Ch 7 Notes ~ The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton

Chapter 7 Notes

ART 240

Ch 7 – Revived and Remade

• ·         Photos are the processes of signification and cultural coding
• ·         Modernism: sees photos in terms of authorship and aesthetic and technical developments of medium
•          Postmodernism: examines medium in terms of production, dissemination, and reception
• ·         Seen as signs that acquire their value from their place within a larger system of cultural coding
• ·         Roland Barthes – Michel Foucault à influences
• ·         The meaning of the image is not of its author’s making – determined only by reference to other images
• ·         Experiences that hinge on our memory à family memories, magazine advertising, films, surveillance, old photographs, etc
• ·         Cindy Sherman à widely written about à 1990s Untitled Film Stills à69 photos of  a woman in a scenario of charged moments
• ·         She’s both subject and creator
• ·         All part of the viewer’s experience
• ·         Yasumasa Morimura à Self-Portrait as Art History à 1985
• ·         Nikki S. Lee à research and preparation is greatly included à The Hispanic Project
• ·         Trish Morrissey à Seven Years à link of family experiences through personal photographs
• ·         Jemima Stehli à After Helmut Newton’s Here They Come
• ·         Muniz à uses illusions created from typical simple objects (wire, chocolate, soil, spaghetti)
• ·         Schorr à responses to Helga paintings with critical twists on gender dynamics
• ·         Aleksandra Mir à First Woman on the Moon à constructed fake lunar landscape in Holland
• ·         Cornelia Parker à photographs manifestations of history’s most important events and figures
• ·         Objects are visually transformed into abstractions
• ·         Susan Derges à used the process of light-sentitized paper to show movements of river and seawater
• ·         Color depends on ambient light from towns and villages and the temperature of the water
• ·         John Divola à archive of continuity photographs made on film sets
• ·         Susan Meiselas à American à photojournalistic projects à first Persian Gulf War à First World War à history of Kurdistan and relationship with west
• ·         Tacita Dean à British à The Russian Ending
• ·         Joachim Schuid à German à salvages discarded photos and recycles their meaning à Pictures from the Street
• ·         Represents personal memories and active rejection
• ·         Thomas Ruff à pornographic images from the internet à creates ones that depict remoteness
• ·         Shows idealization
• ·         Vibeke Tandberg à Norwegian à Line à intimate professional and detached relationship with subject