tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6452604934334420904.post9075767873916421434..comments2023-10-06T07:26:51.241-07:00Comments on The Tasty Spoonful: The Built Environment and PhotographyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6452604934334420904.post-12340094972590947472011-05-05T12:29:13.373-07:002011-05-05T12:29:13.373-07:00I love art rants!
I was very close to talking abo...I love art rants!<br /><br />I was very close to talking about Gursky in this post, and think it turns out I was way off base about him. <br /><br />One question I have for you is about the Dusseldorf School photogs in general. I can't think of how to fit some of their work into the framework I've laid out here primarily because they were interested in interior spaces (Cathedrals, libraries, shopping malls, supermarkets) in a way that some of these other photographers that I've talked about here are not.<br /><br />Do you think it's possible to think of them (and sure, I know they did a TON of stuff in landscapes too) as an inverting of this aesthetic of the built environment? I don't know quite what I'm saying here except that it seems possible to think of them as inverting, but still conversing with, the logic of artists like those above. <br /><br />The thing is they're more interested in aestheticizing the interiors of those built spaces. Something like getting inside the human, yet v. grand space of "late capitalist" life.<br /><br />Told you I liked rants too.A-J Aronsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13791611340364727163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6452604934334420904.post-79569615099365676052011-05-05T10:09:51.038-07:002011-05-05T10:09:51.038-07:00I read your piece about new topographies and was r...I read your piece about new topographies and was really excited. The Bechers are in part responsible for establishing photography as an essential post-modern medium, and for producing my favorite school of contemporary photographers. Something to add to your opening framing of them that complicates the early lack of interest in their work is that by being essentially the first conceptual photographers, they actually opened the door for an entire new generation of artists that used photography as post-modern critique. While their photographs are meant to look sterile, stark, and documentary, they are in fact highly crafted and constructed images. They spent hours gaining impossible perspectives in order to construct a false sense of continuity between these structures, exposing the photograph not only to be a constructed subjective image, but to be far from the perfect document. This led the way for artists like Jeff Wall and their actual Dusseldorf students Andres Gursky and Thomas Ruff to probe further with their contemporary critiques of the medium, driving into the history of painting and photography's complex and controversial relationship to it. As you said, the Bechers were the first conceptual artists to "exploit" the associations viewers have with the medium as a documentary mode, turning this "trust" on its head by creating false documents, that were as constructed as paintings. art rant!Emma Steinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15873040200864189505noreply@blogger.com