•Peter Galassi - chief curator of photography at MOMA NYC.
•Blake Stimson - teaches art history and critical theory at UC Davis.
•Joel Snyder - professor and chair of the Dept. of Art History University of Chicago.
•Douglass Nickel - Andrea B. Rosenthal professor of modern art at Brown University. Curator of photography at SFMOMA for 10 years.
•Vince Aletti - former art editor and photography critic for the Village Voice.
•Corey Keller - associate curator for photography at SFMOMA.
•Philip-Lorca deCorcia - exhibited art photographer (noted for his series Heads) and chief critic for the graduate school at Yale.
The panel opens with an acknowledgment that "the question is a blunt instrument" that's intentionally vague and deliberately open to interpretation. They purposely used the word "over" instead of "dead." They also state up front that they didn't form the panel and ask the question because they thought that the answer was "Yes." They set it up because they felt it was an important question to ask and be discussed. The core of what they intended to get at was: if there's something over in photography, what is it and, by extension, does it even matter (that thing, not photography, though one could certainly have an opinion on either)?
People interested in the event and the panelists had to address the question and while digital photography was touched upon, it was not a central theme. In other words, it was not about this tired notion of "The digitalization of photography is killing photography." I'm glad it didn't go there. Joel Snyder (a man whose outlook I disagreed with in many ways; something I'll come back to later) did a good job of making a case for the digital process within photography as it relates to art. As an art history professor, he references how in the early days of photography it was always references as "mechanical" which was a way of speaking to the fact that it was reproductive in nature and it was only reproducing something that was actually there, it required no artistic talent and could be done by any button-pusher and/or a person who understood the chemistry aspects of it. He goes on to touch on some early aspects of photographs as art was the literal cutting and pasting method but the photo itself was very much a matter of reproducing or documenting art instead of being it.
The way he wraps it up is to point out that we are now at a point where the photographer as an artist can manipulate photographs as never before and that the photo is now a canvas for the photographer's vision. As someone who resisted a conversion to digital photography (I'd like to say that I've just made it a part of my workflow but I haven't shot film for about 3 years; I don't rule it out shooting 120 again, since I can scan for free here at SCAD) because it "didn't give me the images I composed in my head" it was reassuring to hear that from someone who I'd assume on the surface would be dismissive of the digital process. I've had pretty heated discussions with people on how there should be some sort of separation in this world of image-making, where there are photographers on one side and "digital artists" on another, as if the latter category through the use of computer tools are no longer allowed to use the word "photographer" to refer to themselves. Personally I think that's a.) crazy because it's b.) beside the point.
I really liked diCorcia's outlook the most, general-speaking. While I consider myself an intellectual, a lot of the panel's discussion could be viewed as overly cerebral, so I enjoyed his candor. At one point, Joel Snyder is going on about how what photography has lost is this quality he noted when he was young: how in going to a gallery, all the photographs which were there showed us something new/innovative about photography. Now, by contrast, the photos which go up are just aesthetically please, I guess. Part of me wants to dismiss that as the classic "Things we're better back in my day and this generation does nothing new or imaginative." talk. diCorcia counters that with "You're saying the first man who rubbed two sticks together made fire and everyone else is a bunch of pyromaniacs." Or, in my interpretation, photographer's in Snyder's younger days were innovating (like the first man with fire) and apparently now everyone's compelled to use what they did to do something destructive (like pyros).
At any rate, it's a good watch if you have an hour. Part two of day one is more interesting but some really good discussion in part one.
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