The Photograph as Contemporary Art: chapters1-2

Charlotte Cotton's book is intended as a survey of the field of Photography as Contemporary Art. She dividends the book into eight sections:

1.           Photographers who have devised strategies especially for the camera. Looks at the degree to which the focus has been preconceived by the photographer;

2.           Story telling in art photography;

3.           Deadpan;

4.           Something and Nothing - how the mundane has featured in art photography;

5.           Emotional and personal relationships;

6.           Documentary;

7.           Extending our pre existing knowledge of imagery;

8.           Physical and Material

Cotton then goes on to look at the origins of art photography, claiming it is in work of Eggleston, Shore, and the Bechers.

Chapter 1 If This is Art

The common theme in this chapter is artists who have had an idea, a concept, and manifested it with a series of photographs.

Examples are:

•             Sophie Calle following a man to Venice unbeknown to him and chronicling the events by photographs and notes, and eating food of a different colour each day for a week. Interesting for first part is how stalking someone you don't know would be viewed had a man followed a woman;

•             Kulik's animal pictures;

•             Orimoto's Bread Man sequence where photographer covers his face with loaves of bread;

•             Gillian Wearing asking people she did not know to write a sign about themselves and hold it up in front of camera - again one wonders whether a man could get away with this;

•             Deployed writing witticisms on images;

•             Davis,s series of images taken at night time of windows reflecting the neon signs of fast food joints.

And there are many more.

I find this sort of imagery difficult. I am not a big fan of contemporary art anyway. Much of it appears arrogant. It almost seems to scream to the audience : "This is not skilful but I dare you to say so." The "skill" is supposed to be in the drafting of the concept, in using the medium to say something subtly. But I find the message too obtuse to tease out in most cases. There is a sense in me that says we have things the wrong way round: it is as if the artist/photographer produces a work that is deliberately ambiguous and defies his or her audience to find the message. To me, the artist should be clear about what he or she is saying; enunciate it and let the viewer decide on whether the artist has succeeded. It is not a guessing game. Now sometimes this happens, but often it does not.

Secondly I am very unconvinced that some of these series say anything useful at all. Simply do not get the point of taking images of windows reflecting the Big Mac sign, for example. It seems as if the artist is almost trying too hard - trying to find a concept using the medium rather then using the medium of photography to demonstrate his or her point.  In order to  make a name for themselves, too many artist/photographers are simply inventing wacky topics with dubious intellectual value.

Chapter 2 Once upon a Time

This chapter is about storytelling in contemporary art photography. Some of the photographs make reference to fables and fairy tales.

Often described as tableau or tableau vivant photography as the pictorial narrative is concentrated in a single image.

One proponent is Jeff Wall. I like Passerby  on page 48,  clearly a staged photograph but the message of fear in the dark night is clear.

Some photographers use earlier works of art as an inspiration, e.g Tom Hunter's Thoughts of Life and Death.

One theme of tableau photography is to depict figures with back to camera so that character is unexplained. Good example is Hannah Starkey March 2002, of a woman sitting in an Oriental canteen.

There is a school too that uses children in mock ups of tales of fears and fantasies. Deborah Messa Polly's image Legs  is an example of using female characters in allegories of tales. Here she uses the legs of Goldilocks with the phallic tail of a pantomime lion. Van Lamsweerde and Matadin's Widow is a disturbing image of a girl in black appearing to be possessed but dressed immaculately.

Like Charlie White's Understanding Joshua, series of images in which Joshua is part alien puppet. Cotton makes point that this is a rare injection of humour into art.

Finally, Cotton turns to tableau photography that finds allegory and drama in physical and architectural space. Like Katherine Bosse's images of spaces designed for sexual play., e.g. Classroom p71.

Like too Cerca Paseo de Marti on p77 by Desiree Dolon. Depicts a Cuban classroom in which the empty chairs face impassioned political statements on the blackboard and a portrait of Fidelity Castro.

Got on much better with this chapter. Could see more readily what the photographers were seeking to achieve, much less the sense that subjects were being sought to fit the photography, more that the photography reflected ideas. Or perhaps just mellowing a little...