CREATIVE CULTURES - POSTMODERN PHOTOGRAPHY

I believe that we are in the midst of a major movement in photography.  One that began more or less with Cindy Sherman in the seventies and continues today in the work of hundreds of artists using photography. The movement started a revolution in what is considered fine art photography: away from the formalist aesthetic of Harry Callahan,  Brett Weston Ansel Adams etc and to an idea driven use of the medium whose top practitioners today are Jeff Wall, Philip-Lorca Dicorcia, Andreas Gursky Cindy Sherman, Vik Muniz and many more. It can be argued that all these artists are making photographs that are in some way about the sociological nature of photography itself which I believe sounds like a movement. It is this very shift in the use of photography that has resulted in a wide-spread acceptance of the medium along side painting, drawing and sculpture. 

"Further, to say that what has happened in photography is not a movement because of the multitude of approaches is not a valid argument. What is important is the break from tradition, in the same way that the impressionists broke from realism and the abstractionists broke from representation."

What makes the movement in photography unique is its non linear progression.  In contrast, the movements in painting have  for the most part followed one another: impressionism, post impressionism, cubism, abstract expressionism, minimalism etc. with a few offshoots here and there (e.g. surrealism). It is difficult to tell where we are within the postmodernist photographic movement, but I sense that we are approaching the end in that newer artists seem to be combining the modern and postmodern standard.  Its no longer okay to just use photography as a means to illustrate your ideas.  The end result must now adhere to the pristine standards of the modernist ideal as well.

 

 The image above my Gregory Crewdson could be viewed as post modern because it makes the viewer look beyond the surface, questioning who the subject is and why she 'posing' in such a way. Crewdson is famous for his staged image and this style of photography can be described as post modern, often finding inspiration from 19thC paintings and making their vision represent the now.