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Unsuspending Disbelief: The Subject of Pictures

Unsuspending Disbelief: The Subject of Pictures Downloaded from http://afterimage.ucpress.edu/ on December 5 2019 and new strategies to exist simultane- of past social forms that, far from being this sense of the residual—mirrored by ously.” This actionable belief that print old or outmoded, offer possibilities of both print and city—as the most engaging exists simultaneously as a relic of the renewal through the retrieval and reval- stage of cultural reinvention. past and as an avenue toward the future uing of discarded artifacts and fashions. relates strongly to Raymond Williams’s The printmakers here, whether academics CHRIS BURNETT is an associate professor in the ideas about “the residual” as a realm or independents, appeared allied in seeing Center for the Visual Arts, University of Toledo. Unsuspending Disbelief: The Subject considerations moved on to questions Struth’s incomparably lucid and monumental of Pictures concerning time as it affects depiction and photographs, while often choreographed, RICHARD AND MARY L. GRAY CENTER FOR recording: durational exposures, decisive nevertheless serve as documentation, while ARTS AND INQUIRY moments, a shift of time to the process of Connors’s latest images from cities around UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO construction, and subjective experiences the world are manipulated to add and NOVEMBER 21, 2014 of time. subtract elements of the image, shifting any The second panel departed from the para- documentary function away from a single Laura Letinsky, professor in the Department doxically abstract and dizzying problem of point in time or unified space, and modifying of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, materiality by posing questions about “The the process of production to implicitly ques- whose lush enigmatic photographs of Urgency of the Real.” Photographic practices tion the indexical status of the photographic tabletops, food, and flowers have become that foster relationships among groups of image. Jay asked, “Can photographers lie?” increasingly abstract, organized a daylong people and record, commemorate, memo- and quoted Theodor Adorno’s “Art is magic symposium at the Gray Center for Arts and rialize, give power to, or provide witness free from the lie of being true” as a way to Inquiry for twelve working photographers and grounded the interchange between Deana offer perspective on the polarities between theorists, including herself, to convene and Lawson, Chris Mottalini, and Margaret Olin. constructed and recorded realities, and discuss the state of contemporary photo- Moderator Doug Ischar, whose photographs their implications for what one of the pan- graphic practice. Letinsky launched what she of gay communities in Chicago and San elists described as meaning and resistance proposed as an “ongoing conversation,” on Francisco in the 1980s documented what to meaningfulness. “The Subject of Pictures,” with the conceit was at stake during the AIDS crisis, and In response to photographers’ roles as that suspending disbelief—part of the whose strikingly formalist and homoerotic witnesses and their commitment to the real agreement between reader and storyteller films were screened in an adjoining room, raised by the second panel and extended that makes fiction possible—is not neces- described his commitment as being not to a here, Connors remarked, “I do consider sarily part of the photographic exchange material practice but to a set of issues. Olin’s myself to be a witness, but a calculating and because, as Letinsky said, in the words of latest project—she is likewise working in a complicated witness,” articulating a fluid Diane Arbus, “with photography there is mode that was once called “engaged”—con- postmodernist position on the problem of always the real.” sists of finding bystanders and participants truth in contrast to Struth’s commitment Shane Huffman, whose photographs in photographs that she took in 1970 at the to a critical understanding of things as they record the movement of microwaves and first Gay Pride parade in Chicago. Mottalini are. Connors’s stance reflected the mean- cosmic background radiation, moderated the has documented a series of homes designed ings of the term “slippage” used in the first panel, which was comprised of Anthony by modernist architect Paul Rudolf that are panel title “Slippage of the Description,” Elms, curator of the 2014 Whitney Biennial, abandoned and slated for demolition. His borrowed from the field of semiotics and and Barbara Kasten and Daniel Gordon, subjects, preserved in the book After You referring to the possibility for multiple colorists who both photograph scenes (archi- Left / They Took It Apart (2013), reveal the significations and the possibility for play tectural sculpture and appropriated elements fragility of buildings, documenting very between signifiers and signifieds. to form still lifes) constructed for the camera. deliberately designed dwellings on the brink At the end of the day, the twelve panelists The panelists considered questions framed of disappearance. Lawson works with the and moderators came back together for a by the topic “The Materiality of the Image,” present, composing, in collaboration with her concluding discussion. While some subjects while sitting in chairs flanked by their images subjects, large, lush photographs examining were launched and shifted course throughout displayed on an alternating loop. cultural and psychological dimensions of the the symposium, the unfolding of ideas Huffman proposed a definition of black body in photographs. among this important and dynamic group of photography as a domain (covering light, Returning to the ontological problems and photographers, curators, and thinkers gave a space, time, event, and movement) rather the status of truth in the photographic image privileged view of the questions at hand on than a medium, in an abstruse but critical that introduced the symposium, Letinsky the subject of pictures. discussion concerning the function of moderated the last panel with photogra- photography as a process that depicts or phers Thomas Struth and Matthew Connors, JANINA CIEZADLO is an artist and writer who lives records. The group’s necessarily inconclusive along with intellectual historian Martin Jay. in Chicago. 42.4 afterimage 3 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism University of California Press

Unsuspending Disbelief: The Subject of Pictures

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Publisher
University of California Press
Copyright
© 2015 Afterimage/Visual Studies Workshop, unless otherwise noted. Reprints require written permission and acknowledgement of previous publication in Afterimage.
eISSN
2578-8531
DOI
10.1525/aft.2015.42.4.3
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Downloaded from http://afterimage.ucpress.edu/ on December 5 2019 and new strategies to exist simultane- of past social forms that, far from being this sense of the residual—mirrored by ously.” This actionable belief that print old or outmoded, offer possibilities of both print and city—as the most engaging exists simultaneously as a relic of the renewal through the retrieval and reval- stage of cultural reinvention. past and as an avenue toward the future uing of discarded artifacts and fashions. relates strongly to Raymond Williams’s The printmakers here, whether academics CHRIS BURNETT is an associate professor in the ideas about “the residual” as a realm or independents, appeared allied in seeing Center for the Visual Arts, University of Toledo. Unsuspending Disbelief: The Subject considerations moved on to questions Struth’s incomparably lucid and monumental of Pictures concerning time as it affects depiction and photographs, while often choreographed, RICHARD AND MARY L. GRAY CENTER FOR recording: durational exposures, decisive nevertheless serve as documentation, while ARTS AND INQUIRY moments, a shift of time to the process of Connors’s latest images from cities around UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO construction, and subjective experiences the world are manipulated to add and NOVEMBER 21, 2014 of time. subtract elements of the image, shifting any The second panel departed from the para- documentary function away from a single Laura Letinsky, professor in the Department doxically abstract and dizzying problem of point in time or unified space, and modifying of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, materiality by posing questions about “The the process of production to implicitly ques- whose lush enigmatic photographs of Urgency of the Real.” Photographic practices tion the indexical status of the photographic tabletops, food, and flowers have become that foster relationships among groups of image. Jay asked, “Can photographers lie?” increasingly abstract, organized a daylong people and record, commemorate, memo- and quoted Theodor Adorno’s “Art is magic symposium at the Gray Center for Arts and rialize, give power to, or provide witness free from the lie of being true” as a way to Inquiry for twelve working photographers and grounded the interchange between Deana offer perspective on the polarities between theorists, including herself, to convene and Lawson, Chris Mottalini, and Margaret Olin. constructed and recorded realities, and discuss the state of contemporary photo- Moderator Doug Ischar, whose photographs their implications for what one of the pan- graphic practice. Letinsky launched what she of gay communities in Chicago and San elists described as meaning and resistance proposed as an “ongoing conversation,” on Francisco in the 1980s documented what to meaningfulness. “The Subject of Pictures,” with the conceit was at stake during the AIDS crisis, and In response to photographers’ roles as that suspending disbelief—part of the whose strikingly formalist and homoerotic witnesses and their commitment to the real agreement between reader and storyteller films were screened in an adjoining room, raised by the second panel and extended that makes fiction possible—is not neces- described his commitment as being not to a here, Connors remarked, “I do consider sarily part of the photographic exchange material practice but to a set of issues. Olin’s myself to be a witness, but a calculating and because, as Letinsky said, in the words of latest project—she is likewise working in a complicated witness,” articulating a fluid Diane Arbus, “with photography there is mode that was once called “engaged”—con- postmodernist position on the problem of always the real.” sists of finding bystanders and participants truth in contrast to Struth’s commitment Shane Huffman, whose photographs in photographs that she took in 1970 at the to a critical understanding of things as they record the movement of microwaves and first Gay Pride parade in Chicago. Mottalini are. Connors’s stance reflected the mean- cosmic background radiation, moderated the has documented a series of homes designed ings of the term “slippage” used in the first panel, which was comprised of Anthony by modernist architect Paul Rudolf that are panel title “Slippage of the Description,” Elms, curator of the 2014 Whitney Biennial, abandoned and slated for demolition. His borrowed from the field of semiotics and and Barbara Kasten and Daniel Gordon, subjects, preserved in the book After You referring to the possibility for multiple colorists who both photograph scenes (archi- Left / They Took It Apart (2013), reveal the significations and the possibility for play tectural sculpture and appropriated elements fragility of buildings, documenting very between signifiers and signifieds. to form still lifes) constructed for the camera. deliberately designed dwellings on the brink At the end of the day, the twelve panelists The panelists considered questions framed of disappearance. Lawson works with the and moderators came back together for a by the topic “The Materiality of the Image,” present, composing, in collaboration with her concluding discussion. While some subjects while sitting in chairs flanked by their images subjects, large, lush photographs examining were launched and shifted course throughout displayed on an alternating loop. cultural and psychological dimensions of the the symposium, the unfolding of ideas Huffman proposed a definition of black body in photographs. among this important and dynamic group of photography as a domain (covering light, Returning to the ontological problems and photographers, curators, and thinkers gave a space, time, event, and movement) rather the status of truth in the photographic image privileged view of the questions at hand on than a medium, in an abstruse but critical that introduced the symposium, Letinsky the subject of pictures. discussion concerning the function of moderated the last panel with photogra- photography as a process that depicts or phers Thomas Struth and Matthew Connors, JANINA CIEZADLO is an artist and writer who lives records. The group’s necessarily inconclusive along with intellectual historian Martin Jay. in Chicago. 42.4 afterimage 3

Journal

Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural CriticismUniversity of California Press

Published: Jan 1, 2015

There are no references for this article.