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Title: The Photograph as Contemporary Art Author: Charlotte Cotton ISBN: 9780500204184 Publication Date: 2014 Publisher: Thames Hudson Introduction: • Technology was invented in the 1830’s • Since then, photography has become a contemporary art form, and in the 21st century it is embraced as a legitimate medium (like painting and sculpture) • This book intends to provide an intro and overview of photograpy as contemporary art by others defining it as a subjecy, while also indentifying its characteristic themes and features • All of the photographers in the book convey a sense of the ‘broad and intelligent scope of contemporary photography’ • Every photographer mentioned in the book shares a commitment to maing their own contribution to the culture of art photography • The photos presented in this book were originally made for galleries and in the pages of art books, so bare that in mind, as well as that each photographer is in a way being defined by one photo • The majority of art photographers have some sort of degree and craft their art for art viewers • Now that art photography is being taken more seriously, it also brings in crticial discussion which ‘tends to centre on the consolidation and qualification of the field, rather than on rethinking it conceptually’ • We have image based communication on a daily basis with the use of social media and other photo sharing platforms • amateurs are able to self-publish their own photobooks due to digital printing • Citizens are also able to get involved in documentary photography used in journalism • This all does however push us to become more specific about what qualifies as artistic photographic practise • Each category of this book is a theme, either a stylistic theme or a choice of subject matter that determines a characteristic of art photography • The chapters tend to group together photographers who share more common ground in their motivations & the way they work • Chapter 1 focuses on… ◦ How photographers devise strategies for the camera ◦ It challenges a traditional stereotype of photography • Chapter 2 focuses on… ◦ Storytelling ◦ The way that ‘tableau’ photography is prevelent in contemporary practise ◦ How a narrative can be told into a single image ◦ Relates to the pre-photographic era of the 18th and 19th centuries with their paintings ◦ How props, gestures and style help convey a sense of narrative • Chapter 3 focuses on… ◦ Photographic aesthetics ◦ ‘Deadpan’ is a type of art photography that has a lack of visual drama or hyperbole ◦ These are photos though that suffer from being reduced in size, as they are best as big prints • Chapter 4 focuses on… ◦ Subject matter ◦ How contemporary photography has bushed the bounderies of ‘what might be considered a credible visual subject’ ◦ Everything in the real world is a potential subject • Chapter 5 focuses on… ◦ Emotional and personal relationships ◦ Intimacy ◦ Some of the photographs have an amateur style to them, like ordinary family snaps ◦ Considers what art photographers add to this style • Chapter 6 focuses on… ◦ Highlighting the use of documentary photography in art ◦ ‘Aftermath photography’ - where photographers arrive at sites of disaster after ◦ Shows off political and individual upheaval ◦ Visual records of isolated communities • Chapter 7 focuses on… ◦ Expoloting our pre-existing knowledge of imagery ◦ Remaking well-known photographs ◦ Mimicking generic types of imagery ◦ By recognising familiar kinds of imagery, we are made aware of what we see, how we see and how images trigger our emotions and understanding of the world ◦ Critique of originality ◦ The revival of historical photographic techniques ◦ Understanding past events or cultures • Chapter 8 focuses on… ◦ Photography where the nature of the medium is part of the narrative ◦ Art photographers have made conscious decisions to highlight certain physical and material properties of photography ◦ Draws attention to the choices a photographer must make when creating their work ◦ How art photographers are making images that can be viewed both online alongisde art that is for gallery purposes ◦ Flourising creativity • Photography as contemporary art in the 21st century is influenced by contemporary art markets, as ell as the impacy of digital technology (for both production and viewing of images) • Also inspired by 19th and 20th century history of the medium • Experimentalism of European avant-garde photography of the early 20th century • The use of colour over black & white dominated contemporary photographic art in the mid-1990’s • It wasn’t until the 70’s that people who used vibrant colours received critical support and in the 90’s, colour became standard practise • William Eggleston & Stephen Shore were important to the contribution of colour photography becoming prominent • Eggleston created colour photos in the 60’s which was rarer ◦ In 1976, there as a exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (New York) that displayed his colour images taken between 1969 & 1971. It was the first solo show of a photographer working mainly in colour ◦ It was an indicator of his work creating an alternative approach • In 1971, Stephen Shore had photographs printed as postcards (5,600 of them!) and failed to sell many of them, so he placed them in postcard racks (many got posted back to him) ◦ His fascination with the everyday styles of photography continued when in 1972 he exhibited 220 photos made with a 35mm instamatic camera, showing ordinary objects cropped and depicted very casually ◦ His art wasn’t well known until his book ‘American Surfaces’ which was published in 1999 • Eggleston & Shore’s contributions were also involving opening up a space within art photography to allow a more liberated approach to image making • Younger artists have followed in their footsteps • The exhibition ‘New Topographics: Photographs of a man-altered landscape’ (curated by William Jenkins) was first shown in 1975 in Rochester (New York) and is recognised as an ‘early survey of some of the most critically important and influential photography of the late 20th century’ ◦ It included Bernd and Hilla Becher (who worked together from the mid-50’s onwards) ◦ Their photos of American artitechtural structures (eg. gas tanks, water towers, blast furnaces etc) have informed the aesthetics and conceptual aproaches of contemporary art photography ◦ They stand in contrast with the previously mentioned colour photographs, but there is an important connection ◦ They’ve both been very important to adapting vernacular photography to function as pat of an artistic strategy ◦ The intent of infusing art photography with connections to history and life ◦ The exhibition brought together a wide range of work that had diverse concepts • 21st century has also been a time of the reappraisal of other histories of photography • The influence of the history of art upon present day art photographers reflects the fascination in wide contemporary art • Interest in avant-garde experimentation has made Laszlo Moholy-Nagy a very important figure ◦ Encompassd painting, sculpture, film, design and experimentational photography in the spirit of Dadaism and Russian Contructivism ◦ Epitomised the pluralistic practises associated with the German Bauhaus School ◦ He experimented with light ◦ Fused photography and sculpture • Marcel Duchamp (1880’s-1960’s) is the originator or Dadaism ◦ His collaborations with Alfred Stieglitz and man Ray resonate strongly within the field of contemporary art photography ◦ They used photography as a device to generate a visual charge & assign artistic meaning to its subjects ◦ In this context, photography is the rool of the Duchampian readymade ▪ It creates a default, manfactured object borrowed from daily life • It is not surprising that interest in the history of photography and of work from an earlier time has become more popular as art photography has been accepted as a valid medium • The second decade of the 21st century has ushered in an era of confience and experimentation • It’s different from the process in the late 20th century of validating photography • Now that photography is accepted as a fact of being a medium of contemporary art, we are now ready for new and exciting turns in the development Chapter 1: • Photographers in this chapter collectively make one of the most confident declarations about how central photography has become within contemporary art, and how far removed it is from traditional notitions of how photographers create their work • The photographs evolve from a strategy orchestrated by the photographers specifically for creating an image • Framing those moments will always be part of the process however and the central artistic act is directing an event specifically for the camera • This means artistic creation begins before the camera is held in position, and actually begins with planning the idea • The roots of it lie in the mid 60’s and 70’s, when photography became central to the communication of artists’ performances and other temporary works of art • Conceptual art played down to the importance of craft and authorship • The style of mid 20th century photojournalism was often adopted to invest the image with the sense of it being an unplanned action • Conceptual art used photography as a mens of coveting brief artistic ideas or actions • It is both a document and evidence of art • Art was revealed to be the process of delegation to ordinary and everyday objects and photography became a tool to avoid the need to create what is seen as a good picture • The

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