When I read a short review piece by Brian Dillon this morning linked by Mark Woods, I realized that I had achieved a lifelong goal. I am now, without question, a dropout. It was hard to get past the first few sentences:
What mode or degree of attention does photography demand, or deserve, today? It sometimes seems the photograph as such is no longer really with us: suborned to contemporary art practices for which mediumistic integrity is beside the point, dispersed in myriad online quotidia that flummox efforts at a cult-studs overview, the medium meanwhile a decade and more past its heyday as gallery-bound pretender to painting’s spectacle and presence. And yet criticism carries on much as if photography were still parsable in terms of the old problems.
The photography that Dillon speaks of here is photography as an institutional or industrial (as in “art industry” or “culture industry”) practice. It’s a curious way to start a book review, steeped in academic jargon— but, after all, the books under review are targeted at precisely that sort of academic (or pseudo-academic) audience. Photographic practice has perhaps never been more omnipresent, as the glowing waves of cell-phone cameras at any social or political event easily demonstrates. But does it deserve attention? Uh, yes— is the only sane answer for a general audience. But for an academic audience, perhaps not. Glad I’m a drop-out from all that.
Driving to the hardware store for some track to continue the current “light the living room” project, I was listening to the Elson Lecture by Elizabeth Murray. Murray begins by talking about listening to a very intelligent man discussing the relevance of painting using terms like modality and temporaneity saying that she wondered to herself why he felt the need to use such terms to isolate and distance himself from his audience, in effect erecting an academic wall around himself when what he was actually saying was easily understandable and might be restated in plain language. As I read Dillon’s review of three books, which I do have some interest in, I had to ask myself why he felt a book review was the place to exercise his vocabulary regarding pointless debates. Murray suggested that, in the case of painting, people would still be doing it “until the rubble of civilization was bouncing.” I agree.
Of course, Dillon sidesteps his opening cynicism by lauding Tod Papageorge’s Core Curriculum (Aperture, 2011) as the indispensable antidote. Not the first rave of that one I’ve read, but I’m not moved to read it yet. James Elkins’s What Photography Is (Routledge, 2011) sounds a lot more interesting, though Dillon pretty much pans it. It dwells on Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes’ seminal (though a bit shopworn) text. Barthes book is yet another of those books that has launched a thousand misappropriations and misreadings. I’d be far more curious about Elkin’s correctives than Dillon’s.
But, given that I need to install more light in the living room to look at such wonderful recent acquisitions such as Robert Bergman’s A Kind of Rapture — a truly amazing piece of photographic / literary work (and a terrific corrective to Alec Soth’s pretentious twaddle)— I’ll have to put off Elkin’s book for another day. As for Dillon’s essay, well, I think I’d much rather listen to Toni Morrison reading her introduction to Bergman’s book again than comment further.
Now, back to that living room!
