From: Bill Marsh (redcloud54@earthlink.net)
Date: 10/05/03-12:07:08 PM Z
Could it be that all the current "retro" impulses our
culture is diving into, from car design to a resurgence of
50s-style politics, and art, music, etc., is the fact that,
we are witnessing the fin de siecle of the West? In other
words, has photography simply run out of gas, and the
resurgence of past processes is an attempt to recapture lost
meaning?
Donning my flame-retardent suit now.
Bill
shannon stoney wrote:
> I am working on a little paper about neo-Pictorialism and regular old
> Pictorialism. My idea, which I thought I invented but which turned out
> to be sort of a commonplace once I started researching it, is that the
> antiquarian avant-garde and Holga users and pinhole folks constitute
> some sort of revival of the old Pictorialist aesthetic of the late 19th
> and early 20th century. You know, soft focus, vignetting, romantic
> subject matter (sometimes), fooling with the negative, alternative
> processes, interest in dreams, memories, and visions as opposed to just
> the hard-edged, scientific, f64 world out there. This is an
> over-simplification but you get the drift.
>
> I was wondering if anybody has some ideas about why this "trend" has
> occurred, when it started, what it was a reaction to, where is it going,
> what is its relationship to other "avant gardes" that it is
> contemporaneous with, how it relates to so-called postmodernism, whether
> it is a form of postmodernism, whether it is just retro or truly
> avant-garde, how marginal it is, how academia and institutions see it,
> and any other questions you can think of. Of course I will credit you
> in my paper for any of your ideas, although I have no idea how to cite
> emails in the end notes. Maybe like: "Jane Doe, email communication,
> 10/4/03" ?
>
> Also if you have images that illustrate your idea about this, that would
> be great too (attached to emails to me off-list of course), or links to
> websites could be sent to the list or just to me, as you wish.
>
> We had a fun meeting in Houston yesterday at Clay Harmon's house, and I
> saw a lot of stuff that fueled my interest in this question, and I heard
> a lot of good ideas about why we do what we do. Thanks, Houston and
> Austin folks, and especially Clay.
>
> thanks in advance for your thoughts,
>
> --shannon
>
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