UCSB | winter 2005 | lower division photography | art19 | intro | talks | assignments | reading

 

As in all fields of human endeavor that have experienced the perceived crisis of Modern culture alongside a technological 'retooling', theories and models that have traditionally informed and policed the various practices of photography have themselves been called in for questioning...

  • the uncomplicated documentary image as an imprint of the real world
  • the shameful, shameless, or narcissistic nude - much fancied by men as the very image of Woman
  • the family album, displaying the completely functional bonded-unit of a politico-religious economy
  • the evidential image, proving beyond doubt the continued Federal cover-ups of MIA's or UFO's
  • the controlled nature of the landscape tradition - an epic land; a heroic trek [Marlboro: Country & Man]
  • the 'soul-baring' precision of the portraitist
  • the genius of the photographer-artist
  • the invisibility of the photojournalist

...all of these should be at least as laughable to us now as the notion that "photography steals your soul" was to some earlier. They are the beliefs and superstitions surrounding the various practices of photography.

As Roland Barthes famously revealed, it is Myth that has simultaneously described and hidden the world from us (not least in the making of images); so that now it is possible, even necessary, to reinvent the well-deconstructed myths of photography, to excavate the ruins that our image-culture is constructed upon. The art 19 Illustrated Talks and Readings are designed to offer historical and critical perspectives and tools for the consumer-producer of images. [see talks]