Joerg Colberg sees photography as transformative art: HERE
Colberg's recent post on this issue is something that we as photographers should always keep in mind. Confoundedly, I have witnessed contemporary work that seems to ignore the transformative nature of the medium (actually, the work doesn't ignore the transformative nature, the artist does). While in this post-post-modernist era our awareness of the image as construction exists, there is often a disconnect between the truth about how this medium can irrevocably change a subject. I have heard many artist discussions which completely ignore the transformative nature all together, some will argue it is about the document, but that characteristic in and of itself is a transformative one, it suggests archives, museums, and evidence; all spaces where a subject becomes still, silent and helpless. I suppose that is the death that Barthes identifies.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
NYT Article on Fairey's Obama 'Hope' Poster
via NYT
Oopsey! Looks like Shepard Fairey is in for it with the upcoming court battle over fair-use from the AP photograph he used as a template for creating his Obama 'Hope' Poster. Initially, I had been under the impression that Fairey had used a photograph that had been created to mimic the original image, which would have perhaps given him a stronger case under fair-use, particularly in photography. However, it turns out he lied to the court about where the image originated causing his counsel to withdraw from representing him, not a good sign. To be honest, AP has so much money behind it, the mere thought of a lawsuit from them against any individual is enough to make one shake in their boots. Unfortunately, it looks like Fairey really dug his own grave lying to the court while filing a counter-suit under those false pretenses. Not sure how I feel about this suit, appropriation has been something in the art world for quite some time, Sherry Levine anyone?, I am curious how this is going to pan out.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Are You Happy with the Shape of Your Bikini Wax?
A response to an article I just read:
Are You Happy with the Shape of Your Bikini Wax? by Gloria Feldt
This article got me thinking, because I just read another article on this topic earlier in the week, about how women are more unhappy today than supposedly 'before'. Also, this was written by my second cousin (mother's cousin) so shout out to her too, though the article itself has nothing to do with art, it is focused on the female as consumer, which is totally relevant.
I just turned in the following long-winded comment, but it felt goooood...
The issue of woman as consumer is an issue at the heart of post-modernism and which has become an essential element in much art that came afterwards. This concept of consumerism as identity has been at the heart of the feminist art scene since Cindy Sherman's ‘Film Stills’ and Joan Jonas's 'Organic Honey', both artists were commenting on how the over-saturation of media forced confusing issues of identity onto women. Granted, identity was an issue long before the 70s, however it was the proliferation of media that evolved alongside the feminist movement that created a confusing and even hypocritical dichotomy between the opportunities available for the contemporary woman. One, the opportunity within media, i.e. visual culture, was inevitably reduced to the woman as object, while the opportunities that became available outside of this reduction, such as in the workplace or the home, gave the woman the ability to be something other-than this object. Because of media’s reduction of femaleness to a product of consumerism, women never had the chance to escape that reduction as our culture is completely and irrevocably saturated with imagery; the only way to fight this assumption is to avert our eyes, a precarious proposition.
I don’t think it is that women are unhappy about opportunities they gained through feminism, (as I often read in oblivious commentaries online) I think women are unhappy about media’s transparent position that a woman should still have the same absorption with personal presentation and being an object of sexual desire as she should saving the world.
We are not blind, women are unhappy because the media is propagating a stereotype that no-one wants, a stereotype that suggests that ‘being’ is only skin deep.
Are You Happy with the Shape of Your Bikini Wax? by Gloria Feldt
This article got me thinking, because I just read another article on this topic earlier in the week, about how women are more unhappy today than supposedly 'before'. Also, this was written by my second cousin (mother's cousin) so shout out to her too, though the article itself has nothing to do with art, it is focused on the female as consumer, which is totally relevant.
I just turned in the following long-winded comment, but it felt goooood...
The issue of woman as consumer is an issue at the heart of post-modernism and which has become an essential element in much art that came afterwards. This concept of consumerism as identity has been at the heart of the feminist art scene since Cindy Sherman's ‘Film Stills’ and Joan Jonas's 'Organic Honey', both artists were commenting on how the over-saturation of media forced confusing issues of identity onto women. Granted, identity was an issue long before the 70s, however it was the proliferation of media that evolved alongside the feminist movement that created a confusing and even hypocritical dichotomy between the opportunities available for the contemporary woman. One, the opportunity within media, i.e. visual culture, was inevitably reduced to the woman as object, while the opportunities that became available outside of this reduction, such as in the workplace or the home, gave the woman the ability to be something other-than this object. Because of media’s reduction of femaleness to a product of consumerism, women never had the chance to escape that reduction as our culture is completely and irrevocably saturated with imagery; the only way to fight this assumption is to avert our eyes, a precarious proposition.
I don’t think it is that women are unhappy about opportunities they gained through feminism, (as I often read in oblivious commentaries online) I think women are unhappy about media’s transparent position that a woman should still have the same absorption with personal presentation and being an object of sexual desire as she should saving the world.
We are not blind, women are unhappy because the media is propagating a stereotype that no-one wants, a stereotype that suggests that ‘being’ is only skin deep.
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