"Postmodern" documentarists?

Sorry for using the P word, but I couldn't think of a concise way to

describe what I'm after. What I'm looking for is photographers who

are doing documentary work using an approach that might loosely be

termed postmodern.

 

What I mean is work that questions the assumptions, myths, etc. that

it portrays, somewhat as Cindy Sherman's untitled film stills do.

This kind of work tends to get done in the studio (e.g. Sherman)

partly because it's easier to do that way (I think), and partly

because that kind of thinking distrusts the whole idea of

documentary photography. But I want to see this done in the real

world -- so your "postmodern" documentarist, instead of documenting

the world around him, is documenting the myths and assumptions in

the image in a way that calls attention to them.

 

Clear as mud?

 

For example, I recall seeing a news photo of refugees crossing the

Macedonian border during the war in Kosovo. A woman had collapsed

and was lying on the ground -- but the frame also included the

gaggle of photographers lying on the ground with their wide-angle

lenses stuck in her face. So in addition to showing the facts of the

story, it also called attention to how the story was told and to how

we perceived the story.

 

I'm not simply looking for pictures that make the point that they

are just pictures (e.g. Friedlander). After a few original people do

it, that becomes a circus trick. I'm looking for pictures that show

a "reality" while calling attention to the evidence that it is a

myth. Consider, for example, a McCurryesque body of work that makes

continual reference to western orientalism.

 

What I'm after isn't single images like the Kosovo example above,

but photographers who consistently work this way. I'm interested in

how they pull it off -- whether through the use of symbols, etc., or

by using multiple images to make the point.

what exactly do you mean by continual reference to western

orientalism from McCurry's body of work? Do you mean that

his work give a false/mystically sense of south asia from a

western point of view/photographer?

Sorry, I shouldn't have said "McCurryesque." All I meant was a body of work dealing with the orient and the first person I thought of was McCurry.

 

What I should have said is a body of work on the orient that simultaneously expresses that orientalist view, and undermines it.

This is probably not what you're looking for but Parr's work on

western middle class monculture seems to document reality

and yet mystify it at the same time imo.

I don't have a good example to offer off hand, but I think you have described something interesting which involves the portrayal of events showing multiple levels of reality and incongruity. I don't like your initial example of Cindy Sherman, however. It seems to me the term "documentary" implies the act of recording reality as it is found. Staging an event in a studio seems like the opposite process -- it may be revealing of some important truth as can be the case with a novel, but it isn't documentary (unless you are trying to document the process of creating a studio shot).

Actually, I find the Cindy Sherman reference to be a good one as she was interested less in the photographic print, and more interested in reflecting on basically male conceptions of female identities, the idea explored was/is more important than the image itself. I'm intersted in yourtopic generally as well. I've seen some workbut can't remember their bloody names. I'll try to find out

I agree that Cindy Sherman isn't documentary -- she's just an example of a similar idea, done in the studio. It's easier to do there, because the photographer has control of the situation and can insert whatever symbols or references he chooses. Doing this sort of thing in a documentary mode strikes me as much more difficult.

'What I'm after isn't single images like the Kosovo example above, but photographers

who consistently work this way.'

 

Look in any art gallery. The approach you describe is everywhere. Martin Parr,

Andreas Gursky, Boris Mikhailov, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Thomas Struth...

Post-modernism and documentary photography are fundamental opposites. I don't see any way to put them into the same photograph, and I would include the example given in the initial post. The group of photographers named in the post just above is a list of people whose work could hardly be considered "documentary" in the way the term is generally used.

 

Historically, and recently, "documentary" has generally been perceived as being about the subject, whereas post-modernism, while suffering from vagueness of definition, has generally been about the act of creating, rather than just the content.

Jeff, that's the essential problem with using the P word, and the reason I defined this as only loosely postmodern.

 

Another problem with the notion of postmodern documentary is that postmodernism distrusts received wisdom and insists everything is just the product of a bias, while documentary work wants to assert that its content is the truth. So the kind of work I am talking about is more or less saying, "that myth you want to see isn't the truth, but this is."

 

That's what the Kosovo image I mentioned does; instead of saying, "this is the news," it says, "this is what news is."

 

Ultimately, I am more interested in the subject here, which is why a lot of postmodern work simply doesn't qualify. I'm interested in a language that talks about its subject, rather than in a language that calls attention to its own structure, but it has to address its subject in a certain way.

 

For example, we could have a photographer who sets out to shoot the myth of the American West in Ansel Adams's footsteps, and tours the national parks creating monumental large-format landscapes. Yet his landscapes always include elements -- jet contrails, telephone lines, park signs, fences -- that remind us that the parks are not in fact wildlands but strictly delimited and carefully managed parks. That's a pretty ham-fisted example, but note there is a distinction between doing something like this, which both expresses the myth and comments on it, and simply going around taking pictures of damage to the parks and of their hordes of visitors, which would be the straight documentary approach. The work remains essentially documentary because it's not about how photos get made; it's about its subject, the supposed wilderness.

 

Martin Parr is on my list of photographers to look closely at, but I've been put off by his use of colour. Several of the other photographers cited by Elliot (who apparently isn't aware of the dearth of art galleries here in London, Ontario) are disqualified by virtue of staging their pictures, and others (from what I know of them) just aren't doing the sort of thing I'm after.

Parr's essay would not work as well if they were in b+w imo.

It seems to me that the difference you are describing is between those who want to create "perfect" abtractions of reality and those who are willing to show reality with all the warts. The first would be represented by Adams and nearly everyone you'll find in the PN Top Photos list. The other may be best represented by the Lomo shooters.

Sorry, that last response of mine was too flip. I do think you are setting the bar awfully high, though. I imagine there are quite a few shots out there that would meet your criteria for portraying an idea and its negation in the same frame, but the idea that an individual photographer could build a portfolio of such pictures seems kind of hard to imagine.

Leslie, I mean not the fact that Parr shoots in colour but his particular use of colour. Obviously that's an integral part of what he does, but that doesn't make it any less garish.

Sylvia Plachy

Yes, they are garish indeed and rather unpleasant.

I like your premise and hope you keep us posted

with any further development on the idea.

'The group of photographers named in the post just above is a list of people whose

work could hardly be considered "documentary" in the way the term is generally

used.'

 

I'm puzzled by your comment Jeff. Surely Parr's work, and that of his stablemates at

Magnum, is exactly what people commonly regard as documentary work.

 

'Historically, and recently, "documentary" has generally been perceived as being about

the subject, whereas post-modernism, while suffering from vagueness of definition,

has generally been about the act of creating, rather than just the content.'

 

But these aspects are not mutually exclusive. For example, diCorcia's street portraits

- self-reflexive with their complex lighting, but surely also studies of their subjects.

Or Mikhailov's stories about the down-and-out in Russia - so he pays them to act up

for the camera, but nevertheless the work is still a document of a time and place.

Even Gursky, and his liberal use of Photoshop, seems to be engaged in a project to

document the zeitgeist.

 

If these guys aren't documentary photographers (or at least working in the

documentary tradition), then who is?

'For example, we could have a photographer who sets out to shoot the myth of the

American West in Ansel Adams's footsteps, and tours the national parks creating

monumental large-format landscapes. Yet his landscapes always include elements --

jet contrails, telephone lines, park signs, fences -- that remind us that the parks are

not in fact wildlands but strictly delimited and carefully managed parks.'

 

Andrew, that's exactly what Thomas Struth did in this project:

 

http://www.photoeye.com/templates/

mShowDetailsbyCat.cfm?Catalog=sm159&CFID=238205&CFTOKEN=90296226

(you'll need to delete a space in that link - after 'templates/')

Thanks, Elliot. That link is still broken w/o the space -- which of Struth's books listed on photo eye are you referring to?

'STRUTH, THOMAS - Thomas Struth Galerie Max Hetzler and Schirmer/Mosel.

Photographs by Thomas Struth. Munich, 2001. SM159S Softbound $29.95'

I think truly postmodern photography, isn't about the quality of the photograph. All the photographers discussed above, still rely on you to look at the story in the print. I think post-modernism would de-emphasize the print altoghether, its just an appropriated image to manipulate, scrall on, cut etc. Some of the so called postmodern "photographers" don't even use their own images.

A very interesting point that I specifically want to explore on the Postmodernism and Photography site. (Hopefully up in a week or so. I've had computer problems.) In fact I have an entire category devoted to the question of photojournalism.

 

To make one point: no photograph stands on its own; it needs a context from which to be interrogated. And the purpose of talking about Postmodernism is not to just consider new techniques and genres - but to also develop a critical way of looking at all works from a postmodern standpoint. One important way of doing that is to talk about what is marginalized: overlooked in normal analysis or even not represented (for photography usually through careful framing - such as blocking out the other photographers in the scene mentioned above).

 

Another is to talk about the unselfconscious use of technique. When I was on vacation in Vietnam, I was struck by first of all the alienness of the culture I was in. And then I was struck by the way I was molding my surroundings through my photography into a very westernized way of looking at it (turning those alien vistas into nothing more than pretty picture postcards). I was very aware that the photographs I was creating would fundamentally fail at conveying to their audience the alienness that I was actually hoping to capture. I'd put Steve McCurry into that same category - what I call "Kodak Colonialism."

Hi John,

 

Despite my landscape example, it wouldn't necessarily be a matter of attempting to make photos that "stand on their own." The same could be done (more easily, no doubt) by using many pictures, perhaps with contrasting subjects, etc. The problem is to do it in a way that remains subtle and allows for differing interpretations.

 

The main thing is that I'm not just interested in what is happening, but in what people think about what is happening: national myths, ideologies, and so on. So I'm interested in photographers who have gone out into the real world and documented the evidence of these myths in a way that questions them.

I think using series is very important. On boards like thise we usually see and discuss individual iamges. That limits the context so much that there's very little to actually talk about.