulation is irrelevant. If the photograph is only being used to better remember something, there is no need to manipulate. In this sense, photography is not over but will always be around. One will always want an object of representation in connection with their own memory. Even an art photographer will want a photograph of their baby to remember how cute it was before turning into a teenager. For the utilitarian and functional purposes of photography, this question is similar to "Are Automobiles Over?" (or as Peter Galassi compares it to plumbing or language). While technology will change what it looks like, the purpose will always remain.

Here is a photograph that I took to remember when my good friend climbed up this structure for no logical reason. My impulse to take this photograph was based on my reaction to this, slightly out of the ordinary event that was humorous to the three of us here, and that we may want to have a visual to our memory of it. This could be a composite image of something that never actually happened. The viewer does not know, but because I intend for the primary viewers of this image to be myself, the climber, and the girl watching, the question of indexicality is no longer relevant. The photograph is serving its function as a document of reality that I will hopefully still have in years to come. 

Even though the question is incredibly broad, being that it is in an art institution, I am going to assume that we are talking about the photograph as an art medium. Regarding functionality, art photography is to general consumer photography just as sculpture is to general consumer architecture. Lets observe:

sculpture

consumer architecture

art photograph

consumer photograph

The vast differences seen here between a Richard Serra sculpture and an ordinary, general consumer model home go far beyond the differences between the Phillip-Lorca diCorcia image of the mailman and the general consumer mailman image. DiCorcia's photograph is of course significantly different than a general consumer image of the mailman. While the sculpture is still a constructed object, the vast differences between the general consumer use of a constructed object, has resulted in the sculpture taking on the term sculpture and not a form of architecture. While they are still slightly related they are incredibly different.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia's photograph is incredibly different from the general consumer photograph, but there are still too many similarities. The fact that they are both considered photographs makes them too similar. I will agree with Charlotte Cotton when she states that "photography is what it used to be - that's what's wrong with it". While art photography has laid a solid foundation, it is time to go further. Photography is not over but has just tested the waters and is ready to jump right in. Will it still continue to keep the term "photography", not necessarily, but does that even matter? Maybe it will be called something like imagery? or visual art?

is this photography?

is this photography?

is this photography?

does it matter?

We are now being faced with a question of medium specificity. I will have to agree with much of what was stated by Walead Beshty, George Baker, and Trevor Paglen. Institutional art is moving into a post-medium age, which can, in some ways, be linked to the rapid technological advances taking place within contemporary culture. Around the 23 minute mark on day 1 part 2 of the symposium, Beshty begins to describe the "medium" and that in posing arguments about the ontological identity creates a divide constructed by primarily historians and critics, not practitioners, within art. Beshty refers to this idea as an "institutional wound". Joel Snyder asks his graduate class if they are photographers or artists. It is not one or the other, it is both. It has always been both. We are just now starting to realize it.

The rendering of light through technological devices is advancing closer and closer to how the human eye renders. It is entirely possible that in the near future we will have the technology to make a photograph on an iphone that renders light in the same way it was originally seen. Craft, alone, is no longer interesting because it is so accessible. What is beneficial now is that because of this accessibility  the idea of the artist is now being presented in a much more fitting way. It is now necessary to determine if the medium is most fitting to the subject or message being presented within the art. We have never seen a culture where craft and the multiplicity of images is so easily accessible. I believe that this may be one of the most exciting times in history to be an artist and an even better time to be working with photographic images.

Can a photograph tell a story?

In the review of the four books, A Vision of Paris by Eugene Atget, A Life of Photography by Edward Steichen, The World Through My Eyes by Andreas Feininger, and Photographs by Cartier-Bresson, Clement Greenberg writes that the art of photography has only been successful if it tells a story leaving the pictorial aspects as secondary. Greenberg starts by referring to Atget as the "complete photographer". Atget was interested in the identity of the subject in which he photographed. Greenberg states that any "pictorialism" within Atget's work was came as a result from his interest in capturing the identity of the subject.

Greenberg continues by addressing the work of Edward Steichen, specifically one photograph towards the end of the book in which a woman's arms are raised from behind a large stone. In Greenberg's description and criticism of the work, I was confused. Here Greenberg is describing the photograph as having a story of "life verses trimmed and carved stone" yet goes on to write that because of this story it "cancels out artiness". Is this "artiness", that Greenberg refers to, a positive or negative term? Is this "artiness" referring to the image as having any artistic value or referring to a purely formal / abstract composition (which Greenberg discusses in the following paragraph)?

In the next portion, Greenberg discusses Andreas Feininger. It is in this section that Greenberg states that photography has the advantage of the speed, in which to represent realism, over painting. Where painting can achieve realism as, if not more, accurately than photography, the photographer has the advantage of being able to experiment with much more ideas and aesthetics from the quick process of making a photograph.

John Szarkowski has very different ideas as to what photography, as an art medium, is. He addresses this in five different points:

The Thing Itself
Szarkowski addresses that once a subject is photographed, it is transformed from reality to the intent of the photographer. In taking the picture, the photographer is keeping the final result in mind. The subject and the photograph itself are entirely different. Szarkowski states that the problem lies in the general publics notions of photography representing the truth. This idea is saying that what we may have overlooked in the everyday, the camera has captured the generally unseen, only for us (the viewers) to see the image,  and reminisce on the actuality of the situation which we missed the first time around. This is an illusion of realism.

The Detail
In this section, Szarkowski very literally argues that photography cannot tell a story. He refers photography as being a medium that symbolizes, not tells, the truth. If a symbol is an abstract form relying on human interpretation to give it significance, then this statement is in partial opposition of Greenberg's statement, "the purely formal or abstract is a threat to the art of photography." It is not a complete opposition in that the symbolization is generally not a pure abstraction. Traditional photographs generally use identifiable objects, people, and environments to be displayed within the frame. Because of this general notion, the photograph is not a pure abstraction because there are identifiable symbols and icons (as in a representation that is universally recognized as opposed to culturally) that comprise the image. If an image is then made up of icons and symbols that can be easily understood then the photograph, as the overall symbol, is abstract but not to a point of dismissal.

The Frame
Szarkowski describes the actual framing of an image as transforming it from what the actuality of the situation was. He refers to choosing two people within a large crowd. When photographed in a single frame, even if those two people don't know each other, the viewer sees a previously unseen relationship between the two, even if that relationship was nonexistent to begin with.

Time
Szarkowski draws attention to the fact that photography only displays short slivers of time.

Vantage Point
In this section, Szarkowski states that photographs give the viewer an idea or sense of the scene but "withhold[s] its narrative meaning". He does not write a whole lot about the vantage point while it seems as though there is a great deal that can be said about it. By photographing from a specific point, giving a specific perspective, even if the photograph was to display a narrative, it would be in the eye of the photographer. The narrative would be a first-person story not to the truth of what is being shown, but only to the truth as the photographer sees it.

This idea of "vantage point" can be considered in relation to Ariella Azoulay's recent article in Aperture about the work of Aim Deuelle Luski. Luski makes cameras while trying to remove the "vantage point". The artist does this by creating ways of making an exposure while leaving much up to chance. By creating cameras with multiple apertures to expose the film at the same time, the result is one not entirely of the photographers choice while not entirely by chance. The photographer still chooses when and where to expose but does not have control over the composition of the frame. Azoulay describes this vantage point as being the photographers "ownership" over the image. The work of Luski is attempting to break that ownership. If this attempt is successful then any sort of narrative that may be represented in the photograph is no longer held in a first person perspective, but more so in a third person perspective.

Week 11: Systems

In the essay "Systems Everywhere" the work of the New Topographics photographers is examined according to the systems theory, which puts the importance or meaning of something on the relation of multiple parts as opposed to each individual part holding its own. The first two systems we are presented with are the natural ecological system and the "broken system" of the human-altered landscape. The natural ecological system is structured around a recycling process: plants that intake oxygen and generate carbon-dioxide help feed the plants which intake carbon-dioxide and generate oxygen. We are presented with Robert Smithson's view of the "broken system" of the human altered landscape, which is addressing that man has not followed the natural system and is creating without regarding what will happen to the waste. This broken system is significantly enhanced by the industrial age and consumerism of a capitalist nation. The first example we see in the New Topographics, holding these ideas of systems in regard, is Robert Adams' Mobile Homes, Jefferson County, Colorado, 1973. The New Topographics photographers are looking at the systems of a human-altered landscape.

We then move onto the aesthetic of the images. In comparison with more traditional landscape photographers such as Ansel Adams, the New Topographics systematic aesthetic does not direct attention to each individual photograph but to the work as a whole. At first, one could regard this approach similar to Michael Fried's ideas about theatricality, but because unlike Ansel Adams' highly pictorial images of places most people were not familiar with at the time, the New Topographics look at what the mass majority was familiar with. Because of this we could relate the systematic aesthetic approach of the New Topographics photographs back to Hegel and his theories of true infinite.

I have made this graph that I think may be a visual representations of one of the systems involved in this work. As we can see, the photos are made using the landscape, the photos are presented to the viewer, who lives in the human altered landscape. I think that this can be related to Hegel's true infinite in that the viewers are connected in infinite ways to each other and the environment. These connections can be observed through the systematic aesthetics of the New Topographics.

Week 10: Photography's Expanded Field

In this essay, George Baker presents us with an idea that photography has expanded beyond its modernist idea of the photographic object. Baker is claiming that photography is becoming a much more expanded medium similar to the idea of sculpture as an expanded medium, primarily written about in Rosalind Krauss' "Sculpture in the Expanded Field".  Baker starts his claim by addressing that while modernist photography strived to be an art of pure visual stasis, it failed to ever do so. While the modernist photograph attempted to provide a narrative it would never be able to do that based on the stasis nature of the object. Baker goes on to claim that if modernist photography is not stasis and not narrative, then there must be not only an inverted form, which would connect narrative and stasis, but there also must be forms that connect both narrative and not narrative, stasis and not stasis.

Baker uses Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills as an example of an art being stasis and not stasis simultaneously. This is found through Sherman using the photograph to display a stasis moment taken from a narrative, more specifically: a film. It is stasis in that it is addressing a stopped moment, while not stasis in that the stopped moment is from a film which is an art of almost pure narrativity.

We are then to look at the other side of the graph which would be an art that is both narrative and not narrative. The work of James Coleman, which are projections of stills taken from films, are seen as fitting to this claim. Narrative in that these are images taken from a film, but not narrative in that we are not watching a film but are watching a single image taken from it.

At the top of the graph, being an art of both narrative and stasis is the work of Jeff Wall. His work is stasis in that through the use of the lightbox, Wall is drawing attention to the photograph as being a physical art object, similar to that of a painting. While Wall is drawing attention to the physicality of the art object, the content within the image are mostly narratives. We can find the content as being narrative in that there is, most often, some sort of situation that seems to be paused. It is usually very easy to see that there is a story or an event that has the illusion of taking place as the photograph is being taken.

While Bakers ideas of the expanded fields of contemporary photography seem to be accurate, I start to question where Paul Graham's A Shimmer of Possibility falls into.

Pittsburgh (Man Cutting Grass), 2004, from A Shimmer of Possibility

Graham's first edition (published 2007) is comprised of 12 individually bound chapters. In each of these chapters we see a sequencing of images which, because of the similarities in visual aesthetic, are viewed as the passing of time of one event. In an interview with Aperture magazine, Graham addresses that he often examines the very nature of photography, "End of an Age alternates between sharp and blurry photos, so that considers focus; American Night has very light and dark pictures, so that deals with light intensity-aperture; and shimmer uses stuttering single frames, so that reflects upon time frozen or flowing through the camera shutter."

Page Spreads from "Texas" chapter of A Shimmer of Possibility

One can see the idea of the photograph as multiple images as opposed to only one image of a certain scenario, but there is something else going on here. From viewing the "Texas" chapter of the book, it appears as though Graham is following two people, one of which carrying two cases of Pepsi. It appears as though Graham followed them home, photographing them along the way, while also becoming distracted by other surroundings along the way. Between the 2nd and 3rd spreads, this idea of becoming distracted seems to be the case. In the 2nd spread the two appear to be walking uphill on a old sidewalk, the 3rd appears to be a view looking downhill on what appears to be the same sidewalk. The two continue to walk past a graveyard. Apparently there was not too many distractions here except for the graveyard, which appears to be in focus in one of the images. Then finally the two continue into a neighborhood, where at one point Graham seems to position the camera facing away from the road but into someone's yard where we see two children playing. The two carrying the groceries continue on until Graham stops and the two continue off into the distance. 

How can we interpret this body of work according to the claims of George Baker? I do not think that this work would fall into the category of in between narrative and not narrative, just as I do not believe it would fall into the category of in between stasis and not stasis. This work is both stasis and narrative, but may even be more than that. Is it possible that this body of work can be found in the center of Bakers graph?

Using the "Texas" chapter as an example, here are reasons why I believe this work may be able to fit in between all four categories-

Narrative - There is a sequence of images displaying what appears to be an progression of time over an event (the two people with groceries walking) through visual motifs, i.e., lighting, surroundings, subjects. 

Not Narrative - While we are seeing an event take place over time, we are not certain of the event. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of narrative begins with "An account of a series of events, facts, ect.". This is not a narrative because we do not have all of the facts. We assume these people have just gone grocery shopping and are now walking home, but we never see them leave the grocery store and we never see them go into a home.

Stasis - These are still, photographic images. If Graham was solely interested in the event happening over the period of time, he would have used a video camera. There is a reason that these are still images in sequential order as opposed to a seamless succession of the event. 

Not Stasis - There is a sequence of images we are watching, similar to that of a film. One can flip through the book and watch these images in a forward or backward sequence, so the element of motion is present. 

George Baker's theories about the expanded fields of contemporary photography and his Klein group graph were published in October in Fall 2005 and Paul Graham's A Shimmer of Possibility was not published until October 2007. I would be very interested to see if this work has modified or verified Baker's theories.

Week 9

Response to Lev Manovich reading:

Lev Manovich brings up some interesting ideas in this essay on new media in regards to the internet. Manovich first gives the idea of contemporary digital social media as being considered "Web 2.0". His idea of "Web 2.0" Manovich writes that what we are now seeing, because of web 2.0, is a much larger amount of people accessing content that is made by non professionals. He also describes web 2.0 in showing the statistics of people using social networking software.

What I found most interesting about this article was when Manovich described the shifts happening in human tactics and corporate strategies. He gives a really good example describing the two. Strategy would be a government designing a city plan and giving the streets different names, while tactics would be each individual human finding shortcuts in those streets, or finding the route that works best for them. Strategy is clothing designers making clothes for people to wear, while tactics is the human choosing how to mix and match those clothes. Manovich uses this idea and argues that tactics are now shaping strategy. Massive corporations such as Google and Facebook only exist because of the tactics of people and are only continuing to survive based on what the consumer wants. If the consumer wants what the massive corporation cannot provide, it is much easier and faster to receive that want from another source.

While this idea trend started happening in digital culture, we are now seeing it in a physical sense as well. Manovich addresses popular sneaker companies allowing the consumer to customize the sneaker they are buying. He also addresses that there are now markets for what used to be youth subcultures. 

He continues by writing about conversations through media and concludes his essay asking a pretty open-ended question: "Is Art after Web 2.0 Still Possible?" He quickly addresses that with all the money invested in the market of contemporary art, it is unlikely that it will ever collapse. I suppose I would have to agree with Manovich in that I really do not think that modernist art will ever be destroyed by any sort of technology. Something that I have been wanting to further research is the relationship between modern art and mass media culture. I hope to believe that modernist art is one of its own entity. Something that is outside of any sort of corporate controlled economy flow. I hope to believe that while looking for the source any industry, trend, technology, the source always ends up being a money hungry mega corporation, modernist art is at the opposite end of the spectrum. I think a question to ask is not "is art possible after web 2.0?" but "how will web 2.0 influence art?"

Response to Jason Evans reading:

In the reading done by Jason Evans, I was initially a bit surprised in his statement "I am underwhelmed by photography's presence online and the lack of innovative explorations of the new medium." He begins to back up his statement by addressing his creation of websites like TheDailyNice.com and a newer TheNewScent.com. He wrote about how it is only through the use of the internet that he is able to make the work that he wants to while reaching a newer and larger audiences. It is all very affordable also, he refers to the idea that he does not have to make any coffee table books. 

Evans continues by addressing how photographers today were brought up or educated in a way that makes the photograph more than the image but an object itself. "The prospect of all of those uncalibrated monitors is going to be a turn-off for any photographer who has labored with specific tools and palettes to produce particular effects." I dont necessarily think that what Evans is saying here is that all of photography should no longer be focused on the object, only the image, but that he is saying that one would expect there to be more focus on projects only about the image by now. 

We are very slowly starting to see web based art projects, many of which seem to be nothing more than experimentation into unknown territory. This internet and digital culture, in general, is foreign to us. We have entered into an age where physical attributes of an object are now a variable that an artist can choose or not choose to use. One reason to this slow process is because this seems to be one of the largest culture shifts since, quite possibly, the industrial revolution. Maybe we just expect things to happen much more quickly and easily now, the internet is certainly providing "quick-and-easiness" for everything else. What are we supposed to do here? Create websites that have no utilitarian function? Create odd or abstract gif images? Create online galleries? What does this mean? What is the purpose of presenting an art online as opposed to in the physical world? How can we use this new communication tool, this networking tool, this "thing" that only uses sight and sound? This is an incredibly exciting time. So much uncharted territory.

Response to Susan Murray reading:

The article written by Susan Murray is primarily focused on the website, Flickr, and how that has influenced amateur digital photography. I think that her main concern in what Flickr is doing to modern photographers is that it is making it much more difficult to distinguish the hobbyist, the serious-amateur, and the professional. She states "the amateur and professional become virtually indistinguishable in their interaction in the comments section". I don't understand why this idea of what Flickr is doing with amateur photography is really that relevant. Why are we concerned with the indistinguishability between amateur and professional on an amateur photo sharing site? Its a general assumption that anyone can upload a photo to Flickr in less than 10 seconds. Anything that is that easy has very little to no credibility. My question is why are professionals even concerned with Flickr at all? 

Week 7

Response to Ritchin

Ritchin does not necessarily oppose the digital, he is only suggesting that it is different. The change into digital is changing what a photograph actually is. One of Ritchin's observations is that with digital media, the sequencing of the media is lost. "In digital media...no two people will necessarily read the same words in a book, listen to the same music, or experience a film or photo essay in the same sequence." I don't exactly understand what he is talking about here. Is he making predictions of the future here, or is he talking about the present? If he is talking about the present, this is nothing but an opinion, that he backs with no evidence, that does not seem valid. Reading is still sequential whether it is on a page or a book, films are still watched from start to finish, and photo essays are still just as easy to skip around on a webpage as pages in a book. I can only agree with his statement about CDs and iPods. 

Later on in the chapter, Ritchin addresses a previous media change, radio to television, and what that looked like in the beginning. He is saying that photography is still in the beginning stages of the digital conversion and that mostly digital technology is not doing much more than mimicking analog technology. 

Response to Ribalta,

From what I understood of Ribalta's writings is that the photograph used to be used as a way of depicting reality. Through the "digital revolution" it is stepping further and further away from being realistic. When the photograph used to be a representation of reality, now it can only be an idea of a representation of reality. Photography is not to be considered as documentary or fictional, but is to be found somewhere in between. 

Response to Dzenko

Dzenko is taking the same idea that was presented earlier in the Ritchin reading in describing how digital photography, presently, is still being used very similarly to analog photography. Artists are still using this perception of a photograph as an index to their advantage. While a photograph may not necessarily be depicting a real event, it still has a general implication of realism. Though it will probably happen some day, photographs still maintain a general realistic quality. Dzenko describes the work of Starbakka, Even though Starbakka is using multiple images and composing one, because of the scale and perception of the objects within the frame, the photo appears as though it is real. We see a bit of an opposite aesthetic in Ben Gest's work, which intentionally plays with the perspective of the composited image.

It seems that after all of this reading, the main issue is photography and its relation to realism. I guess I don't really understand why this is even being addressed at all. The notion of photography portraying that which is real, has been in question for long before digital came into question. I found a quote by Garry Winogrand, "putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it." (http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/12/theory-garry-winogrand-differing.html) Now that digital manipulation is an option in photography, I think that the medium has a lot more potential now. Photography never depicted the absolute truth, digital has just made the medium less deceiving. 

Week 6 Responses

Azoulay Response-

To begin Azouay's writings about Gillian Laub's photographs, Azoulay describes two works Laub had made prior to the Testimony series. Through referencing these two images, Azoulay addresses Laubs use of objects and accessories as visual motifs which allow the spectator to better identify the subject within the image. Azoulay suggests that through Laub's photographing subjects at the beach, which is generally a place where the subject is stripped from most accessories of identification, there are still visual signs that imply certain characteristics about the subject such as "social, cultural, or economic class".

Azoulay uses these examples to better give a better understanding to her thoughts on Testimony. In this series, often there are images of pairs of seemingly similar subjects. Although these subjects seem similar at first, the spectator then starts to notice the visual motifs that implies that the two subjects are incredibly separate. The separation is through one having seen the reality of death. 

Azoulay continues to describe the notion of citizenship once more. In doing so, she describes that in any image containing the Israeli Jews, every object is filled with politics and that nothing is neutral. Azoulay is using this idea to parallel the images of the Testimony series. The labeling of a reoccurring theme of "friend and foe" that Azoulay pointed out along with the notion that one can only see these "sides" as fantasy, was a very unique interpretation of the images which seem to present this idea in an incredibly subtle way. 

With this body of work, and many others, I start to question if the artist has some sort of agenda or objective. Are we, as viewers, meant to understand the truth of the matter within the image? When Azoulay is describing Loub's image of her grandfather and his gold accessories, are we supposed to use those to understand a sort of truth who he is? With the images of the pairs, are we supposed to understand who these people are? Is the understanding of some sort of personal identification of the subject necessary, or, like the gold chain as the accessory of the old man, are we meant to view the subjects and their individuality as visual accessories to an overall concept to the work?

Response to Reinhardt-

In the first section of Reinhardt's essay, the main idea that is being addressed is the first section, is that of the effects of pictures containing human suffering through dissemination. Reinhardt describes the effects on opposite ends of the spectrum. He begins by writing that because of the American media and government, representations of the individual suffering of war are often unseen or not accurate. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the dissemination of pictures of containing vivid representations of suffering, the dignity of the subject or the group or culture affiliated with, suffers injury. 

It is a complex problem. Through the attempts of the government and the American media to keep images of torture from being presented to the public, the ones that do filter through receive a great deal of attention resulting in the humiliation of the detainees and the detainers. The widespread images, specifically the image of the detainee at Abu Ghraib, fulfills the initial intent in taking the picture (the humiliation of prisoner) while, paradoxically, makes the pubic aware of the inhumane actions done by American soldiers. 

In the second section of the essay, Reinhardt further elaborates on the question and concern of aestheticization. The section went back to philosophies by Jerome Stolnitz who described the "aesthetic attitude" as "we pay attention to a thing simply for the way it looks or sounds or feels" and of Marcia Muelder Eaton who wrote "delight in what resides intrinsically in something is a mark of the aesthetic generally". It is in this section the Reinhardt is questioning the relationship between visual aesthetic and the subject within the frame. He addresses the question that if images containing subjects experiencing human suffering, are created primarily for pleasure, then the photography as a tool for social justice would be completely ineffective. 

James Nachtwey and his images of Sudan are brought to attention in questioning if the visual aesthetic of his images conflict with the explicit content. With this in mind, I start to question Luc Delahaye's images. Do Delahaye's images have the same aesthetic concern as the images of Nachtwey?

Luc Delahaye Dead Taliban Fighter

In bringing up the events of September 11, 2001, Reinhardt addresses images relating to the incident by both Joel Meyerowitz and Thomas Ruff. Where Joel Meyerowitz was granted access to Ground Zero, Thomas Ruff simply appropriated imagery of the Associated Press. While Meyerowitz's images provoke "retinal excitement" and address the events specifically, Ruff's work is not exactly addressing the specific event as he is addressing the response to the event by the public.

Joel Meyerowitz North Tower and Woolworth Building

Thomas Ruff jpeg ny01

Reinhardt moves on to discuss the concern of beauty within images of suffering. From what I understood of Danto's theories, the response that one has differs, depending on if they are part of the situation of suffering, or viewing it in a different time and place. It might be considered acceptable, in viewing human suffering, to accept that the viewer is already outside of the situation, therefore can observe it to a much greater extent than if they were in the situation, in which case there would be larger concerns to address than the beauty of it. 

Shimone Attie Steinstrasse 22 (Berlin)

The works of Shimon Attie come into consideration. Here we see a great example of art that addresses a massive situation of human suffering, but because of the aesthetic of it, in that it does not portray violent and explicit images, it can be seen as beautiful. These works are not saying that the holocaust was beautiful by any means, but they are more looking at the larger idea that is death. The more literal and explicit the image is, the more prone it is to the questioning of the acceptance of beauty.

Alfredo Jaar The Eyes of Gutete

In the final section of Reinhardt's essay, he contrasts Nachtwey's Sudan and Alfredo Jaar's The Eyes of Gutete Emerita. In this portion Reinhardt suggests that acknowledgement towards the subject of suffering is all that the work can do. If the work aims at anything but acknowledgement, it will fail. In Sudan, we are looking at images of human suffering and that is all. There is nothing to think about with this work. Nachtwey is presenting these subjects in a way to where we are forced to view reality. Because of this, the work does not succeed. In Jaar's work, while he is still addressing subjects of suffering he asks the viewer to look beyond that. He asks the viewer to look at that which we most often cannot see. It is this notion of not being able to see that Jaar is addressing. It is because of this, that his work is successful. 

Week 5: Photography and/as Ethics

Response to Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others

In Susan Sontag’s essays from On Photography, she argues that it is only because of images that a war, or any other kind of social injustice, becomes “real”. Her second argument is that images of social injustice have very little impact on the viewer due to the hyper-saturation of these types of images in news media, resulting in the viewer to feel a callous. 

Although her views have changed from that which she wrote in the 1970’s, it appears as though she still argues that imagery of social injustice still does not achieve the goal in which it, seemingly, sets out to achieve. Sontag is now arguing that imagery of social injustice in modern society is seen more as an entertainment to the one who craves extraordinary situations due to, what seems like, the averageness and plainness of one’s daily routine. Sontag is implying that television is using real situations and transforming them into entertainment for the mature and civilized. 

While she has addressed the extreme abundance of imagery depicting war and suffering in the various types of news mediums, i.e. television, computers, phones, she did not address the entertainment industry. It is incredibly common to take current events or extraordinary situations and produce them into high-budget Hollywood films. In addition to her argument that the news is taking real life events and transforming them to be subtle entertainment for western culture, the film industry is doing the same except more obviously (being that movies are most often made for the sole purpose of entertainment). I believe that through films containing fictional story lines within non-fictional current events, the viewer is being entertained and calloused to real social injustices. By providing an entertaining illusion of the viewer becoming a part of the situation within the film, it creates real situations to seem much less extraordinary, therefore less impacting. 

Chapter 10: "Good" Verses "Bad" Objecthood: James Welling, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Jeff Wall

In this chapter, Fried explains his ideas of what is "good" objecthood and "bad" objecthood and contrasts the two using Bernd and Hilla Becher's Typologies as his primary example. Personally, I found that while this chapter was incredibly interesting, it was also extremely complex and very difficult at times to fully comprehend exactly what Fried was describing. Here is my attempt at summarizing and unpacking these ideas.

The chapter begins with Fried addressing a Polaroid by James Welling titled Lock, which is a black and white photograph that comprises a worn, wooden plank leaning against a door suggesting that it is being used as a lock. Fried is using this work as an example to address that only the art of photography has the ability to be minimalist but in a "real as opposed to abstract literalness". Fried uses the example that Welling's work "comes out the other side of minimalism or literalism into the world of real and not "generic" objects. Fried proposes that Lock may be a "real world analogue" to John McCracken's planks which lean against the walls of the gallery they are exhibited in.

Work of John McCracken

Fried suggests that the work of McCracken is a form of "bad or "spurious" objecthood and the work of Welling is a form of "good" or "genuine" objecthood. While Fried explains that the dark tonality of Lock brings attention to the physical aspects of the object (the plank), the major concern that is separating these two works is that Lock is a depiction of the object (the plank) being with its surroundings (the door), whereas McCracken's work is made of the created objects (the planks) being in its surroundings (the physical world) making it theatrical (and we all know how Fried feels about theatrical work).

After explaining his introductory example of what is "good" and "bad" objecthood, Fried discusses the formal, historical and philosophical significance of the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher. 

There is a large chunk of this chapter that is about the history of the Becher's work, but I am going to summarize it in one sentence. The Becher's Typologies are black and white photographs of industrial structures, composed in a dead-pan style, and are arranged as grids to draw attention to the similarities and differences of structures that were built solely with their function, not form, in mind. 

Bernd and Hilla Becher, Water Towers, 1967-83

It came as no surprise that the Typologies caught the attention of Michael Fried once I understood that the Bechers most often referred to the subjects within their photographs as "objects". Fried uses an interview with the Bechers and Jean-Francois Chevrier, James Lingwood, and Thomas Struth to discover three key points to understanding the work. 

The first is that by the Bechers continually referring to the subjects as objects within their writings and interviews about the work, Fried questions the relation of the work to "minimalist/literalist" objecthood which then leads to questioning the relation to the notion of "good" and "bad" objecthood. This also suggests that they are not necessarily interested in the actual industrial structures, but that they are using them metaphorically. The second key point is that the Bechers draw attention to the fact that because the objects were photographed from a higher perspective, one can see where the object connects with the ground. After this explanation in the interview, Chevrier brings up the question of minimalism, which then supports Fried's interpretation about the work. Because these photographs display a very small amount of surroundings around the object, it again is not directly addressing the site-specific context but is addressing the surrounding world in general. The third key point, is that when Bernd implies that it is not about experiencing their work, but instead more of a comparative way of seeing the work.

What Fried is pointing out in these three points is that this work is not only about industrial structures anymore, but is minimal in the same way that Welling's Lock is minimal. The work now shows the object in question (the industrial structure) and its surroundings (the land it is attached to) thereby including it in the realm of "good" or "genuine" objecthood. What is fascinating is that because of this interview, it is clear that the artists are well aware of what is happening in their work. 

At this point in the chapter, Fried presents some incredibly complex philosophies that the work of the Bechers can be related to. The first philosophy he points out is by Hegel from Science of Logic, (1812-16), and Encyclopedia of Logic, (1817, 1821, and 1830). Hegel's philosophies describe his notions of "genuine" or "true" infinite as opposed to "spurious" or "bad" infinite. To put it in the most simple terms, Hegel's ideology of what "genuine" or "true" infinite is the notion the the object in question is infinitely in relation, and thereby eligible to contrast,  everything that is directly connected to it, along with what is connected to those others, along with what is connected to those, ect. Here is a diagram:

"Genuine" or "True" infinite

In opposition to that idea, "spurious" or "bad" infinite would be the idea that the object in question is infinitely separate from everything that it is not and not directly related to. Here is another diagram:

"Spurious" or "Bad" Infinite

In using this theory, Fried is saying that the Typologies of Bernd and Hilla Becher are presenting objects (the industrial structures) in a "genuine" infinite by showing the objects in connection to their immediate surroundings (the connection to the land) and a connection to something that is not direct (the other industrial structures within the grid it is presented in).

The other philosophy that Fried addresses is by Wittgenstein and describes the object in two forms: the object is either seen with space and time or seen in space and time. The object being seen with space and time is an example of "genuine" or "good" infinite and an example of "good" objecthood. Going back to the introductory example, a photograph shows the wooden plank with it's original space and time. In opposition, the object being seen in space and time is an example of "spurious" or "bad" infinite and an example of "bad" objecthood. The installation of created wooden planks is in the present space and time.

To end the chapter, Fried makes one more comparison which is similar to that of the beginning. The final comparison is Jeff Wall's Concrete Ball and Tony Smith's Die.

Jeff Wall, Concrete Ball, 2003

Tony Smith, Die, 1962 / 1968

Fried suggests that Jeff Wall is directly addressing this specific work in his lightbox transparency. Fried describes how there is the ball which would be seen as the opposite of a cube, the ball is filled with concrete which would be the opposite of hollow, and the object is with its original space and time as opposed to being in the present space and time. Fried suggests that what Concrete Ball is doing is the same thing that the Typologies are doing. Fried explains that Tony Smith's, Die, is "a work of almost pure theatricality" and a gestalt, which according to Robert Morris, means that "once all the information is established about [the art work], it is exhausted". 

After reading this chapter, I feel as though I have a much more clear understanding of what Fried is talking about when he describes art as being theatrical or anti-theatrical. I agree with a great majority of his claims. The one problem I am still having with his theories is that he is still referring to forms of art as being "good" or "bad". I completely agree about what he implies that minimalist art is doing, but who is to say that it is bad or in some way inferior to minimalism within photography which he implies is good. It seems as though these are two completely separate forms of minimalism. I still think that certain forms of art can have much more depth in comparison to others but I don't feel as though one is better than the other except in a personal preference, in which case is not necessary to share. Personal preference seems to be irrelevant to everyone except for the person themself. 

Chapter 1 and Walead Beshty

Chapter 1:

I find it very interesting how Fried has started this book - talking about cinema and theatricality. Right away, I was slightly confused as to what Fried’s definitions of theatricality and anti-theatricality is. I am under the impression that he is referring to what was discussed in class last week about art that is theatrical as needing the observer in order to exist. So with that understanding here’s my response.

In this first section Fried describes Sugimoto’s Movie Theaters (I am very interested to see what Fried has to say about the Seascapes), Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills, and Wall’s Movie Audience. In a very literal sense, Fried is taking three separate groups of photographs all with a similar idea: the movies. While reading this I could not help but continually try and find parallels to contemporary photography in a larger context as opposed to just these three bodies of work that are presented, mostly because thats what I think he is going to allude to anyways. I am trying to figure out exactly what Fried is getting at by starting this book with photographs about the movies. I think that what Fried is addressing that while movies are entirely theatrical, photography has very similar attributes yet avoids being completely theatrical. It has a very similar feel to movies being that photography has a much more believable visual aesthetic. This visual aesthetic, most often, is not achieved through painting. Because of this visual aesthetic I think that Fried might be addressing how the photography viewer can “lose themselves” within the photograph.

I think that this is something that is presented in Wall’s Movie Audience once I read that Wall would hang them very high. I think that this is imperative to the work and gives a completely different view of it. With the work being hung above the viewer’s heads, he is making it nearly impossible for the viewer to get lost within the image. Although the images are still backlit, drawing the viewer in.


Fried begins the third beginning by referring to a text from 1755 titled Adelaide. In the conclusion of the story (the portion that Fried focuses on), Adelaide returns to her former lover, Marquis, in a church and shows herself to him yet he notices but chooses to look down. In his refusal to acknowledge her, she is then so destroyed, she falls unconscious and dies.

As far as I could understand, the significance of this paragraph is that it, due to the large amount of imagery within it, draws the reader into fully being interested in the story to where the reader forgets about himself and enters this imaginary world. I think that Fried is addressing how all of these small elements of imagery can add up to create a tableau. Could this be in any way relating to Wall’s idea of “the machine” which refers to one “losing themselves” within the cinema (or in this case text) to obtain pleasure and happiness. It seems as though there is something to be said about that but I can’t quite figure it out.

The second text that Fried refers to is Mishima’s The Temple of Dawn. Fried uses this text as a great visual reference to this idea of two separate worlds coming together, the voyeur’s world and his observation on the world of the other’s who is being seen but is unaware of being seen. Fried describes how being seen by no one and being unaware of being seen are similar yet different.
I found this to be incredibly interesting and may have thought way too much about it. Again I tried to parallel this to contemporary photography, which maybe was unnecessary. In comparison to the contemporary photograph, it is seen as a window to a separate world than that of the viewer’s. The viewer can observe this world but cannot become a part of it, similar to Honda’s situation in the story. Again paralleling the story, the viewer loves the image because of its mystery and that it is a view into an unknown world and the viewer wants and strives to know this world, but that cannot happen because if the viewer was to know it, it would then lose all ambiguity and become much less interesting and intriguing. I’m referring to the section that refers to Honda’s love of the unknown but desire of perception which will then lead to what is known, thus killing his love.

Again with these separate “worlds”, the separate world that the viewer is observing through the photograph, whether staged or not, is still a part of their own physical world, only at a different time in a different environment. Fried describes the Diderotian tableau as “the use of motifs and structures to establish the ontological illusion that the beholder does not exist”. Within the texts, the separate worlds of Adelaide and Marquis, and Honda and Ying Chan, both exist and are happening simultaneously. Stepping back a bit, the separate worlds between reader and text is that they are happening simultaneously as the reader is reading yet the reader’s world physically exists, but the world of the fictional text never existed but was created and only exists in the minds of the creator and the readers. When it comes to photography, the viewer’s world is observing a seemingly separate world, but physically both worlds are part of the same world. The only thing that separates them is time. I am wondering if this element of physicality and time, or being part of the same world yet presented in a way that is fictional, is going to be discussed later in the book.

Actually after rereading that, I wonder if I am even making any sense at all. Or if its even relevant to anything. I attempted to make a diagram trying to give a better understanding of what I’m trying to talk about but it might only make everything more confusing:
(i cannot upload photos for some reason so here is a link:
diagram
also if anyone knows how to upload photos on here i would love to hear, i included 2 other pictures on that flickr showing the problems thats going on here)

Anyways, in this 1st chapter, I think that what Fried is addressing is the illusion of theatricality within contemporary photography through its visual motifs yet it is anti-theatrical through its unique separation from the viewer. Is this why Fried has chosen to draw attention to Bustamonte’s Tableaux, and its “paradoxical combination of invasion and abandonment”? Or is Fried mostly observing Bustamonte because of his way of making the photographs anti-theatrical. Bustamonte would achieve this by making the photograph around noon when no shadows are present, resulting in an incredibly flat image and therefore distances the viewer from the work making the photograph anti-theatrical.


Walead Beshty:

I had a choice to go to the Walead Beshty lecture or go to a barbque. Frankly, I should have chosen the barbque. I was very disappointed in the lecture. I was familiar with his work prior to him speaking but I never really knew what it was all about. After going to the lecture, I realized all of his work is just about contemporary art and photographic practice. That has all been done before, these are not new ideas. Baldessarri used the exact same idea in his photo titled "Wrong", breaking the rules of modern day photographic practices. It seemed like Beshty was focused on creating images "breaking the rules of photography" by not using a camera. But even that is not even "breaking the rules", a lot of photographers don't use cameras in contemporary photography. A lot of artists use an outside source or 3rd party to create the work (as in his FedEx boxes where the FedEx employees would make the work in a physical sense). Check out the work of William Lamson, hes also using outside sources to make the markings on the work. Beshty's work is has so much potential to be interesting, but its not the sort of "anti-contemporary photography" work that he made it out to be.

And what was all that about the placement of his work? I may have missed something but it seemed as though he was contradicting himself. First, at the show in Brussels he purposefully hung the work so that it hung slightly off of the wall. He said that he did this because he didn't like how particular people get when hanging work and the idea that it needs to be "exactly center". About 10 minutes later, hes talking about his work in the Eisenman Building and how he positioned the work in a very precise way. So one day he wants to break this placement rule and the next day he wants to take it to the extreme in the opposite direction?

Don't get me wrong, I love the guy's work, the glass boxes and floor was amazing. In its visual aesthetic it is incredibly original and unique, but the ideas behind the work are just so stale. Someone please show me how I may have misinterpreted this, so that I can appreciate more than just the visual aesthetic of his work!

...and how about that ego of his?

1st blog post

In the Questionnaire on "The Contemporary", the question at hand is, in some regard, what is contemporary art? Hal Foster, who is posing the question, is inquiring if it is only merely institutional or if it is a result of a neoliberal economy. Alberro responds by addressing that, since the Cold War, neoliberalism has become dominant over our culture. Because of this, it has directly affected the fine arts.

One of the most interesting statements I found in Terry Smith's reading was his idea that contemporary art is simply "the old modern in new clothes". This, to me, seems about right. Modernism took place for more than 100 years, all during that period were sub-movements of art including dadaism, surrealism, abstract expressionism, minimalism, ect. If this is the "old modern in new clothes" then that would imply that the art being made today is reflections of past works but with a new twist on it.
Looking at Smith's idea of contemporary art simply being "passages between cultures", he simply referred to it as, "[work] that seems to have nothing that is contemporary about it, yet it persists. He explains that "irony is irrelevant but anachronism is relevant". I suppose that this style of making work would have to involve some sort of socio-poltical cause.

In the reviews of Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before by Michael Fried and The Civil Contract of Photography by Ariella Azoulay they were seen as two very different books with two very different views on photography as art. On the one side, Fried's book looks at photography in much more of a "contemporary as new modern" style. He addresses that the most successful photographs are the ones that draw the viewer in while at the same time keeping the viewer removed from the actual image, almost as a 3rd person point of view. This takes the same technique used by Manet in his painting Olympia, in which there is the nude figure directly addressing the viewer, while at the same time, painted in a way that is drawing attention to the actual painting itself.
On Azoulay's side, this book is viewing photography as what seemed like a much more "contemporary as the passage between cultures". This is addressing that photography has the power to do much more than just hang on a wall, but that through very realistic, photojournalistic images can influence the viewer to act in a much more social justice sort of way.
I can slightly understand how Fried's way of thinking can fit within the context of modern to post-modern to contemporary, being that he is saying that the photographs need to have an aesthetic that fits within the realm of that timeline, where as I cannot understand at all how Azoulay's thinking can fit in at all.

blogs made

hopeefully this works.