Academic Sessions: London 2003
The Ends of Photography
Convenors:
Dr Frances Stracey, History of Art Department, University College London.
Dr Stewart Martin, Philosophy Department, Middlesex University.
Andrew Fisher, The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.
Abstract:
Art practice and criticism is characterised today by the absence of disputes over photography as a legitimate form of art. This appears to have brought to an end a controversy that has in many ways constituted modernism in the visual arts. One of the most conspicuous and historically new forms that this legitimacy has taken is the emergence of a form of photography characterised by its large and even monumental scale, its highly professionalised production, its thematic relation to traditions of modern painting, and its high profile within the commercial and museum culture of contemporary art. Given its emphatic legitimacy and high profile as art, this new form of photography may be thought of as ‘art–photography’. However, if this art–photography does indeed present one of the most explicit symptoms of photography’s new found legitimacy as art, its status within the transformation of art that photography has historically induced is nevertheless fundamentally questionable. In many respects it may be regarded as restoring or recovering various conventions of art that photography had historically appeared to question and even attempt to destroy. If the attempt to preserve art\'s autonomy from photography is largely obsolete and, where it persists, a conservative concern, this does not exhaust the critique of art that photography has historically introduced. But it does indicate the need to rethink and reconfigure the terms of this critique, and therefore the need to articulate a new discourse on photography’s critique of art.
Andrew Fisher (Slade School of Fine Art, UCL) Alan Sekula’s World of Photography.
Sas Mays (Slade School of Fine Art, UCL) Becoming Dust: Vik Muniz and the Ends of Photography’s Institutional Critique.
Frances Stracey (Department of Art History, UCL) Myth and the Readymade in David Levinthal’s Toy Stories.
Diarmuid Costello (Oxford Brookes University) The Resurrection of ‘Aura’ in the Age of Digital Technology: Re–reading Benjamin Today.
Stewart Martin (Middlesex University) Art-photography after Conceptualism.
John Roberts (University of Wolverhampton) Snapshot Ideology and the Critique of Value
Dr Frances Stracey, History of Art Department, University College London.
Dr Stewart Martin, Philosophy Department, Middlesex University.
Andrew Fisher, The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.
Abstract:
Art practice and criticism is characterised today by the absence of disputes over photography as a legitimate form of art. This appears to have brought to an end a controversy that has in many ways constituted modernism in the visual arts. One of the most conspicuous and historically new forms that this legitimacy has taken is the emergence of a form of photography characterised by its large and even monumental scale, its highly professionalised production, its thematic relation to traditions of modern painting, and its high profile within the commercial and museum culture of contemporary art. Given its emphatic legitimacy and high profile as art, this new form of photography may be thought of as ‘art–photography’. However, if this art–photography does indeed present one of the most explicit symptoms of photography’s new found legitimacy as art, its status within the transformation of art that photography has historically induced is nevertheless fundamentally questionable. In many respects it may be regarded as restoring or recovering various conventions of art that photography had historically appeared to question and even attempt to destroy. If the attempt to preserve art\'s autonomy from photography is largely obsolete and, where it persists, a conservative concern, this does not exhaust the critique of art that photography has historically introduced. But it does indicate the need to rethink and reconfigure the terms of this critique, and therefore the need to articulate a new discourse on photography’s critique of art.
Andrew Fisher (Slade School of Fine Art, UCL) Alan Sekula’s World of Photography.
Sas Mays (Slade School of Fine Art, UCL) Becoming Dust: Vik Muniz and the Ends of Photography’s Institutional Critique.
Frances Stracey (Department of Art History, UCL) Myth and the Readymade in David Levinthal’s Toy Stories.
Diarmuid Costello (Oxford Brookes University) The Resurrection of ‘Aura’ in the Age of Digital Technology: Re–reading Benjamin Today.
Stewart Martin (Middlesex University) Art-photography after Conceptualism.
John Roberts (University of Wolverhampton) Snapshot Ideology and the Critique of Value