The Photomontage Activity of Postmodernism

For decades now, Douglas Crimp’s landmark 1980 essay ‘The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism’ has shaped our understanding of modernism’s aftermath, at least as it unfolded in North America and Western Europe. Less remembered, however, is the degree to which the procedures of disjunction, copying, appropriation, and outright theft that he highlighted were epitomised not just by contemporary photography, but by photomontage in particular. This article recovers the debates that led critics such as Crimp, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Christopher Phillips, Benjamin Buchloh and others to turn to photomontage as one of their principal objects of concern in what became known as the postmodern critique of photography. Why was montage tasked to perform this critical function, particularly by people around the journal October who had not otherwise devoted the balance of their writing to photography’s history? The article suggests that these men and women, along with the contemporary artists they foregrounded, manifested what Mary Anne Doane has called a ‘desire for signification’, a reaction in the late 1970s against the mute theatricality of minimalist and conceptual art. Photomontage reintroduced representation to contemporary art and to the canon of art history. But unlike the reemerging illusionism in painting that also manifested this desire, montage guarded against an uncomplicated realism by highlighting and critiquing operations of representation in a manner that painting no longer could.     

Recent Publications

This article examines the absence of atrocity in the photographic series The Course of History by the Belgian-born, New York-based photographer Bart Michiels (1964–). It shows, in beautiful, large-format prints, seemingly innocent landscapes and confined views of nature. Only when viewers read the titles of the photographs do they become aware of the violent history of the sites. These turn out to be the fields of fierce European battles such as Verdun, Waterloo and Stalingrad. The present article reviews recent trends towards using place as a motif in contemporary art photography and focuses on the ‘empty’ landscape as a pictorial strategy that opens up a narrative space, one that needs to be completed by the viewer. The absence evoked by the image is treated as antithetical to the conventional ethos of photography, which canonically stands as the evidence of an occurrence.     

Repopulating the Street: Contemporary Photography and Urban Experience

Over the past thirty years, the city as represented by art photography has been shown as progressively empty and alienating. While the emptiness of nineteenth-century streets was due to the limitations of photographic technology, it was actively pursued as a formal device by the New Topographics photographers. Recent art photography shows an even more pronounced trend towards showing the city as vacant. This contrasts starkly with the densely populated, bustling, urban environments typical of twentieth-century street photography. This essay argues that images of an empty contemporary city can be understood as a symptom of disciplinary relations internal to photography as an art form, and as a consequence of art photography's distancing of itself from vernacular representations of the city when the distinction between art photography and vernacular photography is at risk of collapsing. Empty urban images tell us about modes of experience in the contemporary city and about photography itself. This essay uses the trope of the banal as a way of locating the ‘extreme form of the everyday’ that typifies the contemporary photographic discourse of the street. Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Melanie Manchot both address the everyday street as an acute site for understanding the negotiation of public space and contemporary experiences of the city. Both refer to yet go beyond the dichotomy of the city as empty or full and reveal a different set of relations to the street through photography.     

China in the World: On Photography,Montages, and the Magic Lantern

Two examples of photographic montages from the first half of the twentieth century, one by the Modern Sketch Society in the magazine Shidai manhua and the other by the photographer Lang Jingshan, craft images of the modern Chinese nation. Although dramatically different, both images rely on assemblage formats and the photographic fragment in order to present a vision of a new China within a larger global context. This article proposes a nineteenth-century precursor to these photomontages in the form of an 1885 Shanghai magic lantern show as presented in the pages of the pictorial magazine Dianshizhai huabao. Originating as a lecture on world travel by the Chinese pastor and educator Yen Yung Kiung, the lecture was reconstituted into a lithographic series by the famous illustrator Wu Youru. Intended simultaneously as entertainment, as an educational and charity event, and as a series of lithographic and photographic images, the heterogeneous components of Yen and Wu’s travelogue bring together a complex but coordinated vision of the nation. Like a photomontage in its constant juxtaposition of pictorial pieces, this transmedial ‘Tour round the world’ strives to offer a particular view of China and its place in the modern world.     

Publications Received

At the turn of the twentieth century, landscape photography began to emerge as a new way to represent nature in Korea. Landscape photographs of the Korean peninsula were printed in modern media, such as the daily newspaper Maeilsinbo, the public cultural magazine Cheongchun, and picture postcards. This article explores the photographic representation of nature in Korea in the 1910s. Landscape images of the period were rooted in the visual regime of the camera obscura, and they often borrowed techniques and themes from Korean traditional landscape painting, or sansuhwa. The photographic medium was important in shaping new perceptions, aesthetic experiences, and discourses on nature. This article examines several categories of landscape photography, including images of scenic and historical places, idyllic and bucolic scenes, and urban parks. These categories were common in Korean western-style landscape painting and art photography of the 1920s, and continue to be seen to this day in Korean visual culture.     

'Mini small worlds' of shortest link paths crossing domain boundaries in an academic Web space

Summary Combining webometric and social network analytic approaches, this study developed a methodology to sample and identify Web links, pages, and sites that function as small-world connectors affecting short link distances along link paths between different topical domains in an academic Web space. The data set comprised 7669 subsites harvested from 109 UK universities. A novel corona-shaped Web graph model revealed reachability structures among the investigated subsites. Shortest link path netsfunctioned as investigable small-world link structures - 'mini small worlds' - generated by deliberate juxtaposition of topically dissimilar subsites. Indicative findings suggest that personal Web page authors and computer science subsites may be important small-world connectors across sites and topics in an academic Web space. Such connectors may counteract balkanization of the Web into insularities of disconnected and unreachable subpopulations.     

民俗艺术元素在非遗景区公共空间中的体验应用研究

目的以非遗景区为载体,研究民俗艺术元素在其中的保护传承和再开发。方法从民俗的表现性、体验性、传承性、特征性4个维度,对非遗景区环境中的民俗性表现进行分析,阐述民俗艺术与非遗景区的双重导向性,找到其内在的天然联系。结论以凤凰古城为例对民俗艺术空间进行体验应用设计,总结民俗艺术在非遗景区公共空间中的设计表达方式。通过对民俗艺术元素的再设计,探讨民俗艺术元素融入非遗景区公共空间的设计方法,构建保护传承民俗艺术的非遗景区体验空间。     

‘A Pointer for Beauty’: Photography,Ekphrasis, and the Aesthetics of Attention in Johannes Jaeger’s 1866 Photobook

This essay inquires into attention and detail as aesthetic categories in the nineteenth-century reception of photography in Scandinavia. It circles around what is generally considered to be Sweden’s first book with original photographs, Johannes Jaeger’s Molin’s Fountain in Photographs, with text (1866), read through two articles on the aesthetic potential of the photographic medium written by two contemporary Scandinavian art critics. In seven albumen print photographs, the book documents a fountain sculpture by Swedish sculptor Johan Peter Molin, exhibited at the first Scandinavian Art and Industrial Exhibition in 1866. However, the book also includes poetry; each photograph is juxtaposed with a poetic stanza that describes the part of the sculpture that the photograph reproduces. This paper studies the close relation between image and text in Jaeger’s volume. It argues that a contemporary view of the photographic image, also articulated by the Scandinavian art critics, can be discerned from the layout of the book – namely, that photography produces images too distractive and oversaturated with insignificant details to be aesthetically valuable. The visual and verbal framework for the photographs, then, arguably aims to overcompensate the distractive qualities of the image, by regulating the reader/viewer’s attention towards the sculpture and its significant details. In this ambition, Jaeger’s photobook anticipates a future aesthetic appreciation of the photograph in its own right.     

Sheida Soleimani,Cyborg: Photomontage in an Expanding Network

This article examines the photomontages, photo-sculptures, installations, and videos of contemporary artist Sheida Soleimani in light of earlier Dadaist practices. In particular, it focuses on similarities and differences between Soleimani’s work and that of Dada artists John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, and the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, demonstrating how Soleimani has evolved Dada photomontage and performance strategies in novel and important ways. Soleimani’s development of earlier avant-garde strategies with the help of digital technologies, I argue, proves the continuing relevance of photomontage today. In addition, it also reveals Soleimani’s interest in combining a Dadaist approach to photography, which – through photomontage – emphasizes the artist’s position as a social critic and commentator on reality, with a Surrealist attitude, one that mobilizes the indexical aspects of the photograph to disclose the uncanny and mysterious aspects of the world.     

能源文化广场在地性创意设计探索

“能源文化广场”作为我国第一项以当代能源工业建设为题材的大型文化广场设计,主要从空间文化样态、建筑景观造型和特质文化氛围营造等方面的创意思维入手,目的在于体现当代国际高科技能源工业文明语境下中国工业文化景观的在地性文化形象和品质。在方案设计的文化创意中,设计师运用在地性思想观念和环境艺术设计思维方法,通过对项目所在地的自然环境与人文历史两方面在地性要素的捕捉、归纳和分析,采用造型艺术和象征主义的手法,以实现后工业景观设计理念中对于人性的多维度关照,并为此做出了一系列大胆的探索。通过该项目设计实践和理论研究得出结论,在现代工业技术文明全球化的背景下,中国的工业文化景观同样存在着地域性文化属性和创意设计途径。     

青岛地铁公共艺术设计的文化可持续发展研究

目的 对青岛地铁文化建设、环境艺术设计、公共艺术设计可持续发展进行研究。方法 通过研究地铁站点环境设计、站内景观设计、地铁整体视觉导向及人性化设计的可持续发展,以及地铁文化建设公益设计等,探索具有可持续发展的地域文化和艺术设计形式。结论 差异也是价值所在,地铁公共空间艺术设计要实现文化的可持续发展,必须要寻找地域文化差异。只有保持差异,才能使地铁公共艺术设计的生命力承接城市文化,促进可持续发展城市建设。     

城市公共空间动态景观设计中创意编程的技术途径探究

目的探究如何利用创意编程进行动态景观设计。随着交互设计的发展,设计师们越来越重视用户的感受,景观设计也在逐步探索自身的功能性与交互性。方法通过分析智能交互景观的创新趋势,研究增加城市公共空间动态景观交互性的技术途径,利用创意编程设计出具有交互性的动态景观加以印证。结论创意编程的使用,为设计师提供了一种新的设计方式的选择,有助于设计出更具功能性与交互性的景观作品,丰富了城市公共空间动态景观的内容,满足了体验者更高层次的需求。     

The business of being an editor: Norman Lockyer,Macmillan and Company,and the editorship of Nature, 1869–1919

Broadly speaking, Victorian scientific periodicals fell into one of two categories: specialist periodicals aimed at publishing original research for an audience of scientific researchers, or popularizing periodicals meant to share news about science with a broader readership. When astronomer Norman Lockyer founded Nature in 1869, he envisioned his new weekly as a member of the latter group. That vision resulted partly from his own wish to raise science's profile in Great Britain and partly from the interests of his publisher Macmillan and Company, which bankrolled Nature with its eye on eventual profit. This paper shows that the pressure for Nature to be a financial success shaped Lockyer's approach to editing and thus shaped Nature's content, leading the magazine to occupy an unusual space in the landscape of Victorian science publishing and placing unique burdens on its editor. Nature quickly moved away from Lockyer's initial vision of a popularizing magazine and became known as a periodical by and for researchers. The magazine's popularity among scientific researchers set it apart from its closest inspiration, the commercial weekly Chemical News. But in contrast to contemporary editors at learned society journals, such as George Gabriel Stokes at the Philosophical Transactions, Lockyer did not linger over the scientific details of Nature's papers. Instead, articles for Nature were usually either accepted or rejected immediately, with little editorial involvement shaping their scientific content. The difference between editing Nature and editing other research periodicals is clearly visible in the selection of Richard Gregory as Lockyer's successor in 1919. Most research periodicals selected eminent men of science as their editors-in-chief. Gregory, a science writer and long-time subeditor at Nature, did not lend scientific prestige to the masthead, but was eminently qualified to maintain Nature's distinctive content and its profitability for Macmillan and Company.     

The History and Aesthetics of the Classical Film Still

Dealing with the film still of classical Hollywood films, this article traces the historical development of this photographic genre through an investigation of statements made by ‘stillmen’ in trade journals such as International Photographer throughout the 1930s and 1940s. In addition, the article discusses the aesthetics of the film still, which implies a specific kind of dealing with light, focus, narrative, time, temporality and the instantaneous. Finally, it investigates how these elements were taken up by some prominent contemporary art photographers and video artists.     

Photography in Australia: A select bibliography

Abstract

Olana, the extraordinary private home of American painter Frederic Church, perches high above the Hudson River, with commanding views of the Catskill Mountains and the verdant countryside, approximately 120 miles north of New York City (figure 1). Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), the internationally recognized painter of exotic locales and the North American landscape, lived much of his adult life at Olana, and it was here he retreated when arthritis curtailed his passion for world travel. Designed by architect Calvert Vaux in a Persian style, but in large measure created by Church, the house is architecturally eclectic, an exuberant physical manifestation of the artist's interests, beliefS and travels. Olana is also home to Church's personal collections offine art, books and photographs. Church assembled at Olana an art collection of fifty pieces (including old master paintings, art by his friends and contemporaries, as well as work of his own), a library of 1900 volumes (mainly travel, geography, science and religion), and a collection of approximately 5700 photographs. Although not a photographer himself, Church was an active collector of photographs throughout his life. This photograph collection, wellpreserved but only recently catalogued, and exhibited for the first time at the Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, is of compelling interest to historians of art and photography alike.     

新媒体语境下影像艺术的多元化表现

目的通过研究新媒体语境下影像艺术的多元化表现,探讨新媒体时代背景下影像艺术表现形式的多元化。方法针对新媒介对当代影像艺术产生的影响,包括真实与虚拟的完美再现、媒介交互对艺术表现力的提升以及新媒介对影像艺术的无界性推动等方面对影像艺术的多元化表现进行了分析,认识到媒介性是当代影像艺术的主要特征之一。新媒介的介入提升了人们的视觉互动体验,革新了人们对视觉图像的认识。结论新媒介的产生和发展,不仅改变了艺术家的创作理念、创作手段和创作方式,还拓宽了影像艺术在视觉艺术领域中的作用,对当代影像的发展提出了新的挑战,使影像艺术在数字时代背景下获得了更多的可能性和更大的发展空间,从而推动了影像艺术在新媒体语境下的多元化发展。     

Creating an inclusive and participatory way-finding canvas for All

The recent development of the Chinese visual culture has shown the coexistence and the combination of two major trends: a seamless development involving changes and innovation, and a clear break between a before, often not so distinctly defined, and a now. Here, we can find that the idea of a contemporary national identity, that can be detected in crafts, art, graphics, design, architecture, fashion, music, dance and so on, is going through a process of constant development and maturation. This article summarises and discusses the process and some of the outcomes of a three years research project with a Design for All approach (DfA), started at Tongji University, and which aimed at co-creating a way-finding system through an open platform towards a strategic inclusive approach in the college. Our goal has been to offer a structured canvas to the school for the professors, the students and the staff so they could freely experience it, interpret it and work on it while adding new layers relative to the all the various present and future projects: a participatory, transcultural, multisensorial, inclusive and autopoietic project, i.e. DfA in its core.     

公共艺术形态下的校园家具设计策略

目的研究公共艺术形态下的校园设施设计策略,结合校园文化活动的功能需求,在公共艺术与校园之间建立相互协调发展的机制。在与环境要素的协调交互下,带动人与产品、人与环境、人与社会之间的情感互动,实现校园文化环境共建。方法从校园家具的现状分析出发,将校园环境设施视为一个系统来考察研究。兼顾产品、景观、公共艺术等多个领域的内外部环境系统影响,分析公共艺术与校园环境设施的关联及可行性,推导得出设计策略。结论从校园家具的使用者及校园情境出发,从融合校园环境、结合校园文化、注重公众参与三个层面,探索公共艺术形态下的校园家具创新设计策略。塑造特色化校园文化景观,提升校园公共空间活力,发挥环境产品最大化的社会综合效益。     

The Snapchat Monteur? New Platforms for Photomontage

‘It is important to note that a photomontage need not necessarily be a montage of photos’, the Constructivist writer Sergei Tretiakov declared in 1936. ‘No’, he clarified; ‘It can be photo and text, photo and colour, photo and drawing’. In 2019, ‘photo and smartphone’ might also appear in Tretiakov’s list. The volatile image, filtered through applications and shared across shifting platforms, is far from a new phenomenon. Networks of photographic dissemination and manipulation, traceable to the medium’s origins, have long precluded the possibility of a still photograph. As digital processes abstract cutting and pasting from scissors and glue, avant-garde photomontage offers a useful model with which to regard today’s unprecedented fluidity of images.     

Citizen Photography in Fouad Elkoury’s Beyrouth Aller-Retour

This article examines Fouad Elkoury’s Beyrouth aller-retour[Beirut round-trip] (1984), a collection of black-and-white photographs taken during the civil war in Lebanon. Contrary to the images of death and destruction that circulated in the international media at the time, Elkoury’s photographs of Beirut focus on the survival of the inhabitants of a city in which “the future was always in the conditional.” The article argues that the images in Beyrouth aller-retour instantiate a set of civic relations that are otherwise foreclosed by urban warfare and the dominant news media representations that are complicit with its violence. As is shown, Elkoury’s unconventional take on street photography offers a space in which citizens appear in public, come before each other, and enter into forms of civic dialogue by means of images. This essay builds on recent theorizations of photography as a public art through which subjects exercise citizenship and negotiate the terms of collective life.