7) The Photograph as Art Object, Fiona Johnstone - 22/11/17

On Wednesday we had our next Photography in Context lecture, run by Fiona and all about the photograph as an art object. My notes from the session can be seen scanned in below.

We started off the lecture by talking about what makes a photograph art, and discussed how it depends on the context of the piece, for instance if its in a gallery, publication or museum. We also talked about how it depends on the intentions of the maker. This conversation continued into comparing a Gursky painting and a designer handbag, with the question 'what's the difference between them?'. Again this brought us back to talk about the intentions of the maker, the context in which its in, for instance is the bag in a gallery or a shop? We also talked about the price and quantity of the bags, as these are a good indication of whether or not it's art. In the end the class decided both the painting and the bag were seen as art, and we then went on to talk about different art theories starting from Pictorialism and ending with Spectacle.

The first theory of photography that sparked my interest was Pictorialism. The old strategy for photography to be read as art was to use the conventions of paintings within them, such as still life, portraits etc and themes of nature, the nude and domestic leisure. This was around the 1800s and 1900s, and they had an emphasis on the 'making' of the photography rather than just 'taking' them. It reminded me of John Berger's Ways of Seeing TV show where he talks about this idea of how poses in advertising is influenced and draws inspiration from oil paintings. I find it interesting that although we do not label photography as art only if it has these conventions, but the effects of Pictorialism are evidently still around today.

Conceptual Art was another theory we spoke about, and an example of conceptual art is Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain'. It's considered conceptual art from the way he took it out of one context and placed it in another. Another feature to conceptual art is that the dialogue used about the piece is more important than the material itself. Another point I found interesting about this theory of art is that it offered photography a way into the art gallery, so how ever much people say conceptual art isn't art, I would argue that without it photography wouldn't have been exhibited in galleries until a lot longer.

Another example of conceptual art which I found interesting was Richard Long's 'A Line Made by Walking'. This piece highlights that its all about the process of making the line, and it doesn't mean much without the description of the process. This reminded me of Jason Evans thoughts behind 'The Daily Nice' and how it's about the process of making and not entirely the finished image. This idea is also reflected in my 35mm point and shoot work, because it makes me happy to take the photos so that's what important, not if the image is perfect.

A final point that caught my interest was the individual Hito Steyerel, who thought that low resolution images break down the boundaries between viewer and maker. She stated "It merges art with life and science, blurring the distinction between consumer and producer, audience and author. It insists upon its own imperfection, is popular but not consumerist, committed without becoming bureaucratic." when talking about imperfect images and cinema. This made me think of my 35mm images and how some of them aren't completely perfectly exposed and focused, they insist upon their own imperfection. This is because their role is to give me happiness when taking the image, and then they display this happiness in however the photo comes out. I think Steyerel has an interesting idea so I may look into this further and read her journal about the subject and see if it relates to my practice further.

Overall I found the lecture pretty interesting but quite long as we had a lot of theories to go through, so it was hard to keep focused. However I found some interesting material relating to my project, and I hadn't previously learnt about any of these theories, so it was great to hear more about the history behind photography.

#photographyincontext