What surrounds the photograph
Read Douglas Crimp’s essay ‘The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism’ on the OCA-student website. This essay was first published in October 15 (Winter 1980) and is also available in Crimp, D. (1993) On the Museum’s Ruins. Massachusetts: MIT Press.
I must admit that I didn’t find the essay the easiest to follow and understand so I have completed some additional research to understand the meaning of ‘postmodernism’. According to TATE the term ‘Postmodernism’ was first used in the 1970s and as an art movement postmodernism to some extent defies definition – as there is no one postmodern style or theory on which it is hinged.
It seems that Postmodernism was a reaction against modernism. While modernism was based on idealism and reason, postmodernism was born of scepticism and a suspicion of reason. It challenged the notion that there are universal certainties or truths. Postmodern art drew on philosophy of the mid to late twentieth century and advocated that individual experience and interpretation was more concrete than abstract principles. Postmodernism embraces complex and often contradictory layers of meaning.
Postmodern photographers are particularly interested in the selective, constructed nature of the photograph. Both Robyn Stacey and Cindy Sherman create elaborate tableaux that reveal the fictive qualities of photography. Sherman, creates staged, mock film stills in which she photographs herself dressed and posed in the style of the femme fatale, the housewife or the teenager, exposing the stereotypical representation of women in art and film and revealing how identity is actually fluid.
Tracey Moffatt creates complex series of pictures that are consciously artificial, borrowing from both high art and popular culture to tell epic stories. Moffatt has said that she is interested in creating reality not capturing it and her photographs explore the hybridity of personal identity
Anne Zahalka has been consistently investigating the border between real and fabrication throughout her career. She uses photography to examine the construction of gendered, racial and social types, exploiting the apparent truthfulness of the photograph to examine the simulated nature of contemporary pop culture.
In the essay Crimp made a number of key points which I have captured here:
- Crimp defines the shift from modernism saying “Postmodernism is about art’s dispersal, its plurality,” (p.97)
- “a fantasy that art is free, free of other discourses, institutions, free above all, of history.” (p.93)
- “…the kind of presence that is possible only by representation… (p.94) “The presence before him was a presence” (Henry James)” an absence being a presence, this presence, one that is affected by absence is what Crimp sees as Post Modernist. This is the opposite of what Benjamin had in mind when he introduced the concept of Aura in the essay previously reviewed – Aura has to do with the presence of an original.”
- “The museum has no truck with fakes or copies or reproductions. The presence of the artists in the work must be detectable; that is how the museum knows it has something authentic”
- “Authenticity is what is depreciated through reproduction” Crimp cites the over reproduction of the image of the Mona Lisa, stating “the withering away of the aura is inevitable fact of our time, then equally inevitable are all those projects to recuperate it, to pretend that the original and the unique are still possible and desirable. ….no where more apparent than in the field of photography… culprit of reproduction”
- In the Benjamin essay it was suggested that only photographs that carried aura were those made prior to its 1850s commercialisation. I’m not sure I really agree with this statement
- Benjamin states that Aura in these early examples were the perceived skills of the photographer, the status of the sitters and the relationship between the two – “the tiny spark of chance, of the here and now, with which reality has, as it were, seared the character of the picture” (95)
- “Depletion of the aura… accelerated and intensified” – “liquididation of cultural values” -Museums are charged with sustaining values so faced with a challenge (96)
Towards the end of his essay, Crimp turns and focuses on just three American photographers who have been classified as Postmodern. The first Cindy Sherman photographs herself in an array of different guises, many staged to represent scenes from movies. The second, Sherrie Levine who re-photographs classic photographs by other well-known photographers such as Edward Weston and finally the third, Richard Prince, who re-uses photographs from advertisements such as those showing cowboys used to promote cigarettes. All these photographers are doing is creating a new body of work out of something pre-existing although one could argue that with the work by Sherman this is not as straightforward as those used by Levine and Prince.
Bibliography
Research
Website Accessed 27/11/19
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/postmodernism
https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/postmodernism-in-photography/
https://photographicinspirations2014.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/postmodernist-art-and-photography/
https://moneymakerphotography.com/defining-traditional-modern-postmodern-photography/
https://www.moma.org/collection/terms/84
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art
Cindy Sherman (b. 1954)
Sherman is one of the most influential photo artists of the late 20th century. Her Untitled Film Stills from 1977-80 is a key series of works in the emergence of postmodernism in the visual arts, and her ongoing interest in the mutability of identity has inspired generations of younger artists to pull on wigs and costumes and perform for the camera. But Sherman’s work is organic, exploring the grotesque and the uncanny, the monstrously feminine, and the comedic worlds of haute couture.
Sherman is both the photographer and the model. This offered a completely new perspective in the field of photography and one that was never done before. The theory she was working under during her series of the Untitled Film Stills was that of Postmodernism. This means that she was trying to explore new ways to express art without the usage of the old Modernistic dogma.
Sherman uses cinematic techniques like lighting, scenery, props and framing, and the images are untitled and numbered. These elements seem to reinforce the notion of informed movie culture.
“I am trying to force the viewer into coming up with their own interpretation by the fact that I leave everything untitled. Ideally, I want people to question whatever preconceived notions they may have about a particular ‘scenario,’ about a character.” Cindy Sherman, 1998.
Bibliography
Research
Website Accessed 29/11/19
https://au.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2016/june/16/a-movement-in-a-moment-postmodernism/
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/sherman-cindy/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntebBjLEKaM
Aneta Grzeszykowska (b. 1974)
Grzeszykowska, takes photographs, shoots films and creates objects. Her body is her medium. She says: “My body and surroundings play a major role in my work for technical reasons – these are easily accessible and ample components of creation. My work is deeply rooted in the mundane reality. The questions I ask are addressed to me.”
Her works – Album, Untitled Film Stills, Negative Book and Selfie – tackle the subject of the artist’s identity. The Album project (2005) traces her life from birth. The project came about by putting together her family pictures. However, she decided to erase herself. Her image play with the audience who look for her in the image. Untitled Film Stills refers to the project made by Cindy Sherman in the 1970s who disguised herself as film characters, entered the real world and situations typical for the post-war America. In the series of seventy colour photographs, Grzeszykowska recreates the setting. However, outdated props are replaced with modern items which reflect how much time has passed.
Black-and-white photographs entitled Negative Book capture the scenes from the artist’s own life. The negatives feature Grzeszykowska’s silhouette as a bright area, reversing the usual effect. The most recent project called Selfie marks a radical change of direction. The photographs illustrate stages of her portrait creation out of animal skin. The process reflects the struggle with mortality and attempts to preserve our own identity amid the transient nature of all human pursuits.
According to Grzeszykowska, “the identity should be viewed in this case as both tangible presence and emotional experience. All my photographs are interconnected. Album, Untitled Film Stills, Negative Book and Selfie represent the phases of losing oneself. I deleted myself in Album, I tried to be someone else in Untitled Film Stills and myself again in Negative Book. Something else tries to be me in Selfie.” Interestingly enough, the artist deals with identity and still admits what follows: “In fact, I don’t believe in the existence of identity as such. A person’s past is the collection of their previous versions. They evolve and realize the need for clearly defined identity not until they are actually dying. You could say art documents things, records this process and thus influences the creative one.”
Bibliography
Research
Website Accessed 29/11/19
https://culture.pl/en/artist/aneta-grzeszykowska
http://kontrastdergi.com/en/aneta-grzeszykowska-yeniden-yorumlar-52-sayi/
https://frieze.com/article/aneta-grzeszykowska
https://www.haberarts.com/grzeszy.htm
William Eggelston (b. 1939)
William Eggleston is one of the most influential photographers of the latter half of the 20th century. His portraits and landscapes of the American South reframed the history of the medium and its relationship to colour photography. “I had the attitude that I would work with this present-day material and do the best I could to describe it with photography,” Eggleston explained. “Not intending to make any particular comment about whether it was good or bad or whether I liked it or not. It was just there, and I was interested in it.”1
Since the early 1960s, William Eggleston used colour photographs to describe the cultural transformations in Tennessee and the rural South. He registers these changes in scenes of everyday life, such as portraits of family and friends, as well as gasoline stations, cars, and shop interiors. Switching from black and white to colour, his response to the vibrancy of post war consumer culture and America’s bright promise of a better life paralleled Pop art’s fascination with consumerism. Eggleston’s “snapshot aesthetic” speaks to new cultural phenomena as it relates to photography: from the Polaroid’s instantaneous images, the way things slip in and out of view in the camera lens, and our constantly shifting attention. Eggleston captures how ephemeral things represent human presence in the world, while playing with the idea of experience and memory and our perceptions of things to make them feel personal and intimate.
![William_Eggleston_Photograph-17[1]](https://i0.wp.com/michele512879level3.photo.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/william_eggleston_photograph-171.jpg?w=419&h=272&ssl=1 "William_Eggleston_Photograph-17[1]")
![eggleston-auto[1]](https://i0.wp.com/michele512879level3.photo.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/eggleston-auto1.jpg?w=413&h=272&ssl=1 "eggleston-auto[1]")
Bibliography
Research
Websites accessed 29/11/2019
1 http://www.artnet.com/artists/william-eggleston/
http://www.egglestontrust.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Eggleston
http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1505/william-eggleston-american-born-1939/
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/11/photographer-william-eggleston-on-women-and-work
Martin Parr (b. 1952)
“Unless it hurts, unless there’s some vulnerability there, I don’t think you’re going to get good photographs,”1 he has said.
The Last Resort was one of Parr’s early experiments with colour and in this way the beach has been his laboratory for testing out new ideas. “Whenever I’ve adopted a new technique, I usually apply it first to the beach to experiment with what’s possible,” says Parr. “This has ranged from New Brighton being the 6×7 medium format and changing from black and white to colour. Then the use of the standard lens—initially at a wide angle—then the macro lens and then more recently the telephoto lens.” The beach has remained a fruitful testing ground simply because, “people are just lying there waiting to be photographed”.2
Martin Parr is one of the world’s most iconic photographers, his ability to capture the essence of the British is considered unparalleled within contemporary image-making. The series that first propelled him to success – his mid-80s documentary series The Last Resort – was an intimate freeze-frame of New Brighton, a time capsule of the holidays working class families during Thatcher’s reign. Shot in colour during a time where traditional black and white imagery was the exclusive medium of ‘proper’ photography (a trend first dismantled by Americans like Stephen Shore and William Eggleston before Parr brought it across the Atlantic), The Last Resort signified a shift in the way photography was understood in the UK.
![the-last-resort-martin-parr-1[1]](https://i0.wp.com/michele512879level3.photo.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/the-last-resort-martin-parr-11.jpg?w=553&h=444&ssl=1 "the-last-resort-martin-parr-1[1]")
Bibliography
Research
Websites accessed 29/11/19
1 http://www.artnet.com/artists/martin-parr/
2 https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/society-arts-culture/martin-parr-the-last-resort/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Parr
https://pro.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL5357TF
https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/martin-parr/
Paul Graham (b.1956)
Graham is one of the very first British documentary photographers to work in colour. His first major series of pictures, made in 1981-2 along the A1 motorway in England, later published as A1 – the Great North Road, caught the country on the cusp of a new mood. In the motorway cafes of the industrial north, customers, mainly men, sat alone, detached from and somehow mocked by the brightly coloured, pre-formed plastic interiors, the brand names and neon signs. It was the beginning of service-industry Britain, and as such was the perfect preparation for his next book, Beyond Caring, made inside British DHSS offices, where men and women – many of them from the suddenly unemployed industrial working classes – sat bored and hopeless and fuddled by red tape. A traditional preserve of black-and-white reportage, Graham’s use of colour forced the reality of these torpid places into the present. Taken as he sat with his camera in the rows, his pictures showed the same mind-numbing vistas that faced the unemployed: stretches of dirty lino floor, outstretched legs, metal chairs, hunched bodies, stray toddlers. Official attempts to “brighten up” these spiritually grey interiors only made them worse. Published in 1986, Beyond Caring was a detailed, documentary indictment of Thatcherism, made in anger.
Bibliography
Research
Websites accessed 29/11/19
https://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/beyondcaring.html#a
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(photographer)
https://www.lensculture.com/articles/paul-graham-paul-graham-speaks-about-his-photographs
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2011/apr/11/paul-graham-photography
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/paul-graham-2337
Michele Usher 