Reading point
Read Douglas Crimp’s essay ‘The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism’ on the oca student website. This essay was first published in October 15 (Winter 1980) and is also available in Crimp, D.
As with all the readings you’ll be asked to do for this course, make notes on what you’ve read – and its relevance to your practice (if any) – in your research folder. (Boothroyd, 2020:28)
The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism.
Douglas Crimp first presented 1980, He is an art critic and a professor of art history.
Crimp calls Postmodernism a breach of modernism, from the museum, art history and photography.
Photography. In his 1978 work “Pictures”, he used the term post modernism referring to exhibited art of some younger artists in New York. He explored their concern about the seventy’s performative art, moving towards art with a “presence”.
He goes on to describe the difference between a presence as being there, to a subject having a presence. Concluding that work can have a presence even as a reproduction at a distance from an original. Whilst Benjamin only conceded aura to a minority of art works, Crimp points out that photography has since had aura conferred to it. He suggests that photography can be authenticated by classifications such as rarity of age, and the vintage print, but more importantly the “subjectivization of photography” (Crimp, 1995:97), an appreciation of artist’s stlye, which collecting and exhibiting artwork enhances.
Within this essay he discusses statements of Sherrie Levine on representation. On AfterSherrieLevine.com (AfterSherrieLevine.com, 2021) she rephotographed Walker Evans’ photographs from the exhibition catalogue “First and Last”, which can be downloaded to print out with a certificate of authenticity for each image, thus making them accessible by anyone. Levine suggests that representation creates desire to see the original subject, which can never be fulfilled as it is the art, not the subject that is the original, and therefore photography is the artwork.
Crimp also gives as an example the work of Cindy Sherman where she creates, narrates, and acts in her images. In doing so Crimp says that she has reversed the terms art and autobiography. He also comments on the work of Richard Prince who uses commercial images and presents them as documentary. Crimp suggests that these images “acquired an aura, only now it is not a function of presence but of absence, severed from origin, from an originator, from authenticity” concluding that aura has translated into a presence or a ghost (Crimp,1995:100).
Crimp shows that mechanical reproduction reducing the importance of the original, was a sign that modernism, which valued originality and artistic expression was being supplanted by post modernism. He appreciated new approaches to photography in this emerging postmodern era which embraced more contemporary theories in photography, and the role that photography played in challenging the museums and galleries. At this point I’m not sure whether postmodernism will be relevant to my practice.
References:
AfterSherrieLevine.com (2021) At: https://aftersherrielevine.com/ (Accessed 11/10/2021).
Boothroyd, S (2020) Photography 3: Body of work coursebook. Open College of the Arts. Barnsley.
Crimp, D and Lawler, L. (1995) ‘The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism’ In: On the museum’s ruins. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press
NIKI SOUTH 