Postmodernism in Photography

One of the most controversial movements that began to color all media in the late seventies was what we call postmodernism. Indeed artists and critics associated with postmodernism have been at the center of heated debates due both to the look of their work and particularly to the conceptual ideas propelling such work. One interesting aspect of postmodern practice is that photographs - whether used in magazines, television or films - play a crucial role in shaping the myths and beliefs by which we live our lives. Some argue that photographs (and all their analog and digital variants) have become the “cultural currency” through which we have come to experience and know the world. In other words, our understanding of history, even our sense of reality, is increasingly based upon “reality” generated by photographic information. It would follow then that a key aspect of postmodern practice would be based upon making pictures that deconstruct or unmask media representations and their culturally entrenched meanings. The postmodern picture maker who uses photography accomplishes this by making pictures imitating the style of contemporary media images or by simply appropriating these images and presenting them in a context that allows for a critical reading of their underlying meaning.
To take this thought even further, postmodernist picture makers also believe that in an age in which electronic media provide an unending stream of images that literally shape our lives, it has become impossible for a individual to create anything really new. In this media drenched culture, traditional notions of individual creativity are little more than illusions. As the photography critic Andy Grundberg states, “Postmodern art accepts the world as an endless hall of mirrors - a place where everything in an image and all we know is an image of something else....."

Artists: Frank Majore, Sherrie Levine (appropriation artist), Barbara Kruger (appropriation artist), Staged Photography (Cindy Sherman), Mark Klett, Jeff Wall

Film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXKNuWtXZ_U

About Cindy Sherman