Session Title
Post-Photographic Forms, Mutations and Digital Hybrid
Start Date
4-10-2012 9:45 AM
End Date
4-10-2012 11:45 AM
Session Description
We are in a particular moment in photography’s history where many contemporary photography works reference a diversity of genres and involve a broad range of image- making processes, which I have also explored in my artistic practice. Examining my work in relationships to other contemporary artists has allowed me to reflect on current trends in photography and its varied mutations. For example, American artist Sean Snyder downloads amateur snapshots from the Internet, taken by American soldiers stationed in the current conflict in Iraq, and present them systematically in a grid format. Most of the images depict stereotypical scenes: exotic desert sunsets, smiling children receiving sweets from US troops, and unveiled caches of rebel weapons. They encourage comparisons and pose the question if the photography is betraying the ideology of the soldier-photographer who took them. Another example is Israel artist Elad Lassry and American artist Amanda Ross Ho; their artistic intent is to look at photography simply as a picture devoid of a traditional view of photography as depiction. By combining commercial and object photography, photography and erotica, studio portraiture and collage, Photoshop and issues of design, appropriation and photojournalism, their photographs have no intended ‘home,’ a concept they explore by attempting to create works that are somehow void of authorship or index. My work expands on the idea that the meaning of an image taken of anything today is so exhausted. There is no longer any such thing as ‘photography,’ and one can’t extract a simple definition from the medium given the circumstances. How to maintain the status quo of photography in a time where its definition is being continued blurred. Considering the last five years of photographic practice, one might conclude there should be reconsideration in the term “picture making” in a digital age because we have shifted to an immaterial time where the photography as a physical object has evaporated,’ as contemporary photographer Elad Lassry says. Has Photography finally met its end, transforming into so many post-photographic forms and digital hybrids? For this presentation I will examine the current shifts and trends in photography and relate them to my artistic practice.
Post-Photographic Forms, Mutations and Digital Hybrid
We are in a particular moment in photography’s history where many contemporary photography works reference a diversity of genres and involve a broad range of image- making processes, which I have also explored in my artistic practice. Examining my work in relationships to other contemporary artists has allowed me to reflect on current trends in photography and its varied mutations. For example, American artist Sean Snyder downloads amateur snapshots from the Internet, taken by American soldiers stationed in the current conflict in Iraq, and present them systematically in a grid format. Most of the images depict stereotypical scenes: exotic desert sunsets, smiling children receiving sweets from US troops, and unveiled caches of rebel weapons. They encourage comparisons and pose the question if the photography is betraying the ideology of the soldier-photographer who took them. Another example is Israel artist Elad Lassry and American artist Amanda Ross Ho; their artistic intent is to look at photography simply as a picture devoid of a traditional view of photography as depiction. By combining commercial and object photography, photography and erotica, studio portraiture and collage, Photoshop and issues of design, appropriation and photojournalism, their photographs have no intended ‘home,’ a concept they explore by attempting to create works that are somehow void of authorship or index. My work expands on the idea that the meaning of an image taken of anything today is so exhausted. There is no longer any such thing as ‘photography,’ and one can’t extract a simple definition from the medium given the circumstances. How to maintain the status quo of photography in a time where its definition is being continued blurred. Considering the last five years of photographic practice, one might conclude there should be reconsideration in the term “picture making” in a digital age because we have shifted to an immaterial time where the photography as a physical object has evaporated,’ as contemporary photographer Elad Lassry says. Has Photography finally met its end, transforming into so many post-photographic forms and digital hybrids? For this presentation I will examine the current shifts and trends in photography and relate them to my artistic practice.
Related Paper(s)
Kelley, Jyl A. Photography Whatever We Want It to Be (http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/macaa2012scholarship/8).
Lee, Lynn M. Dreaming in Analog: The marriage of vintage photographic process and the contemporary world. (http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/macaa2012scholarship/9).
Tibbs, Millee. Snapshots, Clichés and Simulacra (http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/macaa2012scholarship/10).