I was at an academic conference trying to chat up the writer Geoff Dyer. He’d finished reading a short poetic essay on the nightscapes of Indian photographer Dayanita Singh and after a public conversation took questions. I couldn’t ask anything intelligent-sounding so waited until the end.
A month earlier in San Francisco there had been one of those perennial events where experts assemble to discuss whether photography as a discipline is in crisis. This time it was flatly called ‘Is Photography Over?’ Dyer spoke.
Judging by his writing Dyer has a sense of humour and a wry appreciation of dilettantism. ‘Dude,’ I said as he put away his papers, ‘is photography really over?’ ‘Ah you mean the conference?’ he quipped, peering up at me, ‘listen to this: on the second day the photographer Lee Friedlander stood up in the middle of some professor’s talk, huffed, threw his hands in the air and walked out… probably to go and take photos!’
Friedlander, who has spent a lifetime inquiring into the specific characteristics of the photograph by taking photographs, walks out on a professor speaking on the muddying of the specific characteristics of the photograph by contemporary art practice, visual culture and new technologies. An image fixed in my mind: old man Friedlander – a pioneer who lives the philosophy of photography – in his multipocket waistcoat walking out on the photography establishment. It was an allegory waiting for its proper application.
1 comments:
Long live Mr Lee and his self portrait with hairy balls and cock of rock and stones.
Those who spend their time debating the whys and hows of photographs and their makers are WRONG! They sit in their velvet armchairs legs crossed (a sign of their perceived cleverness) and stand at their oak carved lecterns with Powerpoints and academic jargons to prop them up like puppets on a stage. But secretly they long to look through the viewfinder themselves. "Do you see what I see" I say to them. Look harder, harder, harder, harder and you just might.
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