Helmut Newton claimed to be a feminist and denied that he made women look absurd or objectified. Running counter to the aims of feminism when women are its subject, objectification, a process, is described as a ‘narrowing of sexual responsiveness’ by Andrea Dworkin in her book ‘Pornography’; it involves disregard for all but a surface, procurable quality when seeking gratification, hence ‘narrowing’. Of course, if a photograph is gratifying it must be objectifying because a photograph is necessarily an object, incapable as it is of providing more than an inanimate image of a person. Thus the question need simply be ‘is the image (of a woman) gratifying?’ If so, it runs counter to the aims of feminism; I would love to be disabused of this apparently logical idea, to see the provision I have missed, for it seems to put an instinct within me at odds with feminism when I have no real desire to be. Is it enough to treat women as women and photographs of women as photographs? What, then, if you are a photographer?

Reading

Helmut Newton a perverse romantic Life and style The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2001/may/05/weekend.lindsaybaker

‘Pornography’ by Andrea Dworkin

After seeing the Deutsche Börse Prize in the fibrous paper flesh, my first reaction was that there was indeed enough straight photography in it; perhaps I was primed, after the reading I had done before my visit. Only Thomas Demand’s work seemed to be caught between sculpture and photography. With the others, enough of the act seemed to be around the pressing of the button.

I would like to see Roe Ethridge or Jim Goldberg win. A couple of emoting faces afloat in seas of almost jet black interior settings sold me on Goldberg; his work was comprised of little pieces so great in number that I could imagine most viewers finding one or two that they liked. Sometimes the scrawled annotations had the semblance of a beautiful patina, sometimes they appeared less natural; I enjoyed the different scripts in their, mainly, felt-pen characteristics.

An en pointe shot of dancers legs sticks in the memory from Ethridge’s work – the beautifully done crosshatched scores to the exposed soles of their shoes in particular; I had been wondering what was gained from the gallery exhibition of his images over their publication in Vice et al until I saw that detail nice and large. All in all, a thought provoking selection with not more misses than hits.

Postmodern. adj. Pertaining to other than that following the modern; the postmodern reacts against it. That which is classical or traditional may be incorporated, if it is incorporated with an awareness that has gone through modernism. More obvious attributes, than ‘historical quotation’, are ‘loud colours, bold patterns’ and ‘a good degree of wit’, according to a newspaper report anticipating the V&A’s autumn exhibition entitled ‘Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990’. The report proffers its definition with mutterings of the thorniness and trickiness of composing such a thing, before stating ‘some people even consider it a term of abuse’.

Before my recent, attempted demolition of the argument that photography is not art, I fessed up to its straw construction; as if, with the confession out the way, the spectacle could still be. Perhaps I was even hasty. Some would have the Deutsche Börse prize be the new battleground. The fight now seems to be a modern/postmodern analogue, if not that thing exactly, with a particular genre of photography, more postmodern than modern, finding favour with members of the art crowd and the shortlist draughtsman, to the exclusion of other genres. The prize’s catalogue glorifies those “reexamining the photographic medium" in ways such as Thomas Demand’s, who recreates pictures by rebuilding the subjects in folded paper before photographing those builds himself. It might seem, therefore, to be concentrating on the arduousness of arriving at a representation, which I argued should not be the be all and end all of art. I shall endeavor to view the exhibition now before wading any further.

Reading:

Postmodernism London's V&A museum attempts a definition Art and design The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/feb/28/postmodernism-retrospective-london-v-and-a

Deutsche Börse When is contemporary photography not photography Art and design guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/06/deutsche-borse-prize-photographers-gallery

Do the Deutsche Börse prize jury really get photography Sean O'Hagan Art and design guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/dec/02/deutsche-borse-prize-conceptual

PAUL GRAHAM The Unreasonable Apple (2010)
http://www.americansuburbx.com/2010/03/theory-paul-graham-unreasonable-apple.html