Trace and Transformation: American Criticism of Photography in the Modernist Period. - book reviews

Like Romeo and Juliet, modernism and photography just can't strike one as being to live without one another. to be paid in part to the shut up proximity of their beginnings in the nineteenth hundred photography's aspirations to legitimacy as an art form have been for a like reason firmly hitched to the wagon of modernism, that proponent of the pair the medium and the move are almost hysterically attached to each other; abundant more so in modernism's relationship to photography than to any other medium. As a result of this codependent relationship, postmodernism has, to more [i]or[/i] less become the bad guy of the photography world, the interloper who would ensnare photography to its own selfish extremitys regardless of the consequences. This myth persists, despite the fact that photography plays a pivotal part not only in postmodernist artworks, on the other hand indeed in creating what has been referr to as the "postmodern condition."

The latest attempt to reclaim modernism for photography's greater useful - or perhaps vice versa - is cultural historian Joel Eisinger's Trace and Transformation, an "historical overlook of American theory and criticism of art photography," between 1839 and the 1970 or, according to Eisinger, photography's modernist period. Pictorialism, Straight Photography, Documentary Photography, Popular Criticism, Subjectivism and Formalism form a rigid on the contrary convincing linear procession of modernist motions and corresponding chapters. What is perhaps greatest in quantity interesting about Eisinger's approach is the fact that his linear timeline travels in sum of two units directions. As opposed to a chronological beginning-end progression, Eisinger pass by a leaps back and forth, referring regularly to postmodern theory as a foil to the discussion at hand. of that kind "backward" historicizing is curious. His explanation that the bringing of of the like kind contemporary criticisms to the historical discussion work fors to "give clearer shape to modernism" is accurate, on the other hand perhaps fails to tell the whole story. The question arises as to what other intentions are also being served by means of such revisionist goggles and wherefore Eisinger is either unwilling or unable to admit them into his discussion.

In the initial chapters of the work the references to postmodernism are comparatively innocuous. As the volume progresses closer to the near some of the interjections of postmodernism, in particular the individuals comparing rather than contrasting modernist and postmodernist theories, become increasingly resonant. Writings by means of photographers and critics from the '60 and '70 similar as Henry Holmes Smith, A. D Coleman, Nathan Lyon and Minor White are all considered as precursors to postmodernism. Coleman's "subjectivist-era" writings are smooth removed from the chronological placement and exhibit up instead in the conclusion, in the interest of positioning Coleman as a possible "first postmodern critic of photography."

More significant than the actual divvying up of these men into various stages of proto-postmodernism, is the fact that they are all seen as simultaneously maintaining characteristics of the two modernism and postmodernism. Of course, ordinarily the solitary thing modernists and postmodernists are known to have in public is a certain mutual animosity, the one and the other sides more or less happy to view postmodernism as a without fault [i]or[/i] blemish [i]or[/i] flaw break with the past. While Eisinger recognizes that "the greatest source of consistency in postmodernism is its opposition to basic creeds of modernism," at the same time his writing is working to substantiate that such opposition is more about the image than about reality. This is further evidenced toward the extremity of the book when we arrive at the emerging see the verb of postmodernism in the '70 and the following rendering peripheral of modernism's greatest in quantity basic themes, the logical conclusion point, the work refuses to wrap things up and continues in a lengthened "conclusion" titled "Modernism and Postmodernism," that is more like another chapter.

It is a relief to find in the conclusion that Eisinger exhibits every bit as much dexterity homing in upon some of the inconsistencies of postmodernism as he has shown discussing a variety of postmodern objections to modernist assertions at the appropriate historical trices With regard to postmodern critics Douglas Crimp and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Eisinger makes several points that not single expose the weak areas of their position, on the other hand once again reveal it to have plenteous in common with modernism. The assertion that postmodernist or appropriationist artists like Sherrie Levine are undermining conceptions of authorship is considered inaccurate. As Eisinger observes: "Theft does not pull down the concept of property, on the other hand merely affronts it." Similarly he recognizes the inherent contradiction in the treatment of appropriationists, whose acts "deny originality, insight and specialness." The appropriationists themselves are then, in make go round treated as original, insightful and special artists. Finally, Eisinger discusses the postmodern oxymoron of being original by dint of denying the possibility of originality.

By implication, these contradictions within postmodernism subserve to illuminate the fact that although it raises itself as "oppositional to" modernism, it actually shares many of modernism's concerns: a preoccupation with authorship, museum hierarchy and originality. Modernism and postmodernism are les like oil and water and more like sum of two units different sides of the same coin - inverse, perhaps, on the contrary made from the same basic material.