• myGriffith
    • Staff portal
    • Contact Us⌄
      • Future student enquiries 1800 677 728
      • Current student enquiries 1800 154 055
      • International enquiries +61 7 3735 6425
      • General enquiries 07 3735 7111
      • Online enquiries
      • Staff phonebook
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • Griffith Research Online
    • Conference outputs
    • View Item
    • Home
    • Griffith Research Online
    • Conference outputs
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

  • All of Griffith Research Online
    • Communities & Collections
    • Authors
    • By Issue Date
    • Titles
  • This Collection
    • Authors
    • By Issue Date
    • Titles
  • Statistics

  • Most Popular Items
  • Statistics by Country
  • Most Popular Authors
  • Support

  • Contact us
  • FAQs
  • Admin login

  • Login
  • Photography and the banal

    Author(s)
    Hawker, Rosemary
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Hawker, Rosemary L.
    Year published
    2008
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    For many contemporary artist/photographers-Thomas Demand, Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky, Gabriel Orozco, Tacita Dean-their subject shifts between the banal and the spectacular. It is no mere coincidence that they address such extremes but rather is a result of a problem that has dogged the medium: photography's aesthetic uptake is compromised by its apparently being too closely and easily connected to empirical reality. In light of this, photographers have the choice of amplifying this connection and opening the medium to a system of affect by reveling in appearances, the ease of the spectacular photographic view and the conceptual ...
    View more >
    For many contemporary artist/photographers-Thomas Demand, Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky, Gabriel Orozco, Tacita Dean-their subject shifts between the banal and the spectacular. It is no mere coincidence that they address such extremes but rather is a result of a problem that has dogged the medium: photography's aesthetic uptake is compromised by its apparently being too closely and easily connected to empirical reality. In light of this, photographers have the choice of amplifying this connection and opening the medium to a system of affect by reveling in appearances, the ease of the spectacular photographic view and the conceptual complexity of the staged tableau. As the call for papers suggests, these artists take photography into the disciplinary structure of art through ideation and visual effects that we also know from other art forms. On the other hand, these same photographers in other works concentrate on the banality of the photograph's appearance, the acute recognisability that approaches a visual tautology that is perhaps native to photography. The latter, seemingly lamentable state is, however, what finally allows these works to achieve an immediate aesthetic effect, one that is grounded in redundancy. While both approaches arise from photography being so thoroughly of the world it responds to, I am not arguing that they evidence a binary condition between the banal and the spectacular that can define the medium. Rather, they are different aspects of the exploration of the photography's aesthetic possibilities. This photography of the banal may seem to be after conceptual art in the sense that it is anti-conceptual but this is something of a paradox. Although necessarily anti-conceptual banality provides photography with a concept of its limit as art.
    View less >
    Conference Title
    Location: the Museum, the Academy and the Studio
    Publisher URI
    http://www.aah.org.uk/
    http://www.aah.org.uk/page/2859
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/20639
    Collection
    • Conference outputs

    Footer

    Disclaimer

    • Privacy policy
    • Copyright matters
    • CRICOS Provider - 00233E

    Tagline

    • Gold Coast
    • Logan
    • Brisbane - Queensland, Australia
    First Peoples of Australia
    • Aboriginal
    • Torres Strait Islander