by Jon Lackman | 14 May 2010 | Conferences, Photography
As a San Francisco Chronicle article noted, the SFMOMA recently hosted a symposium, “Is Photography Over?” Refreshingly, its website published the panelists’ statements and created a forum to extend the conversation and draw in more voices (W.J.T. Mitchell wrote, “I am a little grumpy about the premise of this symposium.”)
In the Chronicle, critic Kenneth Baker wrote:
Despite its taking place in SFMOMA’s auditorium, well-equipped to project images in any medium, no symposium participant showed a single picture … I found it troubling that no one seemed to want to get more specific … SFMOMA associate curator of photography Corey Keller acknowledged the symposium title question as “a blunt instrument,” intended to elicit wide-swinging responses. She suggested revising it to: “If something with photography is over, what is it?” Curator and New Yorker contributor Vince Aletti had the best – at least, the most direct – answer in his written statement. “What is over is the narrow view of photography – the idea that the camera is a recording device, not a creative tool, and that its product is strictly representational – not manipulated, not fabricated, not abstract …”
What do you all think are the most interesting and important books about photography published in the last decade or so? One of my favorites is The Beautiful and the Damned: The Creation of Identity in Nineteenth Century Photography by Peter Hamilton and Roger Hargreaves. It discusses how photography was used both as a fine art and to control people. http://www.worldcat.org/title/beautiful-and-the-damned-the-creation-of-identity-in-nineteenth-century-photography/oclc/48159961
Michael Fried’s Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before is reviewed in The Guardian and an interview appears in Art Review.