Week 14

The readings this week focus on what is Real in photography.  As photography continues to advance and evolve, we're assaulted by more and more technology that is capable of altering the photograph to the extent that it's next to impossible to tell if what is contained in the image has been altered or is even a photograph at all.

The image above was created by my friend Nick who is an architect.  They were supposed to take a photograph of the models they created for a class.  However, Nick is a crazy perfectionist and was unable create the lighting he wanted for his model, so decided to simply model it in 3D studio max instead.  I can't tell that it's an image that was created- rather than taken, and neither could anyone in his class.

The Remediation articles talked quite a bit about virtual reality.  "In order to create a sense of presence, virtual reality should come as close as possible to our daily visual experience"(p.22).  This statement interests me because when I think of VR, I don't think of it as employing technology to do everyday things such as doing the dishes or walking my dogs.  Instead, VR is often expected to show us things that are fantastical and that we cannot access in our everyday lives.  

This of course leads us to the photoblog in comparison.  "Photobloggers like, most of all, to make photographs of what they call 'the everyday', the 'banal' or 'the mundane'.... most photobloggers say that 'real life' is the desired content of their photographs.  They want pictures of real life as it happens, as they experience.  'Real life'... traditionally happens outside of photographs, and this is precisely what they want in their photographs" (p.887).  Digital pictures are free and therefore many many more images can be taken, providing the photographer with an arsenal of images with which to describe even the smallest moments of their days.  A desire is expressed for a camera to be inserted in their eyes so that it is possible to capture every detail of their existence.  Below are a few images from a friend's photoblog.

 I also found it interesting that the reading points out that most photobloggers do not use flash.  In general, they avoid any behavior or photographic tool that causes people to be put on guard or strike a pose.  They capture the moments before and after the instant when someone expects the photo to be taken.  

Modernism Rewind

I'm going to journey back in time to week 2 and refresh my own memory on modernism.

Beginning with Harrison- he defines modernism as "intentional rejection of classical precedent and classical style."  Modernism distinguishes between the classical and the transformation of art in the 19th-20th centuries through industrialization, urbanization, and mechanism (taken from Amy's blog- thanks!).  The artist in the modernist realm believes that the most important thing about art is it's aesthetics and rather than simply being a kind of artist- the modernist is a critic who has a certain set of beliefs about art and it's development.

In Greenberg's Modernist Painting, he states that modernism is "the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in the area of competence."  Modernist photographers included members of f/64- a group that focused on highlighting the sharp detail in which a photograph can render it's subject- rather than making photographs that look like paintings.  Michael Fried- a follower of Greenberg in turn attacks minimalist art for producing effects that do not derive from within the work itself, but instead are dependent on the viewer's relationship with the object (Art and Objecthood, 1966). This, he insists, "is now the negation of art". According to Fried, these minimalists took Greenberg's plea for purity too far; instead of exploring medium, all they do is present the materials for what they are. 

Week 13

This week's readings focused on the writings of Michael Fried and the release of his new book, Why Photography Matters.  Fried identifies two modes of relation between figures in pictures and their spectators.  The first is the "absorptive mode" in which the subject figure of the work is absorbed in their own task and unaware of their surroundings and the presence of the viewers.  One such photography trend and example of this work involves our attachment and focus on our electronic devices.  Andrew Curtis created a series of work titled "Cell" in which the subjects are all focusing on their cell phones.

www.andrewcurtis.com

Another artist who uses this technique is Evan Baden and his series "Illuminati."  This project includes subjects on cell phones, waching tv, and playing video games.

www.evanbaden.com

Both of these series show figures who "appear not to be 'acting out' their world, only 'being in' it."  The subjects are so absorbed in their electronic devices that they seem to be completely unaware of the photographer.  

The second mode that Fried talks about is the "theatrical mode."  In this mode, the figure in the picture is performing for the viewer (and at the time the picture was made- the artist.)  While these two modes seem to be opposites, they are share in common that the act of the subject focusing on something in the image is a performance in itself.

Week 12

The essays for this week, George Baker's Photography's Expanded Field and Rosalind Krauss's Reinventing the Medium, are fascinating to read in an era where film and photography are closely intertwined.   The still image came first, and Baker argues that photography was not deconstructed to form film, but rather was expanded.  "Photography is no longer the priveleged middle term between two things that it isn't. Photography is rather only one term in the periphery of a field in which there are other, differently structured possibilities."  Through multiple frames strung together we are able to see a more complete and expanded narrative.  Krauss examines the work of Robert Coleman in her essay.  His photographs are presented as slides in a traditional carousel regulated by a timer.  Coleman seems to be elaborating on the "paradoxical collision between stillness and movement"  by essentially rotating photographs through a slideshow.  His work is the first step towards a more complete moving picture- the video.  Interestingly, just as Coleman begins to step from still image to a moving narrative, Cindy Sherman creates her pieces moving the opposite direction.  Her film stills seem to take snippets from moving imagery.   

The Baker essay raises one of my concerns in photography by stating “critical consensus would have it that the problem today is not that just about anything image-based can now be called photographic, but rather that photography itself has been foreclosed, cashiered, abandoned—outmoded technologically and displaced aesthetically.”  It seems that photographers are encouraged to divulge in a variety of media to convey their message.  Ann Fessler, a photographer professor at RISD, uses sound and installation in combination with her images about adoption.

In her piece, Cliff & Hazel, the walls are hung with enlarged color snapshots of the Fessler's family.   The center of the room is carpeted, with a comfortable sofa and a television (housed in a wooden cabinet to suggest age). A mobile of Fessler family photographs dangles over the TV, which plays a looping 23-minute video that Fessler made while visiting home for Hazel's 80th birthday. 
Another room installation, Everlasting, has only a carpet pad, no carpet; the upholstery on the sides of the five armchairs has been cut out: the comforts of the family room ripped away. Projected on a wall is a silent, black-and-white archival film loop of nurses wheeling babies, two-by-two, around the corner of an institutional hospital corridor. A 17-minute sound collage plays of some of Fessler's interviewees. The form is expressionistic—five discrete speakers pipe in overlapping voices—but the women collaborate on a linear narrative account, from pregnancy to sequestration to birth, then surrender and sorrow. 

While Fessler's roots are in the medium of photography, it has all branched out into other factions.  The onslaught of digital photography and the access that the general public now has to cameras makes me think that other photographers will continue to involved a variety of media in their work to preserve some sense of originality.

Week 11 Update

One photographer I just remembered is Julie Moos and her series of portrait photographs, Friends and Enemies. In each of her portrait series Moos has been interested in examining objectively a specific socio-cultural milieu, placing her subjects in neutral environments, posed frontally and usually in pairs against a blank backdrop. The series Friends and Enemies was shot at a private high school in Moosâ home city of Birmingham, Alabama. At the invitation of the school's principal, Moos spent several months during the 1999-2000 term interviewing students, teachers and counselors, as well as analyzing candid photographs in school publications.

Recognizing that much of the high school experience revolves around interpersonal relationships, and thinking about the violence that had recently occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado, Moos was sensitive to the friendships and rivalries which she discerned in the class of 2000 at the Birmingham school. Converting a classroom into a temporary studio for a week, with parental consent forms signed and students agreeing to participate, Moos selected students in pairs to be photographed, sometimes choosing students who were good friends and other times students who were enemies, rivals or barely knew each other. The students did not know with whom they would be paired until they arrived for their sessions.

"In presenting her finished color images, which are printed large so that the sitters are virtually life-size, Moos does not inform viewers of the relationships among her subjects. With the stark settings and the face-forward poses that do not allow for interaction among the sitters, viewers are left to try to discern the feelings and relationships from the subtleties of codes of behavior reflected in body language, facial expressions, and styles of clothing and hair. Moos straightforward portraits are compelling for the way they evoke the nuances of character and personality in her subjects. At the same time her photographs challenge viewers to resolve the visual riddles they contain, bringing forth our own memories, experiences and preconceptions and making the photographs in a way portraits of ourselves as well."

This body of work hits heavily on two aspects of the Baker essay.  The first lies in the use of text to convey narrative.  Allan Sekula has "repeatedly insisted on regarding photographic meaning as a hybrid construction depending on both textual and contextual factors in order to be capable of being read" (p.75).  In Moos' work, each photograph is labeled only with the names of the people in the photos, but the viewer has the knowledge that these are "friends and enemies."  The viewer then naturally attempts to read body language and visual clues to label whether each portrait is one of friends or enemies.  

These images are of course also double portraits.  When two people are presented within a photograph- it is simple to try and relate them  Within Moos' work, you are already informed of their relationship.  Moos' has taken control of the generation of crucial questions by giving them text and titles, just as Sander's did in his "Farm Girls."  

Narrativity and Stasis

I believe it was August Sander who said "I want to photograph the world."  George Baker's essay discussing narrative and stasis does an interesting job of dissecting the difference between these two and how they relate to Sander's portraits.

Baker defines the two as such... "By narrativity, I mean simply those techniques that sustain a readable discourse, involving duration, movement, and inevitably a certain sense of plurality.  Stasis, on the other hand, involves signifying properties that are diametrically opposed to those of narrativity, encompassing primarily the petrifaction of motion, the freezing of time, and instead of plurality, the fixed or repetitive motif.  Photography is a static medium.  It is a moment frozen in time, and we are seeing a representation of that object, person, or landscape.  

To me, all photography, and most especially portraiture, has a narrative and a stasis.  While the photograph is a single frozen frame, it also presents a story.  We are humans looking at representations of other humans and therefore have a tendency to try and connect to their lives in some way.  In looking at one of Sander's images below- it is a natural development to begin constructing a story about the man depicted.  He is a chef- which we conclude by his presence in the kitchen and he is holding a mixing bowl.  While photography does not provide us with the future, it does give us clues to make guesses about what is about to occur.

Below I just included two portraits, the first from Bill Sullivan and the second from Anthony Blasko.  While in my own theory that narrative is created simply by context clues and our own imaginations- does it then matter if the narrative imagined is incorrect?

Race Test

I mentioned this briefly in class last week... but if you wanted to take the test to see if you're racist- check this out.

An online psychology test developed by the University of Chicago has been developed to test how racism is inbred in people. The test involves showing 100 pictures of black/white men with and without guns. The test comes as you decide very quickly if you should shoot or holster your gun.
http://backhand.uchicago.edu/Center/ShooterEffect/

Week 10- Race 2

Did you know that Pond’s “White Beauty” cream, pushed in India, Korea and Malaysia, is part of Unilever’s “international stable of skin lightening products”? That the “Pond’s White Beauty Detox range that gives a visibly illuminated and nourished pink glow”? That it “neutralizes the effect of darkness-causing impurities found in the environment and reduces accumulated melanin, thus giving a smooth, pure and bright skin”?

All of this week's readings kept leading me to think of Nancy Burson's The Human Race Machine.  This is an interactive device containing the software programs Burson created in collaboration with her former husband, David Kramlich. It allows you to view yourself as if you were of another race, gender, or age. 

http://www.nancyburson.com/pages/publicart_pages/hrmachine.html

Week 10- Race

I found there to be many similarities between the Butler article from last week and Howard Winant's The Theoretical Status on the Concept of Race.  Butler presents gender as a performative act.  It is not something that we are born with biologically, but rather something that is formed through a series of repetitive acts.   In Winant's piece, he states that "race is either an illusion that does idealogical work or an objective biological fact.  Since it is certainly not the latter, it must be the former" (p. 53).  Winant presents the work of Barbara Fields who explains that race is something we have constantly altered and adjusted to fit our social vocabulary.  This allows us to "make sense, not of what our ancestors did then, but of what we choose to do now" (p.54).  Both Butler and Winant present gender and race in such a way that says that it is something we create, rather that a solid biological fact. 

However, one of the problems that Winant points out with Fields' idealogical concept is that it fails to recognize that race is a part of our identities.  Especially in the US, where people from so many different countries have come together, race is one of the ways in which we define ourselves.  

In September, an ad for L'Oreal cosmetics ran featuring singer Beyonce.  The ad generated a lot of controversy when readers noticed that the singer's skin color appeared to have been lightened.  L'Oreal denied that her skin or features had been changed, but the noticeable difference between the singer's looks in the ad versus other photos of her may have been to the lighting or "creative touchups."  I think in this ad L'Oreal was trying to blur the issue of race in order to reach a larger target audience.  While most people know that Beyonce is "black,"  by lightening her skin, the company is trying to make sure that the "white" population know that their haircolor line will also work on them.  

This issue gets more and more confusing as people from different ethnic backgrounds continue to marry and their children cannot simply break their race down into white, black, yellow, red, and brown.  In many ways, it will become more difficult to judge people on the color their skin because more of the population will no longer be an extreme, but will rather fall somewhere in the middle.  

Gender Update

I mentioned this briefly in class last week... but CAMP cosmetics is the makeup company out of Glen Ellyn that is featuring the world's first line of cosmetics with the spokesperson being a transsexual.

Week 9-Gender

   Judith Butler argues in her essay "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory" that "gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo."  Gender is not something that is created when you are born, but rather is created and evolves through a series of acts over time.  Gender is a performance that is always changing and shifting. "As a public action and performative act, gender is not a radical choice or a project that reflects merely individual choice, but neither is it imposed or inscribed upon the individual.... Just as a script may be enacted in various ways, and just as the play requires both text and interpretation, so the gendered body acts its part in a culturally restricted corporeal space and enacts interpretations within the confines of already existing directives."  

  If Butler is correct and gender is always evolving and in flux, then it seems that some of the acts that are happening in the medical world are taking things a bit far.

 A doctor at the Children's Hospital Boston has launched a new drug that delays puberty so that children can decide if they want to have a male or

 female body.  http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=62010

Dr. Norman Spack created the drug so that you could alter the body earlier and therefore more successfully, but do twelve year old children really know enough about themselves to be able to make that choice?  Dr. Spack also previous acknowledged that only about 20% of children that are gender confused in childhood continue those feelings into adulthood.  If gender is always changing... then what happens when medical steps are taken to permanently change or alter the physical appearance of the body.  

 Another area in which our view of gender has changed is simply in what we find attractive.  Fifty years ago- the looks that were favored where more traditionally 'classic' in the idea of males and females.  Burt Lancaster has the classic square jaw, strong forehead,  and Roman nose, while Grace Kelly is facially much more delicate with higher cheekbones and lower eyebrows.  Today in Hollywood, these classic facial features are becoming much more interchangeable- with these male and female facial features being reversed.  As our ideals of what make a male male or female female evolve- it would seem our perception and attraction levels to what is 'beautiful' are also changing.

Week 8- The Gaze Part 3

*Sorry that I keep posting in sections- my internet is going crazy.

The one thing that really bothered me about this weeks reading was that they really only focused on the "woman as image, man as bearer of the look."  Olin mentions that the feminists have begun to investigate the female gaze, the gaze of gays or lesbians or those with multiple identifications, but not much more than that is said.  

Week 8- The Gaze Part 2

Week 8- The Gaze Part 1

One photographer who employs the gaze in an interesting way is Shizuka Yokomizo.  In her series, Stranger, she sends an anonymous letter to her subject asking them to stand beside their windows at a particular date and time, at which point Yokomizo shows up for a few moments, photographs, and leaves.  She asks that her subjects leave all the lights on, wear their normal clothes, and since she normally photographs at night- the subjects can only see her vague outline outside their windows.  The final images show the outline of the windows and curtains which further the distance between the viewer and the subject.

This type of work best exhibits the most traditional view of the gaze produced by Laura Mulvey.  The viewer or photographer in this case has power over the person they are looking at.  The subjects are performing for the camera and are therefore in a position of vulnerability.  While there is also a gaze being exchanged in the subject looking out at the photographer- the photographer is still the one with the power.  

Week 7

Michael Foucault. Discipline and Punish. Panopticism

The panoptican model can easily be applied to the role of the photographer.  The central tower is the photographer while the surrounding cells are the photographs or the people who are being photographed.  From the tower or center- the photographer has the power of visibility.   From behind the camera- the photographer is able to capture almost anything and everything surrounding him/her.

In the world of celebrity photography- famous people are under constant surveillance.  They are locked in the cells- "this enclosed segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded" (p.2).  This idea of course extends even further into our modern day surveillance- put in place for our own security.  From the supermarket to running red lights, video and photography is in place to make law enforcement easier.  In the same way that the panoptican allowed for easier control over prisoners, surveillance in most parts of our daily lives allows for easier control over rule breakers at large.  The operation of power is increased because the number of people who are able to be observed increases while the number of operators decreases.

This society of surveillance was predicted in another writing as well- George Orwell's 1984.  This book presented a vision of an all-knowing government and a society that was under constant surveillance and was bombarded with propoganda.

The model of the panoptican also serves to illustrate the way the population views media.  The news that we are presented is in the central position of power.  The public remains secluded in its separate cells with little choice other than to believe what it is presented with.

The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau  BLOG UPDATE

  This book points out ways in which we take mass culture and alter it to fit our individual needs.  In the chapter Walking in the City, de Certeau begins by presenting a view from high above the city- reflecting on the spatial planning and then sinks down to the actual streets to comment on particular symbols and names.  When we went on our walk around Chicago, we examined the ways in which those around us take urban elements and alter them for our own uses.  The most common example is that of the planters being used as places to sit or smoke or gather.  While the concrete structures were created to hold shrubs, the population has appropriated the space for their own individual uses.  The city in turn, has responded as such by placing spikes and attempting to create spaces that prevent these kind of spatial alterations.

De Certeau is also fascinated with the way that naming a place changes the space of the city.  Proper names "make sense" and provide a way for us to move about the space.  "These names create a nowhere in places; they change them into passages."

Week 6

Photography has maintained it's individuality as an art form because of the very nature of the medium.  What truly is an original when it comes to a medium that has developed and flourished in part due to its ability to be reproduced.  "That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art."  In painting, it's much easier to distinguish the original from the copies, but in photography, in some ways they are all copies.  What does that mean then for the aura of the work?

Above I tried to recreate a bit about what Barthes says about aura.  Photographs are all copies, and should therefore hold their aura in the same way.  The aura of a painting diminishes when you get further and further from the original.  What happens however, in situations where in photography the prints are numbered?  If only 10 prints are part of an edition, do those have a stronger aura than any copies that would chance to come afterwards?  

I know appropriation art and especially Sherry Levine and Richard Prince have been brought up several times already in this class, but I still think of them when it comes to the idea of aura.

Last year when photographer Jim Krantz walked into the Guggenheim for a 30-year retrospective of Mr. Prince's work, he was struck by the image below.  This photograph- "Stretchin Out" was one that he had originally shot in the late 1990's for a Marlboro campaign.  Mr. Prince copied the image for his own work- but where then does that leave the aura?  Simply because Prince is protected by fair use under copyright laws- is he then able to steal an aura?  The age of mechanical reproduction allows for this image to have two auras- even though to the human eye- they may look exactly the same.  Also, it is a strange thought to think that this image probably has posters on sale in the museum bookshop for $9.99.  "Works of art are received and valued on different planes."  By emphasizing the exhibition value of a piece we are furthering its value as a reproducible work- something that I don't always find so positive.

On Plato's Cave

    In Susan Sontag's On Plato's Cave, she details the various ways that "having a photographic experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it."  One section of the article deals with travel which I found to be particularly fascinating because it echoes some of my own curiosities and observations.  On page 9 she states that photographs "help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure."  Photography has developed along with tourism because gives people an outlet in which to focus their energy when in an awkward or unfamiliar situation.  Sontag also points out that societies with "ruthless" work ethics such as the Germans, Americans, and Japanese, tend to like photography because it eases some of their anxiety about them not being at work.  

    Sontag also discusses the variety of ways in which photographs can be packaged.  Newspapers, photo albums, museums, books... photography is different from other art forms in that it does not lose as much of its essence when reproduced as say painting does.  This gives photography more options than almost any other form of art because it can be cataloged and viewed in sequence or treated as a precious object.  Painting of course could do this as well, but because the reproduction process is different, the painting reprinted becomes almost an entirely different object all together.  

For example, the two images below are two iconographic images, one a photograph and one a painting.  On this blog, we are able to view the photograph in a state much closer to its original form than that of the painting of the Birth of Venus.  The digital era truly lends itself to photography in a much truer way than any other art form.

Week 5- Barthes and Sontag

"The press photograph is a message."  The Barthes Reader delves into the various visual, cultural, and social elements that send both denoted and connoted message.  The article starts by stating the system by which we receive information, and then breaks down the six denoted and connotated meanings in a photograph. 

Alex Potts- Sign

Roland Barthes- Extracts from Camera Lucida

"One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon's youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852.  And I realized then, 

with an amazement I have not been able to lessen since: 'I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emporer.' "  Thus begins Barthes series of essays where he attempts to link the photograph with his own reality.  These essays were written while Barthes was still in mourning over the death of his mother, and the many of them document his search for a photograph of his mother that truly embodies her essence. 

While going through these photographs of his mother, Barthes wrestles with the connections between the image, time, and death.  He is attempting to do what is nearly impossible in looking for the "truth of the face I had loved."  Yet he finds what he seeks in the Winter Garden Photograph.  This image depicts her as a little girl and Barthes connection to the image give him relief from his grief.  Barthes very personal search and experience leave one to ponder how his attempt to reconstruct the photograph connects to Alex Potts' essay, Signs.  Potts examines the relationship between each person's observations and connections to art rely on a specific language that is formed from one's cultural and social background.  A sign is an entity that "on the grounds of previously established social convention, can be taken as something standing for something else."  It is the idea of the sign that then plays into Barthes' two themes in the reaction the viewer has to a photograph.  The first is stadium- which is a general sort of appreciation or attraction to a photograph due to cultural and social background.  Examples include news photographs and war photographs.  The second is punctum- which is he describes as a wound or a prick.  It is a detail in that photograph that deeply connects to the viewers emotions and personal experiences.

Some examples. 

Susan Meiselas- a Magnum photographer who is probably best known for her coverage of the insurrection in Nicaragua and documenting human rights issues in Latin America.  As an American viewer especially, I feel we have sadly reached a point of desensitization with these kinds of images.  The theme of punctum is distinctly evident here for while I am drawn to the photo out of pity, concern, horror- all those emotions are more of general feeling.  I have nothing to personally connect me to this image, so while it informs me, it does not cut through to truly pierce my emotions.

Lauren Greenfield's documentation of adolescent girls however is a collection of works that illustrates Barthes' theme of punctum for me.  Especially her series "Thin."  While I have never dealt with anorexia, her images of girls going through such a difficult time is something that resounds personally for me.  

Postmodernism Part 2

Donald Crimp- Appropriating Appropriation

"Photography will always exceed the institutions of art, always participate in nonart practices, always threaten the insularity of art's discourse."  Photography is still the art world's newest child.  Last week in class, we referred to photography as the 'stepchild' of the art world, which is both it's advantage and disadvantage.  Photography has been able to grow and develop outside of the normal constrains of art.  

Photography of course has played a huge role in appropriation.  Crimp compares Sherrie Levine with Robert Mapplethorpe, stating that whil

e both are using appropriation, Mapplethorpe is appropriating style  while Levine is appropriating painting whole "in its material form."

Postmodernism Part 1

Charles Jencks-  The Post-Modern Agenda

Fredric Jameson

Key idea here is that of pluralism which allows for a diverse set of views.  It is "a resistance to single explanations, a respect for difference and a celebration of the regional, local, and particular."  Jencks puts a positive spin on postmodernism versus the more negative view of Jameson.  Jameson conclues that there is no original thought in today's world, and that our submission to the whim of mass masses is dulling the honesty and realism of the individual.  Essentially, he believes that part of what made modernism so successful was that it was not accepted by the masses.   Because it was not a part of the mass culture, it was able to be more real and focused more on the individual.  Current culture is marketed to the masses and therefore can no longer contain this sort of realism.  

Week 2

Clement Greenberg's Modernist Painting.  

  I had my highlighter out while reading and when I got to this article I pretty much highlighted the whole thing.  I'm sure this has happened to many of you- you're at a museum or gallery and gazing at some 'modern' art, perhaps a Pollack or Mondrian, when you overhear some whispered comments.  "My kid could make that" or "Psh, I could have made that in five seconds.  What?  They're selling that for five grand??!!" 

 I'm quite sure many of those people have never read this article nor care to do so.  Greenberg states "modernism used art to call attention to art."  How true!  It is so easy to quickly become caught up in the realistic details of painting especially.  Do people merely want to be impressed by art?  I think of the dutch masters and how easy it is to look at the detail and delicacy of brushstroke involved in their paintings while never stopping to ponder the overall work.   "Whereas one tends to see what is in an Old Master before one sees the picture itself, one sees a Modernist picture as a picture first." 

John Szarkowski's Introduction to The Photographer's Eye

When I began this article I took a moment to remember the first thrill of making an image in the darkroom.  Even now, it still amazes me that you can shine light on paper and run it through some chemicals- an image appears!  I'm sure if you multiplied that feeling by about a million- you'd get and idea of some of the reaction to photography when it first began.  It's no small wonder that people were scampering around all over the place- taking pictures of anything and everything.  Equally understandable is the rough start that photography got in the art world.  Painting was expensive and time consuming, therefore only monumental and important events and subjects were captured.  With the simple ease and inexpensiveness of photography, anything was a possibility for subject matter and anyone could become an artist.  Szarkowski breaks photography down into five issues that have been critical to the progression of photography.  

The thing itself- treasuring the fact that photography deals with the actual

The detail- the photographer is isolating and cataloging clues.  "If photographs could not be read as stories, they could be read as symbols."

The frame- Photography allows you to choose and eliminate.  The world is an infinite scroll in which there are a myriad of compositions to compose and crop.  (I love this idea.)

Time- Photography captures a still moment that was previously hidden in a flurry of movement.  Muybridge stopped time and showed how horses run.  Cartier-Bresson eloquently titled this idea "the decisive moment."

Vantage Point- Photographers are able to choose from a variety of options to present- birds eye view, backs of heads... all to give us a different sense of the scene.

And lastly- I found it interesting that Greenberg talks about modernism as an "evolution"  while Szarkowski compares the history of photography to a "growth."  "Photography, and our understanding of it, has spread from a center.."  This is my very brief mental interpretation of some photography history.  (I'm having issues getting it to appear below- sorry!)