From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 08/19/02-11:49:45 PM Z
On Sun, 18 Aug 2002, Carl Weese wrote:
> Hmm, the International Style in architecture is a major bulwark of
> modernism, and it is as sleekly non-hand-made and mechanistic as the most
> purist Newhall-approved photographic modernism. Post modern architecture is
> largely about putting some 'fold spindle and mutilate' back into modern
> building designs. Modernism's definitions are exceedingly slippery both
> across and within disciplines.
Carl, after this you wrote about the east coast screaming for the end of
west coast "modernism" in photography, but the structure of my e-mail
program is such that the message got deleted. (Notice the careful
structure of that sentence.)
That's what I recall you saying, anyway, and it still has me wondering.
What, who, when, did you mean? Can you note anything in print of the
period to illustrate? The view from here was quite the opposite. As far
as I could tell, the new "crooked photography" rolled in from the West.
Photo-wise, NYC was a "straight" town.
When the Robert Samuel Gallery had a show of 'Marked Photographs" maybe in
1982, it was either inspired by or came directly from the San Francisco
Museum of Art, and their new curator, Van Deren Coke -- who had just
relocated there from either Arizona or New Mexico, which were the centers
of the new creative movement in photography.
Coke had also edited/written a shocking book: Painting and Photography (or
title like that) making connections, oh the horror, between the two. The
"outrageous" photographs in the Marked Photographs show were deliberately
marked by hand, and, except for the Robert Mapplethorpe, most or all from
the wild west. When Andy Grundberg reviewed the show for the NY Times, he
called the premise shocking, tongue not very much in cheek.
I was new to photography at the time, but that was the kind of work that
interested me...I remember a lovely Betty Hahn, probably a Bea Nettles,
several California artists. Except for Mapplethorpe, the photographers
were NOT From Around Here.
Photography at the time in NYC was fashion, photo journalism, advertising
and the classics, & people like Emmet Gowin at Light Gallery. Such
photography courses as existed were generally "straight." Undergraduate
photography was practically nonexistent, except for an art therapy course
in the School of Ed at NYU, and a few stray workshops at Parsons. The only
noticeable center of new photography in the east was the Visual Studies
Workshop in Rochester.
F64 was simply not enough of a concept to be rebelled against. Peter
Bunnell brought what we may have called at the time "manipulated
photography" to MoMA in 2 shows circa 1968 -- for about 20 minutes. He was
soon gone and the mindset with him. Lee Witkin showed Betty Hahn about
1978. Maybe 4 other photographers (Christopher James, Denny Moers & Benno
Freedman among them) had shows of the kind of work could be called
post-modern, or experimental....
I think they were all from Boston, and Hahn relocated from Rochester to
the University of New Mexico ... So any east-coast "clamoring" for an end
to "modernism" in photography was muted at best.
If you're thinking of AD Coleman, who wrote a letter in Picture Magazine,
(possibly the world's 2nd most obscure art publication) in 1978 calling
for the resignation of John Szarkowski as curator of Photog at MoMA, that
was standard Coleman: he attacked every power symbol, and in this
especially was a voice in the wilderness -- a campaign of one.
Much more typical was the response when Emmett Gowin had two photographs
in his show at Light Gallery that were, oh gasp, toned brown, instead of
regulation black. A critic writing for the NY Times (whose name I'll
remember tomorrow) had a conniption, making it clear that he found the
practice despicable, passe, vulgar and pointless.
So to me this hardly looks like the east screaming for the end of
"modernism" in photography. Anyway, you have provoked my curiosity. Can
you elucidate?
cheers,
Judy
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