(embiggenable)
THIS PAST WEEK I PAID A VISIT TO the George Eastman House, aka: the George Eastman Museum, in Rochester, NY - the home of Eastman Kodak Co. which still exists in a somewhat ghost-like form of its former self. And, FYI, they still make film.
While at the museum, as I moseyed through one of the galleries-the Collection Gallery-I experienced a modified semblance of awe and distinct appreciation as I viewed original prints of photographs made by Stieglitz, Stiechen, Atget, Adams, Arbus, Negly, amongst other notables. Then I moved on to the New Directions: Recent Acquisitions exhibition in the Project Gallery wherein I tried, really tried, to get some kinda grasp on some photographs…
“…acquired by the museum over the past five years and showcase significant developments in photographic practice….Throughout New Directions, the photographic image figures as a tool to fortify—but also unsettle—ideas about history and identity…While some of the artists embrace photography as a documentary medium, others develop strategies to destabilize the authority of the image. Some work to explicitly make visible the myriad ways that the past shapes the present. As instruments of power, archives become platforms to be challenged, subject to reinterpretation and reconfiguration. Found and appropriated materials offer practical, but also critical, approaches to reflecting on contemporary life and the status of images in the digital era.”
…however, try as I might, a grasp of any kind was, at best, elusive, at worst, not possible. That’s cuz the pictures were; a) visually un-engaging, and, b) so “conceptually” driven in their making that, ironically, the concept was virtually indecipherable without a zillion word art-speak “explanations” which, mercifully, were not included with the exhibition. FYI, I write “mercifully” cuz I most emphatically do not go to an exhibition of visual art to read what are essentially an academic thesis about “concepts” that are of interest to academics or, even worse, interesting to psychologists.
Being, at times, a glutton for punishment, in the museum gift shop I purchased an expensive hardbound book, A MATTER OF MEMORY : PHOTOGRAPHY AS OBJECT IN THE DIGITAL AGE. I did so knowing full well, forewarned as it were, that it was a “scholarly” work.
However, the book is illustrated with a large number of photographs by 35 picture makers, each accompanied with a short essay about the picture maker’s conceptual intent. My hope was that with another attempt to get a grasp on “significant developments in photographic practice” I might be able to get at least a scintilla of insight into the academic world’s fascination with conceptual picture making.
Despite my earnest attempt, I yet again was left in the dark and dealing with a nasty bruise from repeatedly banging my head against a stone wall. Best as I can tell, some people get a kick outa dancing on the head of a pin.