Between
Art and Photography:
International Trends in Art and their Influence
on Photography
Photography
is part of art and as such it partakes of the trends dominating the art world.
This participation proceeds on two fronts, the first is as part of the
tradition of the Image, and the second as a part of (as material used in) the various
trends in recent art. The history and tradition of the Image, also often referred
to as ‘Visual Culture’, is photography’s inheritance and home, with the
traditions of painting and film-making continuing to cross-fertilise with the
world of photography. The poster is a key indicator of the public’s love for
the photograph and is its main expression as mass or popular culture (second
only to home photography, now boosted for the first time since its original explosion
in popularity with Kodak, by the ubiquity of the digital camera, most especially
in its popular partnership with the mobile phone).
The
twenty-first century has inherited six trends from the twentieth century; the
Image; the Found Object, Minimalism, (Post-)Conceptualism, Performance and the
Found Experience (or “Little Anthropology”). I want first to look at what role
photography plays in these trends (in the process giving a short definition of
each one) so reviewing their influence on photography, augmenting the
documentary and popular memory functions of its origins and the painterly
influences that have sustained ‘art’ photography.
The
category of the Image, which has
played a key role in human culture from the cave paintings of the Paleolithic
to the virtual digitality of the present, includes matters realistic,
dream-like and abstract (in painting, the traditions of recognisable depiction,
of vision or surrealism, and of abstraction). The addition of the new
technologies of computer technology, digitality, virtuality and video do not
alter this fact (changes are quantitative, ease of reproduction and alteration,
rather than qualitative). The treatment of the image has increased its scope
exponentially, with anything imaginable now being capable of synthesis (a privilege
hitherto preserved for painting) and all manner of alteration possible to
received image material. Not least of which the photograph (which before
digitality relied upon collage and montage), which has been defined by the
variety of its relationships, or, better, its distances, from reality (the
first shot or image registration). So photographs may be a record
(documentary), altered, realistic but manufactured (art or propaganda), unreal
(or surreal) either through alteration or manufacture, and finally allusive,
ambiguous or just plain unreadable (abstract). And of course all trends in the realm
of the image have an influence on photography (photographic practitioners may
be artists working in other media, or filmmakers) and photography may be
incorporated in them either as part (document or found object) or whole (as in
Conceptualism when the idea is more important than the image and which is often
not immediately classed as part of ‘Photography’). As part of the impact of
technology on experimental photography, many artist-photographers continue to
use all means available to create original images, combining recorded (or
digitally altered images) with (digitally) constructed images.
A
hundred years on, the Found Object
trend continues to be the most scandalous of artistic traditions – permitting
the inclusion of all things. ‘Ready-mades’, which may quite literally be
anything, are collected and mixed together to form original or surprising
configurations. This inclusiveness of content or object, almost regardless of
taboo or transgression, a feature of all the arts in the 20th
century, is also found in the photograph (most famously in the cases of Robert
Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman and Andres Serrano). The photograph may itself be
used in an art work as a Found Object either as feature or object (as featured
in the output of Robert Rauschenburg, but most cogently in the work on
memorialisation as found in Christian Boltanski’s use of the photographic
portrait). The use of the photograph as the basis for the image as used in Pop
Art, can most notably be found in the opus of Andy Warhol. So the photograph,
perhaps more than other art forms, is well placed to continue to show what had
been previously thought of as unshowable (whether for reasons of censorship,
received notions of decency, or previous lack of interest in a given subject
area). Photography will continue to excavate the underbelly of society, and
show what some might perhaps prefer to remain hidden – likewise the motivation
for this process will remain equally poised between delivering the truth and
shocking the market.
Minimalism. Apart from the
minimal object as photograph’s content, Minimalism as a sculptural, object-based
or musical form has little use for the photograph as such. Its ambitious
spin-off, Land Art, however, relied heavily on the photograph to make its
constructions known and in their on-going survival as record (for most of us
Land Art only ‘exists’ as a photographic image, Michael Heitzer, Eva Hesse, ).
Landscape as art, as a worthy object of aesthetic appreciation, whether altered
(Land Art) or unaltered, will continue to rely on the photograph for its means
of transmission, that is, photography has replaced the painting as the dominant
means of landscape presentation (the tradition of Ansell Adams, as exemplified
in China by Feng Jianguo/冯建国, attests to this continuing pre-eminence).
Present
day Post-conceptualism is the heir
to 1970s Conceptualism in art. Therefore this tradition inherits Conceptualism’s
passion for records and documentary images, enlarges its scope through the
installation or site-specific work (but weakens its interrogation of the
relation of image to word by substituting a striking, playful, provocative or
transgressive contrast as the heart of its aesthetic structure). Amongst such
images not the least important is the photograph (usually in that form of the
art photograph known as the ‘staged photograph’). This importance of the
photographic image continues in modern day Post-conceptualism, the most
successful artistic trend of our time, now a fully globalised phenomenon – the
first truly globalised art movement in the history of the world. So Conceptual Photography (like Conceptual
Painting) provides images where the idea ( the ‘concept’) rules the means of
presentation and content of expression – the realization of the idea in the
minds of the audience being a key part of the artwork’s effect and a measure of
its success. Likewise in the more wide-ranging (and often more shallow) effects
of Post-conceptual photography and the use of the photograph for Post-conceptual
ends.
Performance. The photograph
features in Performance Art as backdrop or as additional material (evidence,
document, object). However the main use of the photograph in this genre,
together with video or digital recording, is as a record of the event in
question and as the event itself in its (re)showing in exhibitions and displays
(from the art work of Anna Mendieta to recent records of ritual as part of the
art work).
From
Found Object to Found Experiences, to
a form that combines documentary material and aesthetic presentation, or ‘Little
Anthropology’, is but a short step. A short step for Art History, but a direct
continuity for Photography with its dominant tradition: the documentary image. Objects,
images and performances are recorded as video events or diaries or collected
together as installations which aim to show a culture, a slice of life or way
of being. A conceptual element often adds a sense of questioning or implied
criticism. The photograph plays an important role in this, as documentary type
images are incorporated into what is often a multi-media presentation or
experience. ‘Little Anthropology’ has, until recently, been more in evidence in
the West, most notably in Europe, where it has been part of the trend of
identity politics (which displaced the avant-gardes of the 1960s and 1970s).
This manner of revealing, showing or witnessing is a way of presenting and learning
about, other cultures or communities, particularly those that are felt to be
threatened or contested in whatever manner (exiles, immigrants, refugees), as
well as a way of documenting, of understanding the ‘other’ within (excluded or
misunderstood communities, gangs, underclass living, communities reliant upon
drugs or prostitution, etc). This turn of attention and process of presentation
follows a similar turn in the object of study of Anthropology in the last few decades
of the 20th century (replacing Cultural Studies and even Sociology, with their
reliance upon a pre-formed and pre-judging ideological rationalism, as an
informed and informing source of criticism of contested identities and social
problems). However this trend has also been gaining ground in China, in part as
heir to the tradition of anthropological record, or ethnography, of its
minority cultures, in part due to the recording of urban change, as stimulated
by the rapid creation and transformation of Chinese cities (both trends relying
on the documentary photographic image). This manner of presentation was
featured in a recent exhibition in
In recent decades the
documentary photographic tradition has taken on all questions to do with the
varieties of human identity, not least the question of ‘minorities’, ‘sub-cultures’
and the ‘subaltern’ - so of ‘the other within’ (alternative life-styles and
sexualities). Indeed for some time the best examples of this trend have
expanded the documentary tradition into a kind of critical anthropology
(classic practitioners include Nan Goldin and Robert Mapplethorpe). Negative is
the depiction of this border as freak-show. Positive is the inclusion of all
forms and levels of human life.
Make a painting of a stone
and you have the realm of the Image, place the stone in a museum and you have a
Found Object, if several stones are arranged into a simple form we have Minimalism,
if several stones are arranged to form a word we have Conceptualism. Fill the
gallery with stones and you have Installation art. If the stones are used as
part of a ritual we have Performance. If the topic of the previous two types represent the life of a community
then we have a Little Anthropology or Found Experience. The photographing of
these activities constitutes one kind of photography: another is when the
photograph itself is used as part of the original art work.
Photograph the stone in its
natural context and you have the genre of Documentary; use the stone in a
violent contrast to something surprising and you have (post)Conceptualism,
photograph the stone as part of a man-made landscape and you have Land-art or
(if the stone is part of a traditional Chinese Garden) Art photography. Place
it in a dream-like context and you have Surrealism. If the photograph is black and
white, possibly of documentary origin, but evincing a high degree of formal
qualities, then we have a Classic.
Colour versus black and
white.
Some critics still refuse to allow that the colour image is a legitimate form
of art photography (Graham Clarke). However this battle has long been lost; since
the 1970s colour photography has become accepted as a legitimate means of
expression and colour photographs have become part of the photographic canon (se
especially Eliot Porter, Ernst Haas and Harry Callahan, foremost among which
William Eggleston, whose notion of ‘colour as form’ helped to inaugurate this
change). Yet looking back at the treasures of 19th century black and
white photography and the continuing importance of black and white photography as
a tradition in the present, one can see why many still regard the colour photograph
as a kind of populist frivolity (the stuff of glossy magazines and family
portraits). Colour documentary shots still do not feel as gritty as black and white…
It is worth asking the question: Why is this? Colour is more immediate and more
‘natural’ with respect to our sense of vision, so colour logically should be
preferred in this genre… yet, the black and white image retains its priority. Actually,
in magazine reportage, the colour image has taken over, and the black and white
image remains as a ‘special choice’ for serious events. To be augmented by
black and white’s affinity for ‘removed’ (semi-present) effects, here offering
the restraint that is appropriate to a serious topic and also the ‘grittiness’
that clearly is opposed to the abundance of expression of (most) colour images
(the distance in time suggested by the lack of presence of the black and white
image is sensed as more ‘honest’ than the ‘illusory’ immediacy of colour). So the
issue is in part cultural and historical; the received tradition of the black and
white photograph is the historical bearer of the documentary image and colour is
a comparative late-comer: and in part the effect of the special sense of
removal or mediation, of the black and white photograph, which paradoxically
appears to offer (by means of this mediation) a more serious form of the
present. See for example, the many exhibitions recording the damage of the 2008
Size matters. In the realm
of presentation and format, the size of photographic imprints (usually in
colour) continues to grow. While in part a luxury of established or well-funded
artists, this trend nevertheless represents an exploration of the impact and
aesthetics of the large scale image and its most apposite content or object (following
on from the impact of the advertising hording on the reception of the image by
mass society). In some cases we are talking about borderline installation art as
the print size takes over an entire wall (see the work of Gurtsky and followers
including, for example, Burtinsky).
Other trends /“Other’s”
trends.
The representation of minorities, of those previously excluded in some way from
mainstream culture (sub-cultures) or from the received canons of ’High Art’
(the ‘low’), and so representing an-other’s culture, or culture’s ‘others’,
continues to be a major part of (post)modern photography. The photograph as
documentary record, but also as rhetorical or persuasive device, can everywhere
be seen playing a role in the politics of culture and identity (as in the works
of Gao Bo/高波). This use of
photography can be read as an offshoot from prior forms of documentary and
ethnological study (and often includes the influence of Conceptualism). Now this
kind of photography plays its role as part of ‘Little Anthropology’s’ received
experience and can be found in major galleries all over the world - so echoing
parallel process of giving voice to minority or ‘subaltern’ cultures and groups
across the word and as evinced in global trends in literature, drama,
performance and the theory that accompanies them (Post-modernism,
Deconstruction, Post-colonialism). Such trends, focusing on identity, on ‘the
Other within’, as well as more exotic forms of anthropological documentary,
have been growing in strength since the 1980s.
Another
alternative or ‘other’ trend in photography is, what is often called, the ‘Minor’ trend, as opposed to mainstream or
‘Major’, dominant or majority fashions; a kind of ‘fringe’ or alternative to what
are often more overtly commercial trends. The Minor as a genre is best
represented by the photography of the ‘Micro-sacred’, the finding of the sacred
in the everyday, a kind of continuation of the Still Life into our modern sense
of place, an heir to the tradition of art photography – yet often taking its
cure from current trends in Philosophy and Cultural Criticism. In general these
types of photographic art tend to circulate in national, regional, and even
international, exhibitions whilst not being bought up in significant amounts by
any of the major (and so market-forming) national, regional or international
galleries.
Global/Local. National and regional
cultural features continue to inflect the types of trend listed above, giving,
what are often global forms, a particular regional flavour. Key here is the
role of and attitude to tradition; as for example, in the case of nationally
privileged, ideal or traditional landscapes, usually as an inheritance from
local painting (which then find their way into both advertising and art
photography). Language group or type is another regional indicator (here
defined by its appearance, by the type of script tradition, Latin, Cyrillic,
Arabic, Hindu, Chinese and other types of character). As is the type, school or
degree of visibility of religion (as can be seen, for example, in the influence
of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, or of Daoism and Buddhism as approaches to Nature
and the representation of a variety of objects and persons). Regional styles of
clothing, most especially in the decision to feature or depict ‘traditional’ clothing,
also plays this role as does, whatever might be considered as the given, or,
more likely, as the culturally informed ‘typical’ kinds of the Face (with its
accompanying Gaze, as normally inflected for gender and generation). In a
globalised marketplace such ‘markers’ remain a key means of distinguishing
between what are often identical genres, styles, and means of expression or presentation
(the photographic image, its textures and its objects, its means of
construction as well as the uses to which it is put, has become, like art
itself, globalised).
Since
the inception of the Magnum photographic agency in 1947, also coincidentally
the date when Polaroid was first marketed, and especially since the landmark
event in 1955 of the ‘Family of Man’ exhibition at the MOMA,
If
Documentary images are the dominant 20th
century genre in the world of photography… then it is the ‘Classic’ photograph, especially the ‘Classic’ black and white’
photograph that still rules the galleries and the hearts of the public (as
witness the history of auctions, the poster and the postcard).
How does this relationship
work? From bottom of the pyramid, from home and holiday snaps, to the middle
layer, the documentary image used in recording and reporting in magazines and
in the press, and so to the top of the pyramid, arriving at the realm of the art
photograph and its genres (portrait, landscape, surreal image, the instant
caught, the symbolic moment), home of the ‘classic’ photograph (the image that
has survived, and offers a special, valued, and valuing, version of the past).
Present day photography is a broad-based pyramid where the collectors and
public alike (through the medium of posters) can be found collecting the ‘classic’
type (usually black and white) photographic image; with the best documentary
photographs (evincing the most promising arrangement of form) becoming ‘classic’
over time. The work of Henri Cartier-Bresson is still the iconic example of
this process (in China the painterly documentaries of Lu Nan/吕楠 play this role).
A
quick look at three genres will illustrate this process. In the world of the Landscape, whilst the landscapes of Ansell
Adams (in black and white) are still the benchmark by which most landscape
photographers are judged, the depiction of the urban and the everyday is now
most often done in colour as a new trend from the 1980s (see, for example the
work of William Eggleston and Martin Parr, representing two opposite poles of
colour photography). In the realm of the Portrait,
the two figures who have transformed how we approach this everyday genre are Cindy
Sherman, who stands as the classic self-referential post-modernist (all her
portraits are of herself) and Robert Mapplethorpe, who has courted
transgression to the point of inviting censorship. In a world obsessed with
images of celebrity, the portrait can not but help live on in a variety of
forms (for a gentle parody of this, see the work of Xiao Quan/肖全and Guan Ce/管策). At the apogee of Art
photography; we might mention the Still
Life images of Ernest Haas, for his intense use of colour; an appropriation
going well beyond the use of colour as a medium: now employing colours as a
painter might – as a feature or essential, meaning-laden component, each requiring
thought and calculation, and not taken for granted as a kind of general means of
expression (as with Kodak colour, or the ‘home snaps’ look - cultivated by some
photographers in the 1990s as a demotic form).
It
is important to note a third general tradition or school of influence in
photography, that of Surrealism. Normally
a part of art photography (as exemplified by the work of Man Ray), it has
recently been found joining hands with conceptual photography (and as a ‘hook’
in documentary style photography). From basic (definitive) estrangement to the depiction
of inner psychologies and the world of the dream (or nightmare) Surreal
photography provides many of the most unsettling, as well as many of the most striking
images in modern photography (see Kon Mitchiko, and in China the popularity of
the genre is evinced by the work of Rong Rong/荣荣& inri, Han Lei/韩磊), Wang Yao Dong/王耀东, Jiang Zhe/蒋志, Feng Qing Yu/冯请钰, Wang Ning De/王宁德, He Yun Chan/何云昌, and more recently Qiu/丘 and Lu Youpeng/鹿右鹏),.
If
the legacies and uses of Conceptualism are crucial to art history in China, not
least in its role as a source of innovation, but also of copycat fashion (see
the use of the ‘surreal detail’ to suggest conceptual ‘depth’ in recent
photography), then the other key historical legacy is that of the world of painting
(traditional and modern, Chinese and Western), functioning as a kind of visual
memory, offering prompts in the realm of form and presentation as of choice of content.
An omnipresent inter-text (as much in the art-photography of Hong Lei/洪磊as in the documentary
investigations of Lu Nan/吕楠). All feed into
the world of the image and its reading. Both Conceptualism and Art History are particularly
important to an understanding of modern photography, as much as for the
background inspiring experimentation as for basic comprehension and
orientation.
By the mere act of framing,
making the everyday into the extra-extraordinary; gift of photography to the
world.
*
Copyright Peter
Nesteruk, 2012