Part 1 Beauty and the Sublime: Exercise 1.2: Photography in the museum or in the gallery?

Exercise 1.2: Photography in the museum or in the gallery?

For this exercise we are asked to read Rosalind Krauss’s essay:

 ‘Photography’s Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View’.

and then summarise Krauss’s key points in your learning log (in note form) and add any comments or reflections.

The essay was first published in 1982
 http://dm.postmediumcritique.org/Krauss_PhotographysDiscursiveSpaces.pdf

A quick wiki search and review of Rosalind Krauss describes as"an American art critic, art theorist and a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Krauss is known for her scholarship in 20th-century painting, sculpture and photography."

I think it important to understand a small element of her to enable me to have a better understanding of her essay which I'm asked to comment on. 

Her wiki link is detailed below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_E._Krauss

Key Notes

• Her comparison of the original and lithograph Ufa Domes, Pyramid Lake, Nevada  image describes how the mystery and texture is lost in the copy. I wonder how much of the original image was created by the deficiencies of the photographic process of the time and to what extent the original reveals the true vision of Timothy O'Sullivan

• The Ufa Domes contrast with flattened landscape "fashion" that changed from 1860 where images may have been preferred where they "voided" perspective. This presentation method may have been deemed more suitable to presentation in an exhibition where the size of the image enabled viewers to feel the image as being part of the exhibition wall and its impact better for it and the image given a "grounding" because of it. This Krauss suggests legitimises the image. Is this legitimacy deemed because it modelled the painting style of that time?

• Krauss describes the contrasting images; the deep perspective of Samuel Bourne's A Road Lined with Poplars, Kashmi, to Auguste Salzmann's Jerusalem, The Temple Wall

• Regardless of the image being viewable, its position remains the same - its on a wall. However the location its viewable in Klauss suggest may signify its inclusion or exclusion as an item of art e.g. gallery display signifies its art

• However in another breath Klaus claims that the term artist should only be applicable if the person producing the art has served some kind of apprenticeship. This then becomes an interesting statement since in my view anyone producing art of any kind should be considered an artist. I think her reference to an apprenticeship, or perhaps degree in photography, working in the photographic industry etc. so that the artist understands the genre and style to which they maybe working in and how their work fits in with the style of others and specific periods of times. Some may call these "isms", others could refer to them as the fashion of the time and fitting into to style or approach that is larger than the artist them self.  My view on this is the question...who starts off a photographic style, an ism, a fashion

• Klauss also describes, not sure if it applies now, but when she wrote the article she was against the desire of some to attempt to classify 19th century photographic images to specific and more commonly understand genres of photography, of historical art and challenges the reasons for doing this. Of course the question is really how did the photographer intend their work to be, was it in isolation, was it in understanding of the genres, was it in the creation of a new one. Like O' Sullivan's work,she questions if this was produced for critique in the art is sometimes produced, or perhaps for scientific analysis

My Reflection

My view of the discussion points made in Klauss's paper could only ever be answered by the artist them self. Today's modern media world easily allows the artists intention to be confirmed, and an ism to which they may try to insert the images in, and to associate their work and understand how it fits in among other artists work and styles. I see no problem in reflective / historical insertion of work into a genre, and really the genre it fits into is either obvious or simply an individual view. 

In terms of Klauss's paper its unnecessarily complicated and she takes a long time to express a simple view and to evidence her views. I enjoyed her explanations of O' Sullivan's Tufa Domes but I did not enjoy reading her argument. This could of course be my lack of understanding and perhaps a requirement myself to undergo a Photographic apprenticeship of some kind but I think communication is an enabler of a message or view to be shared by someone with someone else. If its made exclusive what purpose does it serve? Perhaps its make the author appear exclusive and her understanding beyond that of the average person. The theme of the point is there but I felt its hard to unravel and therefore not meant to be understood by a wide audience. perhaps that in itself was an exclusive"ism" present at the time this paper was written.

So where should photography be displayed, the museum or the gallery? Wherever it gets the greatest viewing, either critical or analytical since both of these are subject to interpretation whether informed or uninformed; the gallery perhaps the fashionable, the museum more reflective