That Seventies Show...

Last week, several of us decided to try and decipher "what's new" in photography despite the mantra that it's forever stuck in the seventies, the reasons for the latter perhaps as obvious as they are longstanding. While the last decade did experience a near sea change in technology, photographic and otherwise, it was basically a change in how we edit, collect and disseminate our images; this leading edge technology basically replicated analogue photography while making it faster, more convenient and supposedly (depending on who you ask) more economical.

Little in the way of genuinely "original" work has understandably come about because of that technology (not counting HDR- digital's version of black velvet painting). In fact, the one body of work that did manage to produce a "new" visual aesthetic was completely old school- the large format, narrow field of focus look inevitably doomed to tire as quickly as it appeared. And I'm betting someone came up with that one in the seventies too, but was either too embarrassed someone would think that they just didn't know how to work a view camera, or the editor/curator they showed their pictures to was in turn, too embarrassed to exhibit them for fear people would think he or she was taken by- someone who didn't know how to work a view camera. I suppose we're now either more secure to be original- or just more desperate. To be fair, I should also mention the rather ingenious Google Street View projects that were, in fact, due to recent technology- even if it could be argued that they had their genesis in the "appropriations" of the lowly Prince.

Yes, pretty much everything was done in the seventies, if not... way earlier- if only with something considerably less plastic than today's ever pliable pixel. Photographers have been effectively slicing and dicing, adding and subtracting, appropriating and recombining the photographic image since its inception- exponentially in the seventies, and once again in digital for good measure, just because we could, this time without ever leaving the comfort of our desk. And while the seventies also experienced considerable (although tame by last decade) technological advancement, what really occurred then was a veritable supernova of visual, cultural and aesthetic change that continues to influence to this very day.

The seventies started fast and furious with small format, black and white- prevalent in magazines, newspapers and the handful of photographic art galleries that existed back then. The most innovative, experimental and relevant work was all done with 35mm, right up until the mid seventies when it was blindsided seemingly overnight not only by color photography, but large format as well! Suddenly, the ubiquitous, democratic, can do 35mm was relegated to fledgling students, pj's and the printed page; and by the late seventies, the art market would be ruled by the giant color prints that large format cameras could produce and yield- the same aesthetic that rules the art market... to this very day. Large prints, large prices- it is the trade and currency that continues to rule the photographic art world. And that particular formula is yet another (if smaller) piece of the puzzle responsible for why so little is "new." The proletariat looks at their digital images on a monitor, or in books; the money players of name galleries and art institutions that control art market commerce trade in large format prints.

Collages, cut outs, massive enlargements, the usual extremes- why do we always go there when we think of "new," when they are, in fact, the most obvious retreads (no matter the technology). The hardest kinda new is to make something worth looking at within the conventional confines of that very limited medium called photography (eg- what the Bechers did then and what Gossage continues to do to this day).

Ironically, it is technology that will ultimately usher in the new, a technology that will not just replicate and facilitate current processes, but actually revolutionize its creative, artistic capabilities well beyond today's camera. "Cameras" that will seamlessly meld stills, videos, and 3D images and holograms to create stunningly novel work- not to mention lots and lots of staggeringly colossal crap!

And even then, yesterday's little light tight box will still be capable of making some very subtle works of quiet wonder.