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8/12/2019 On Photographic Postmodernism - Re-photograpghy
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ABSTRACT:
Though the matter was not a subject of intense debates, it is somehow obvious
that postmodern photography raises profound questions on originality, on the
value of a photograph as a work of art and on the artistic merits of a
photographer. While some postmodern photographers turned to the snapshot-
aesthetic or, au contraire, to elaborate constructions meaningful compositions,
others opened up to clichs inspired by literature or by Baudrillards theories on
simulacra and by Warhols tribute to the ready-made. Two somehow similar
methods stir our interest here: first, the extremely controversial re-photography
(appropriation) of Richard Prince and secondly, the rephotography of Mark Klett.While bearing the same name and admitting the impossibility of original
creation, the two example we have in mind are usually considered to be at
opposite ends of the axiological judgment of photographic skills and talents.
Unity and Diversity in Knowledge Society International Conference
Interpretative Practices and Theories of Photography Workshop,
September 27th2012, Iai, Romania
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In the mid-1970s, Prince was an aspiring painter
who earned a living by clipping articles from
magazines for staff writers at Time-Life Inc. What
remained at the end of the day were the
advertisements, featuring gleaming luxury goods
and impossibly perfect models; both fascinated and
repulsed by these ubiquitous images, the artist
began rephotographing them, using a repertoire of
strategies (such as blurring, cropping, and
enlarging) to intensify their original artifice. In so
doing, Prince undermined the seeming naturalness
and inevitability of the images, revealing them as
hallucinatory fictions of society's desires.
Untitled (Cowboy)is a high point of the artist's
ongoing deconstruction of an American archetype
as old as the first trailblazers and as timely as then-
outgoing president Ronald Reagan.
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Prince's picture is a copy (the photograph) of a
copy (the advertisement) of a myth (the cowboy).Perpetually disappearing into the sunset, this lone
ranger is also a convincing stand-in for the artist
himself, endlessly chasing the meaning behind
surfaces. Created in the fade-out of a decade
devoted to materialism and illusion, Untitled
(Cowboy)is, in the largest sense, a meditation on an
entire culture's continuing attraction to spectacle
over lived experience.
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Timothy OSullivan, 1872, Green River Caon, Upper Caon, Great Bend, Uinta Mountains. The Horseshoe and Green River below the
bend from Flaming Gorge Ridge (U.S. Geological Survey). On right: Mark Klett for the Rephotographic Survey Project, 1978, Flaming
Gorge Reservoir from above the site of the Great Bend, Utah.
Left: Timothy OSullivan, 1868, Quartz Mill near Virginia City (U.S. Geological Survey). Right: Mark Klett for the
Rephotographic Survey Project, 1979, Site of the Gould and Curry Mine, Virginia City, Nevada.
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Left: Mark Klett with Michael Lundgren, 2003, Hearst Building, Market
Street. Right: Arnold Genthe, 1906, Untitled (Hearst Building) (Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco).
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Left: Mark Klettwith Michael Lundgren, 2003, Walkway, Stanford University. Right: C.
Mendenhall, 1906, Agassiz statue at Stanford, April, 1906 (U.S. Geological Survey)
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