Curator Alison Nordström of Rochester’s George Eastman House on their re-showing of the seminal New Topographics exhibition: (podcast HERE.)
It is a curious thing that today, this exhbition in art historical writing about the history of photography is the second most commony cited exhibition, after 'The Family of Man'.
An exhbition that nobody saw. A catalogue that nobody read. But now an exhbition that everybody considers not only very important but thinks they know a great deal about. Why is it such a big deal now? We're not sure. A small group of people saw the show but they were a select group of people. The conversation was really not about land use, not about the built landscape. The conversation was about what should a photograph look like. Is there any subject that should not be photographed... and turned into art. They were fine art not because of anything about the picture - that's never what makes something art - but these were made by artists, people who had masters of fine art degrees... what makes them art is the way they were used.
It's a really insightful podcast even though I disagree with some of her thoughts - such as she's a bit contradictory over the value of the actual images if they are important in themselves or not and also if there is a environmentalist angle, which she denies but which some contributors clearly insist upon in the reading of their work (Baltz and Adams in particular). She also makes a (critical?) point (not relevant to this show) but one I deffo agree with:
"One of photography's issues still, is how to separate art photographs from photographs that everyone else takes. It may be one of the reasons that contemporary photographs are so big."
: )
It is a curious thing that today, this exhbition in art historical writing about the history of photography is the second most commony cited exhibition, after 'The Family of Man'.
An exhbition that nobody saw. A catalogue that nobody read. But now an exhbition that everybody considers not only very important but thinks they know a great deal about. Why is it such a big deal now? We're not sure. A small group of people saw the show but they were a select group of people. The conversation was really not about land use, not about the built landscape. The conversation was about what should a photograph look like. Is there any subject that should not be photographed... and turned into art. They were fine art not because of anything about the picture - that's never what makes something art - but these were made by artists, people who had masters of fine art degrees... what makes them art is the way they were used.
(Robert Adams)
It's a really insightful podcast even though I disagree with some of her thoughts - such as she's a bit contradictory over the value of the actual images if they are important in themselves or not and also if there is a environmentalist angle, which she denies but which some contributors clearly insist upon in the reading of their work (Baltz and Adams in particular). She also makes a (critical?) point (not relevant to this show) but one I deffo agree with:
"One of photography's issues still, is how to separate art photographs from photographs that everyone else takes. It may be one of the reasons that contemporary photographs are so big."
: )