the camera: transformations and challenges

The Camera:transformations and

challenges

Oct. 19

FA/AK 2100

After Nadar: Painting offering Photography a Place at the Expo of Fine ArtsTournachon: Felix (Nadar) 1820 1910

Robert Frank, Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955-1956, from the series The Americans

Self conscious art photography, 1940s-50s

Photography and Modernism

Otto Steinert, Pont Neuf, Paris: 1949

Photography and Modernism

Self conscious art photography, 1940s-50s

Andy Warhol, Lenin

Andy Warhol, Beethoven

Photography and Modernism

Art embraces mass media

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965

Photography and Modernism

The Rise of Conceptualism

Keith Arnatt: "Trouser-Word

Piece" (1972)

Photography and Modernism

Language was conceptualism’s ideal medium. Put ideas centre stage

Chris Burden SHOOT, F-Space, Santa Ana, CaliforniaNovember 19, 1971

Photography and Modernism

Language was conceptualism’s ideal medium. Put ideas centre stage

Gordon Matta-Clark Pier In/Out 1973 Color photograph

Camera extended the idea of the object into performance

Photography and Modernism

Barbara Kruger, 1996

Photography and Modernism

Aesthetic conservatism vs radical vanguardism: art as politics

Untitled 1981

Untitled 1981

Art and Theory - Postmodernism

Photography and Modernism

Gerhard Richter - Atlas 1962 -  Panel 1: Album photographs, 1962-66

28 b/w photographsOverall 51.7 x 66.7 cm

Memories and Archives

Photography and the logic of the archive

Art could be a space to examine the meanings and implications of the archival rather than simply turning images into art works

Allan McCollum, Each and Every One of You, 2004

Yinka Shonibare 'Diary of a Victorian Dandy 14:00 hours', Photograph, 1998

Images can both aid and disable the continuities of history, memory and identity

Memories and Archives

Gardner, Alexander   American (b. Scotland, 1821-1882) Lewis Payne

Objectivity and the Camera

Photographs as special objects

Mel BochnerActual Size (Hand),

Objectivity and the Camera

Allan Sekula, Two, three, many...(terrorism), 1972, s/w

Objectivity and the Camera

John Hilliard. Cause of Death? (1974)

Objectivity and the Camera

Bernd and Hilla Becher

Water Towers, 1980. Black-and-white photographs mounted on board, 61 7/8 x 49 7/8 inches overall.

Objectivity and the Camera

Extended commitment to objectivity

Andreas GurskyChicago Board of Trade II, 1999

Objectivity and the Camera

Christian Boltanski

France, born 1944Monument Odessa, 1991Mixed media

Objectivity and the Camera

Fischli & WeissFrom the series Quiet Afternoon, 2003

Objectivity and the Camera

Richard WentworthMaking Do and Getting By, Munich 2000, 2000

Traces and Time

Art and data collection

Gabriel Orozco Until You Find Another Yellow Schwalbe 1995 photograph on paper55 x 71 cms

Traces and Time

Man RayDust Breeding (Elevage de poussiere), 192024 x 30.5 cm, Black and white photographTraces and Time

Edward Ruscha

Royal Roads Test, 1971

Traces and Time

Chris Burden

Shoot, 1971

F Space, Santa Ana, California

Traces and Time

Eleanor Antin. Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (detail). 1973. 148 photographs; overall length 20'.Instalation of photographs depicting a 5-week diet resulting in a weight loss of 11 1/2 pounds.

Traces and Time

HENRI CARTIER - BRESSON, (Behind the Gare Saint Lazare), 1932

HENRI CARTIER - BRESSON (Brussels), 1932

The Everyday

Martha RoslerThe Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems1974-75(detail)

Moving beyond merely aesthetic images

The Everyday

the bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems, (1974 - 1975)

The Everyday

Jeff Wall . The Destroyed Room, 1978

The Everyday

Combining descriptive character of photography with the theatrical possibilities of staging and awareness of genres from visual art and cinema

"Insomnia” by Jeff Wall (1994)

The Everyday

Jeff Wall Untitled (overpass), 2001

The Everyday

Combining descriptive character of photography with the theatrical possibilities of staging and awareness of genres from visual art and cinema

Jeff Wall Mimic, 1982

The Everyday

Combining descriptive character of photography with the theatrical possibilities of staging and awareness of genres from visual art and cinema

Jeff WallPicture for Women

1979

Edouard Manet.

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. 1882. Oil on

canvas

Combining descriptive character of photography with the theatrical possibilities of staging and awareness of genres from visual art and cinema

KRZYSZTOF WODICZKOEdinburgh Projections

August 1988

Onto six of the columns of the unfinished copy of the Parthenon at Carlton Hill in Edinburgh, Wodiczko projected images that represented the disenfranchised of the city. Personifications of homelessness, single parenthood, unemployment, alcoholism and drug addiction loomed over the city. The text “Morituri te Salutant” (those who are about to die salute you) was projected onto the lintel above. Across the hill the face of Margaret Thatcher and the words “Pax Brittanica” were projected onto the dome of the observatory.

The Everyday

Gillian WearingSigns that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to sayInterim Art, London 1997

The Everyday

Rudolph Burckhard, Jackson Pollock painting in his studio

Self Portraits

Jo Spence, 1990

Self Portraits

The self as something performed rather than revealed

Jo Spence, 1990

Self Portraits

The self as something performed rather than revealed

Cindy Sherman, Untitled # 96The self as something performed rather than revealed

Self Portraits

"Untitled Film Still #58"

"Untitled Film Still #33"

Self Portraits

Francesca Woodman, 1958-1981

Self Portraits

Allan McCollum, 1982Perpetual Photo

Mediation

Andrew Grassie, Spaceman, from the series 'Why Paint Spacemen', 1997

Mediation

John Baldessari, Hanging Man With Sunglasses, 1984

Mediation

Yve Lomax “The observer affects the observed,” 1994

Mediation

Keith Piper, “Club Mix” 1999

Surveillance: about looking

Sofie CalleSuite vénitienne, 1980

Surveillance: about looking

Claude Cahun. “What Do You Want of Me, 1928

Surveillance: about looking

Philip Lorca, “Heads” (2001)

Surveillance: about looking

Robert Smithson. Spiral Jetty, 1970

Nature/Culture

Hamish Fulton Boulder Shadows, Wyoming, 1995, 1995

Nature/Culture

Richard MisrachOutdoor Dining, Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, 1992

Nature/Culture

GABRIEL OROZCO

Cats and Watermelons1992

Cibachrome, 16 x 20 inches

Nature/Culture

• Avant-garde cinema vs commercial cinema: To understand avant-garde film and its reasons for being we must related it contextually to mainstream or commercial cinema

• Mainstream cinema is basically hegemonic

• The emphasis on realism was established during the early years of film through an increasingly standardized language of film (Classic Hollywood Narrative Form)

– Characters were displayed realistically and with a progressive character arc.

– The story was told linearly with clear dramatic arc.

– Every effort was made to preserve a sense of spatial and temporal continuity.

Counter Cinema: reactions and revolutions

• We can also understand the difference and tension between commercial and avant-garde film by this following dichotomy set up by Peter Wollen

Classic Cinema Counter Cinema

Narrative Transitivity Narrative Intransitivity

Identification Estrangement

Transparency Foregrounding

Single Diegesis Multiple Diegesis

Closure Aperture

Pleasure Unpleasure

Fiction Reality

Counter Cinema: reactions and revolutions

• Avant-garde film directly challenges mainstream conventions.

• The surrealist approach to cinema was to directly challenge the logic and coherence of narrative approaches to cinema.

• Man Ray once said that the point of this type of cinema is to deliberately try the patience of the audience

• The avant-garde was not necessarily against narrative but rather wanted to approach it differently.

Counter Cinema: reactions and revolutions