Re: Defining "post-modernism" -- WAS--- First define "post-modern"photography, dammit
First of all, I'll agree we ought not veer out of the alt photo stuff but now and then it's okay . . right? And, this should be my last diatribe on all this stuff. On November2007, at 8:33 PM, Don Sweet wrote: Hi JackI'm not fully sure of what you say/imply here. My point was that a history of European wars leading toward WWII and that horror, fed philosophy to 'invent' PM, which is an angered critique of modernism and capitalism. It is feasible to think most reading this list know of Eisenhower's speech as he left office to warn the public of the power of a military and industrial complex. The knowledge of the rhetoric of war-mongering was alive and bubbling decades ago. Makes no difference. Photography is inclusive of such actions as its the medium by which we see personal affectation, ideation of belief, record of pose etc. Is not all fashion photography about performance. Was not the majority of Warhol a love affair with the poseur. I might be walking the plank here but the decisive moment is a realization of Shakespeare's "all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players", wherein the "aha" as one presses the shutter (curtain of life) is the understanding you are creating a fictional account of reality. Maybe one is making a real account of fictional truth in that we all subscribe to some belief whether inculcated or learned. Good point . . I've enjoyed thinking through mine own perspective that Cezanne 'knew' that it is possible to use two perspectives by employing photography's memory factor. Look at a table with, say, some oranges and apples and then sit in a chair and fondly gaze again: 2 perspective understandings. The second from the chair is based more upon the memory of the former. Put them together, as Cezanne did, and you speak of the fluidity of time. Braque and Picasso not only broke times (as depicted soon thereafter by Dali in the early 30's) but included visual similes. So in that sense and again in my mind the perspective of the photographic lens aided visual interpretation of representation. It is about use of exciting spatial relationship, out of the norm, yet depicting all that one normally sees. Think of the view of Earth from the moon that created, virtually, the Whole Earth Catalogue. Gee whiz, ya know, so much is subjective . . . essentially, to me at least, and not to confuse everyone, after the Renaissance and after cogito ergo sum and after the calculus, which many thought to be modern, our use of Modernism begins with Manet. It wished to break tradition and yet make brilliant that which is innate such as his Picnic On the Grass or Olympia. Again, for me, it was a path to self expression which was aided by photography scintillating veracity. PM and as you note, de-construction, can hopefully provide a way to see something that doesn't work, or which has progressed to egregious excess (such as not-paid-attention-to cancers) and search through the making of it, or its creation, using semiotics, or signs of the time, to 'solve' the problem and make things better . . . all, so to speak. If Jorge Shrub (read G. Bush) were a PM thinker, he would've provided education to young people here rather than stealing their future. As for alt photography, maybe deconstruction could lead us to use contemporary vision but depict it through the methods of history. I'd like to connect this back to alt photography, but I have no idea how.
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