on photographic postmodernism - re-photograpghy

8/12/2019 On Photographic Postmodernism - Re-photograpghy

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ABSTRACT:

Though the matter was not a subject of intense debates, it is somehow obvious

that postmodern photography raises profound questions on originality, on the

value of a photograph as a work of art and on the artistic merits of a

photographer. While some postmodern photographers turned to the snapshot-

aesthetic or, au contraire, to elaborate constructions meaningful compositions,

others opened up to clichs inspired by literature or by Baudrillards theories on

simulacra and by Warhols tribute to the ready-made. Two somehow similar

methods stir our interest here: first, the extremely controversial re-photography

(appropriation) of Richard Prince and secondly, the rephotography of Mark Klett.While bearing the same name and admitting the impossibility of original

creation, the two example we have in mind are usually considered to be at

opposite ends of the axiological judgment of photographic skills and talents.

Unity and Diversity in Knowledge Society International Conference

Interpretative Practices and Theories of Photography Workshop,

September 27th2012, Iai, Romania


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In the mid-1970s, Prince was an aspiring painter

who earned a living by clipping articles from

magazines for staff writers at Time-Life Inc. What

remained at the end of the day were the

advertisements, featuring gleaming luxury goods

and impossibly perfect models; both fascinated and

repulsed by these ubiquitous images, the artist

began rephotographing them, using a repertoire of

strategies (such as blurring, cropping, and

enlarging) to intensify their original artifice. In so

doing, Prince undermined the seeming naturalness

and inevitability of the images, revealing them as

hallucinatory fictions of society's desires.

Untitled (Cowboy)is a high point of the artist's

ongoing deconstruction of an American archetype

as old as the first trailblazers and as timely as then-

outgoing president Ronald Reagan.


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Prince's picture is a copy (the photograph) of a

copy (the advertisement) of a myth (the cowboy).Perpetually disappearing into the sunset, this lone

ranger is also a convincing stand-in for the artist

himself, endlessly chasing the meaning behind

surfaces. Created in the fade-out of a decade

devoted to materialism and illusion, Untitled

(Cowboy)is, in the largest sense, a meditation on an

entire culture's continuing attraction to spectacle

over lived experience.


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Timothy OSullivan, 1872, Green River Caon, Upper Caon, Great Bend, Uinta Mountains. The Horseshoe and Green River below the

bend from Flaming Gorge Ridge (U.S. Geological Survey). On right: Mark Klett for the Rephotographic Survey Project, 1978, Flaming

Gorge Reservoir from above the site of the Great Bend, Utah.

Left: Timothy OSullivan, 1868, Quartz Mill near Virginia City (U.S. Geological Survey). Right: Mark Klett for the

Rephotographic Survey Project, 1979, Site of the Gould and Curry Mine, Virginia City, Nevada.


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Left: Mark Klett with Michael Lundgren, 2003, Hearst Building, Market

Street. Right: Arnold Genthe, 1906, Untitled (Hearst Building) (Fine Arts

Museums of San Francisco).


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Left: Mark Klettwith Michael Lundgren, 2003, Walkway, Stanford University. Right: C.

Mendenhall, 1906, Agassiz statue at Stanford, April, 1906 (U.S. Geological Survey)


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