Write a 1,000–1,500-word essay that relates your current work (the work that you made or are making in Body of Work) to an aspect of visual culture discussed in Part One.
Your text should be fully referenced and illustrated with your own photographs plus supporting figures where appropriate. Submit your essay to your tutor by whatever means agreed, either a hard copy in the post or a Microsoft Word or PDF document in an email.
You may find it difficult initially to identify which of the five concepts discussed in Part One (i.e. modernism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, photography and reality, globalisation) are relevant to your practice. However, this challenge is part of the objective of the exercise. Consult your tutor if you are experiencing difficulties.
Modernism
- It becomes increasingly obvious to me that separating photography and its invention from the world in which it exists is risky. Recalling Ariella Azoulay’s comments which I included in DI&C A3, ““To take this excursion to 1492 as the origin of photography—exploring this with and through photography—requires one to abandon the imperial linear temporality and the way it separates tenses: past, present, and future. One has to engage with the imperial world from a non-imperial perspective and be committed to the idea of revoking rather than ignoring or denying imperial rights manufactured and distributed as part of the destruction of diverse worlds” (2018) This is reminiscent of some of the theories about time which emerge from Quantum science – theories that are desperately difficult to comprehend.
- Nevertheless, Modernism appears to be a very specific awakening. We humans can breakdown and dissect reality. However, the first stirrings did not begin then, and Leanoardo’s much earlier famous drawings are an obvious testament to a growing understanding of what human consciousness is capable of.
- Perhaps Modernism is a moment we can pinpoint where a gradual turning inwards, or an increasingly inverted look, can be charted as having sped up.
- If the Greeks looked upwards towards the stars and saw how big everything was culminating in the Rennaissance and Newtonian physics, then the Modernists were really getting humans busy with looking inwards and at the very small which continues apace with quantum exploration – and this tussle with the arrow of time.
- Pages 392 – 397 in Blue Print summation of history’s journey as the understanding of human relationship with self and nature evolves
Post-Modernism
- ‘a rejection of meta-narratives’ (Lyotard, 1979) (OCA CS folder, page 17) – due perhaps to the underlying scientific narrative which posits context and relationship “The theory [quantum gravity] does not describe how things are; it describes how things occur and how they interact with each other.” or “relations between physical systems” – particle A meets particle B and something occurs but without that interaction particle A and B are meaningless. Particle A’s interaction with Particle C may be entirely different from the previous interaction. What’s more A, B and C never operate in a vacuum are entirely affected by environment. They are not discrete objects in a universe but part of the fabric of the universe
- pluralism (ibid)
- Tagg – “photography evolves by a process of internal self-criticism towards the ever-sharper definition of what the medium uniquely is” (page 18) – in my, but not the photography purist’s opinion – the ability to harness light using chemicals (at that time) and make a naive copy of reality which has since become increasingly more sophisticated, leading to the inevitable; photography is part of a journey whereby reality will having turned inwards be able to give birth to itself. And therefore photography cannot be uniquely anything as it is one element of many within a much larger human project
- See above, inwards and small – this happens in tandem with the development of science and computing which relies increasingly heavily on quantum sciences as well as multi-disciplinary endeavors such as the Macy conferences.
- Photography cannot go it alone despite many wishing or thinking it were so
- “a hybrid construction of the self emerging from cultural theory and technology” Brown, 2008
- Again, Tagg is critical of feminist or socialist histories for similar reasons – they overlook context.
- NB – “Good people can do bad things (and visa versa) simply as a result of the structure of the network in which they are embedded, regardless of the convictions they hold or that the group espouses. It is not just a matter of being connected to ‘bad’ people; the number and pattern of social connections is also crucial” (Christakis, 2019. 106) Context, the shape and nature of the connections made seem, at every level of reality, to be all-important. Therefore, attempting to draw photography out and see it in isolation renders any conversation about it potentially meaningless.
Post-Structuralism and the language of photography
I have been convinced that this is where my work is situated. I am just fascinated by semiotics and how our reality is contained in the language we use. For me, this is the most interesting work to be persuing. But it seems very much tied up with the next section. The language we use, which emerges from us and also feeds back is the material out of which reality is built so both this section and the next section are important to me.
Early seeds for BOW, which I have started recording on my Sketchbook pertain to the performance of identity and experience, how we perform our roles and accept scripts handed to us by the narratives we watch/read/hear. We learn these scenes, responses, actions from the films and TV, now games, we engage with – and therefore the Bate quote on page 21 of the course folder may be worth delving into further.
My work on the previous course looked at this – the language of film and music which I grew up with and experienced in early adulthood.
Photography and reality
- There seems to be a catastrophic breakdown of trust in reality itself, within the West, at any rate, as a collective loss of trust in what was once certain emerges. Truth is not reliable and in its place exists an overriding sense of skepticism. If nothing’s real, then why should anything matter? At least, that appears to be the mentality. Or perhaps, this dissolution I describe brings about abject terror and so certain groups feel compelled to retreat to a place where they imagine the rules of life were more tangible, less confusing. Men were men, women women – and everyone knew their place.
- See notes in S&O and DI&C on cybernetics and the development on self and communal reality.
- Digital photography and it’s potential and possibility are both immensely exciting and terrifying as nothing is certain – see Modernism notes.
- See Lars Von Triers Nymphomaniac and the separate photo book by Casper Sejerson Belongs to Joe as a template – photography and text used to convey, as well as being linked to and explored, various universal themes – all of which feed into developing ideas about reality, learning, human knowledge and ability to understand him/herself, such as fishing, the Fibonacci Sequence, trees, and music theory. The book and films (regardless of whether we like them) are multi-layered and complex
- As is reality
- Reality cannot, in my view, be explored purely via photography critique but the form and technique need to be looked at systemically, as elements of form all of which feed into our relationship with reality
Photography and the global age
This heading is the least interesting for me – simply because of all of the above links directly to it anyway – and so feel I can’t fulfill a separate heading. However, I am interested in briefly discussing comments about art and finance. It becomes increasingly clear to me that art, and photography in my experience, is so much about money, snobbery, elitism, and privilege. A person can buy oneself a career if they have the funds and time to do so. Of course, any endeavor whether in the arts or not is often reliant on networking and ‘playing a certain game’ – and it’s impossible to escape that kind of thing. It’s probably always horrible and I’m very uncomfortable with it – it feels grotesque and very ugly indeed to me. It means some artists are at an advantage before they’ve even made anything at all. I also notice how art is used in the City or people’s homes to demonstrate wealth and status. The information contained in certain pieces of work is less about the artists’ claimed original intention and more about money and showing off. Perhaps it’s not Salgado’s fault but his work does this for me and recent experiences of this type of thing as I’ve met people in the industry have made me feel really awful and like running away into the hills never to be seen again.
Refs and possible research links
Brown, A . 2008 Demonic Fictions, Cybernetics and PostModernism
https://www.academia.edu/2020158/Demonic_fictions_cybernetics_and_postmodernism
Christakis, N. 2019 Blueprint, New York, Little Brown Spark
Lotringer, S. 2007 Over Exposed, Los Angeles, Semiotext(e)
Rovelli, C. 2016 Reality is Not What it Seems, London, Penguin
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