The Photograph as Contemporary Art: Chapter 7

Revived and Remade

The chapter looks at the postmodernist interpretation of photography. Cotton contrasts premodernism - characterized by the few "trailblazers" who "typify formal and intellectual transcendence" - with postmodernism which is concerned with "the medium [of photography] in terms of its production, dissemination and reception, and engaged with its inherent reproductibility, mimicry and falsity."

Cotton goes on to say this analysis was heavily influenced by the structuralist thinking of the likes of Barthes and Foucault. Photographic meaning derives only from by reference to other images or signs, not by the author. The significance of images derives from "the larger system of social and cultural coding."

In photographic terms, postmodernism is demonstrated by those who turn the subject towards themselves, literally to themselves in many cases. 

The best known of this genre is Cindy Sherman, the pioneer of those who are producer and subject. These are more than just the classic self portraits of the art world as the photographic medium allows the subject to take an image of herself some way from the camera by using delayed action or cable release. An example is Sherman's image Untitled 48 in which she poses with a suitcase by the side of a road. Another striking example is Jemima Stehli's remake of fashion photographer Helmut Newton's work Here They Come. Stehli poses firstly fully clothed then naked except for a pair of high heeled shoes in an identical pose holding the cable release to give the reader no doubt that she is taking the image.

Cotton's chapter then wanders off somewhat. This is not untypical of other chapters where she seems to classify the work of photographers into genres that even they might not recognize. 

She examines briefly the work of some who use fantasy or fiction, such as Joan Fontcuberta's Herbarum series exploring surreal plant forms. An extreme (and large scale) example of this genre is Aleksandra Mir's work First Woman on the Moon for which a section of Dutch coast was moulded into a mock lunar landscape, with a sideways swipe at the (then) male dominated world of space travel by representing the women as cross between stereotypical air stewardesses and wives of astronauts waving their menfolk off.

A further sub genre has been the use of 19th century techniques. Susan Derges has used the photogram to record the movement of rain and water. Adam Fuss has also used the photogram and been one of the photographers who have revived the daguerreotype.

Some photographers work with existing images, rewroking thwm into a sort of collage. Tacita Dean found some early twentieth century Russian postcards at a fleamarket and annotated them. Joachim Scmid works only with photographs discarded on the street