“Baudrillard speaks about veritable bombardment of images and signs as causing an inward collapse of meaning where reality is entirely constructed through forms of mass-media feedback where values are determined by consumer demand.”[1]

We now live in the midst of a visual culture, or the culture of images—that is what many cultural thinkers often say. Indeed, our daily lives cannot be removed away from the onslaught of images through the advertisement boards, mass media, televisions, films, and the Internet. The significance of the visual aspect in our lives is obvious in the popularity enjoyed by visual culture analysis. In truth, our contemporary culture is increasingly shaped by and depends on its visual aspect. This also affects the contemporary patterns of human perceptions and communications. It turns out, however, that such onslaught of images also trains us to “ignore” the bombardment of myriad images. Is it not true that without any certain interest we never truly pay attention to the images around us? Often, we neither know nor care about the meanings behind the deluge of images, just as Jonathan E. Schroeder explains:

“We live in a visual information culture. In no other time in history has there been such an exploitation of visual images. And yet we seem to pay little attention to them, we do not always ‘understand’ them, and most of us are largely unaware of the power they have in our lives, in society, and how they function to provide most of our information about the world.”[2]

In truth, it is difficult for us to consume and absorb these images steadily. In line with Schroeder’s explanation, Anne Celine Jaeger writes:

“Moreover, in an era of endless print media, on-demand TV viewing, mobile-phone photography and advertising campaigns tailored to the individual, our eyes have become so accustomed to the daily onslaught of images, that we are no longer able to look at them with discerning eye.”[3]

One of the most important elements that have shaped our visual culture is photography. We must admit how our lives today cannot be separated from photography. We can say that our daily lives and even our attitudes have been shaped by photography, through its various derivatives and applications. Photography affects human experience: it directs how humans see the world, what they want to see, how they imagine something, and how they think about their identity. Photography also encapsulates the activity of consumption: it informs, directs, communicates, lures, enchants—and it offers creative ways to influence the consumer’s experience.[4] However, photography is often misunderstood. In our history, the modern humans readily accepted photography as a part of the modern culture, as Schroeder again clarifies:

“Photography is the greatest image producer the world has seen; an information technology that unhinged objects from place, revolutionized identity, and continues to shape the world we live in spectacular–yet often misunderstood and unreflected upon—ways.[5]

Indeed, one cannot deny the fact that photography has played a significant role in the production of images within the visual culture. Furthermore, the technological progress in digital photography has accelerated and therefore given rise to new possibilities in photography and its application. By using the digital technology, photography has brought about a new paradigm of representation, as Margot Lovejoy states:

“Photographic technologies acted as underlying structure for the evolution of nineteenth- and twentieth-century visual culture. However, digitization has superseded and subsumed them, in completely new paradigm for representation.”[6]

Photography in the Digital Era

“The digital revolution has impacted us in ways that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago, causing some to ask not ‘is this art?’ but ‘Is this photography?”[7]

There was a time when photography was considered as an “honest” and straightforward representation of reality. Photography was seen as “telling the truth”, it presented neither lies nor mere illusions, unlike artwork, especially paintings. It was believed that photography honestly captured the reality through the lens, just as our eyes perceived the reality of the world. Roland Barthes once wrote that a picture was “that which has been”, as the photograph convinced us that what we saw in it had been there in reality. Photography is an index to reality: “…the photograph, through its indexical relationship to a subject before the lens, is a kind of proof of that subject’s existence.”[8] Similarly, photography is often seen as a form of “universal language” that can go beyond any cultural barriers and be understood by anyone anywhere.[9] However, photography’s credibility, “honesty”, and neutrality have long been disputed. A picture is nevertheless a medium whose appearance can be manipulated, as Terry Barrett explains:

“Examples of manipulations of photographs prior to digital technology are plentiful in the history of photography. Manipulations of two kinds are available: altering the subject matter before photographing it to suit the photographer’s purpose, and distorting photographic negatives or print after the initial exposure has been made.”[10]

This is especially true in the digital era, when we are never certain about the authenticity of photography. We know how easy it is to manipulate the photograph on computer using the image-manipulating software. It has been proven that in the last decade, the digital technology has been playing a significant role in the production of images. Automatically, the digital media also provides art with a new perspective, as Lovejoy describes:

“Digital media have catalyzed new perspectives on art, affecting the way artists see, think, and work and the ways in which their productions are distributed and communicated.”[11]

The Contemporary Art-Photography

“Most contemporary artists use the medium of photography because it is a language of our time.”[12]

In her well-known essay, “Photography after Art Photography”, Abigail Solomon-Godeau differentiates between photography in the context of postmodernism and the previous art photography:

“The generic distinction I am attempting to draw between photographic use in postmodernism and art photography lies in the former’s potential for institutional and/or representational critique, analysis, or address, and the latter’s deep-seated inability to acknowledge any need even to think about such matters.”[13]

What Solomon-Godeau explains shows the difference between art photography that adopts the modernist principles, and photography in the era of postmodern and contemporary art. The difference is critical. While in the early twentieth century, the issue of photography was how it could be accepted as an art form; in the twentieth century we have our doubts about the possibilities and boundaries of photography itself. Andy Grunberg explains it thus:

“If the issue for photography at the beginning of the century was whether the medium could be art, the issue it faces at the end of the twentieth century is whether photography can ever again be wholly itself.”[14]

Art photography in the modern era clearly adopted the principles of modernist aesthetics. It is interesting how art photography that adopted the modernist principles used as its point of reference the “purity” of the medium. In other words, photography must be about photography, just as Clement Greenberg defends the abstract painting as painting about painting. Szarkowski, defender of modernist art-photography, stated that the question “is that photography achieves the status of art when it refers to its own capabilities and traditions.”[15] Meanwhile, art-photography in the postmodern era takes the opposite direction:

They do so based not on the characteristics that appealed to Modernists—descriptiveness, objectivity, clarity, fixity, singularity—but on their Postmodernist counterparts—allusiveness, stereotypically, abundance, excess, mystery. It is in this sense that photography has been fundamentally and irrevocably redefined over the past twenty years.[16]

That is why it is quite difficult today to define what art photography is, or perhaps we no longer need a rigid definition, just as the contemporary artists process a variety of possibilities for photography. The convergence spurred by digitalization further obscures the boundaries between photography, video, and film, all of which involve lens-based image-making devices.

“Pop art, with its fascination for vernacular representation of popular, capitalist culture, and Conceptual art, with its interest in systems of information and signs, would conspire to create an atmosphere in which hybrid practices, not pure ones, prevailed. Photographs, those omnipresent, seemingly inescapable products of cultural information—as well as their allied forms of lens-based image making, film and video—would become part and parcel of contemporary art.”[17]

It is often difficult to tell apart works of contemporary art-photography and new media that take advantage of the digital technology, from images that we encounter on a daily basis such as the billboards, banners, advertisements, video clips, etc. Art-photography, therefore, still constitutes a difficult-to-map realm, just as Susan Bright has said:

“Photography is constantly changing and hard to define. Its discursive and somewhat promiscuous nature has tended to confuse many people as to its status and value as an art form.”[18]

Images that the artists produce represent the intended construction of meaning. The position of the artist as the party that questions, represents, and takes issue with the dominance of the visual images in the contemporary culture becomes relevant because they make use of the modes and codes that agree with the visual culture. In this sense, we can say that artists who use photography—and all its possible derivatives—are artists who are most-closely related with matters of image production and consumption of today.

We can treat all kinds of image as representational text, but artwork has a distinct quality. Often, the images of art photography are no different from the advertisement images. Artwork, however, is viewed differently because, as it has been said before, there is an agreement about artwork’s being the construction of the artist’s awareness in questioning and criticizing the aspects of the culture. In comparing artwork with advertisements, Tony Schirato and Jen Webb explain: “Art is assigned a cultural value that advertisement lacks, so it attracts a long, slow gaze, while adverts are there for the sweeping glance only.”[19] That is why in the West, one can say that the art of photography has become a dominant player in the contemporary art realm. Susan Bright thus explains:

“We are now at a point where challenges to photography’s status have been exhausted, and it goes without saying that it can be art. Its high-profile presence in contemporary exhibitions at major international art museum signals its importance, as does its ever increasing market value.”[20]

John Berger, a famous photo-theoretician, once said: “Yet when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions about art.”[21] In relation with art photography, “art” and “photography” are two issues with uncertain boundaries. Is it not true that the contemporary art, with its creeds of anything goes, pluralism, and the end of art, precisely shows the disappearing trust in the meanings and limitations of the contemporary art? Similarly, talking about photography will bring us to two opposing poles, between the attitudes of common sense that believes how photography is a “visual truth” that records reality just as it is, and, on the opposite extreme, the belief that we can no longer trust photography, especially in the digital era with its penchant for simulations of images.

Since its inception, photography has always impacted the fine art tradition. Similarly, at the time when the conceptual and pop artists make use of photography, there emerges a crisis of representation in the contemporary art. Margot Lovejoy writes:

“The incorporation of mass culture and photography into the fine arts by the Pop movement, in tandem with the use in the arts of new forms of electronic representation, marks the moment of major crisis for representation.”[22]

Crash Project: Image Factory

The invitation to take part in the Crash Project exhibition might very well be considered as an inconsiderate invitation for the artists involved. From the title, it is clear that the exhibition has been prepared in a rush—deliberately so. Each participating artist is asked to prepare his or her work in no more than two weeks—and added to this was a request from the curator for the work to be new, although this was not obligatory. One of the strengths of the medium of photography—compared with the conventional media such as paintings and sculptures—is the speed in which the artist can produce the images. Naturally, works of art photography do not have to be, and are not necessarily, made in a short time, especially when it comes to the aspect of preparing and maturing the concept. Like other artists, the photo-artists also need time and experience to prepare, develop, and execute their ideas.

In this exhibition, artists are given a challenge to work quickly, using any theme. The invited artists can also present works other than photography, as long as these works are still related to photography or digital media such as video, computer art, and others. Exhibition participants, for example the artists from the MES 56 community (Agung Nugroho, Anang Saptoto, Akiq AW, Angki Purbandono, Edwin Roseno, Jim Allen Abel, and Wimo Ambala Bayang) and ruangrupa (Ade Darmawan, Julia Sarisetiati, Indra Ameng, Reza Afisina, Mateus Bondan, Henry Foundation, Oom Leo, and Hafiz) are artists whose experience and commitment in art photography and multimedia art are indubitable. Similarly, photo-artists such as Indra Leonardi, Davy Linggar, Agan Harahap, Deden Durahman, Tromarama group, and other artists in this exhibition have contributed greatly to the development of the contemporary art photography.

I am naturally happy that most invited artists or photographers have been willing to participate, although with understandable grumbles—due to the short time given for them to prepare their works. Certainly, it is not my intention to simplify or belittle art photography, as if it could be randomly prepared. I believe that the photographers who create art photography, or the artists who use photography in this exhibition, have more than adequate experience with the medium, whether in terms of the technique or the issues that they have so far conveyed through their works. In other words, I trust them to be able to prepare their works in two-week time. Of course, some people might consider my reasoning to be inaccurate.

In Indonesia, works of art with unconventional appearance or media are generally difficult to accept and understood as works of art by the lay audience. That is why works of photographic images, especially those with digital bases, have not been adequately accepted and welcomed in the Indonesian art world. It is easy to guess that this has to do with the presumption of how easy it is to “produce” works of photography. Furthermore, photographic images are easy to find in our lives, in the mass media, advertisements, and photo albums. “The trouble is that it lends itself to many varied uses,”[23] said Susan Bright about the range of uses of photography in our lives. On the other hand, the popularity and various uses of photography or lens-based images are precisely their strength and potentials in the contemporary art.

This exhibition indeed displays works of photography that deviate from the works of art photography in the modernist sense. Works in this exhibition show the kind of photography that is only loosely bound to the principles of photography—and in some aspects they even clash with these principles.

As I have mentioned before, photography and all its derivatives have been accepted as a part of the contemporary art—this is no longer an issue. In the world of contemporary art in the West, we can even say that photography plays a dominant role. Should we then consider the definitive restrictions about what art photography is—as well as its derivative? To me, it depends on the artists themselves. Observing the works displayed in this exhibition, however, it is clearly difficult to determine the definition of art photography. It is clear from the works presented here that what we call ‘art photography’ is very fluid. As long as the artist still sees its connection with photography, the work becomes art photography. Several works also show that the photography itself does not necessarily have to be the artist’s independent creation. The contemporary artists often make use of found images.

From the title, “Crash Project: Image Factory”, it is not immediately clear that this is an exhibition of photographic works. This exhibition, however, has been held with the intention to talk about photography within the framework of the contemporary art. Not all the works presented in this exhibition can be categorized as works of photography. There are several video works that cannot be immediately considered as works of photography. In reality, the digital technology has created a convergence between moving images, still images, and sounds within the same database.

Automatically, this exhibition does not appear like a conventional exhibition of art photography. Several artists even deliberately move away from the conventional art photography. Perhaps, to borrow Naville Wakefield’s term, this exhibition also presents works that subscribe to the creed of “aesthetic of disappointment” and do not concern themselves with categories:

“Art tends to begin where categories fail, and in many ways it is the failure of photography as a discretionary medium that makes it attractive to artists today. Bad photography now reigns. It has become our adult comedy action drama of ontological failures. It makes for good art at a time when good photography witnesses only the flow of technical virtuosity into addictive banality.”[24]

Of course this exhibition does not wish to map and read hastily the development of art photography in Indonesia, but at least we can view it as an effort to discuss the possibilities for art photography within the world of the Indonesian contemporary art. The works in this exhibition do not talk about the issue of photography qua photography. In this exhibition, photography is an instrument for a more specific end goal. That is why the photographs in this exhibition can even harm themselves by appearing unlike conventional photographs. The photographs in this exhibition are free to collaborate with texts, other materials, become books, to be present in the multi-media formats, etc. In short, it thoroughly depends on the artists to direct the possibilities of photography to produce images—as well as its impossibilities, in which case it might be difficult to consider the works as works of photography. Schroeders says, “Yet photography is relatively invisible—we take for granted that most of our information about the world is delivered to us via photography in forms of still pictures, television, film, video, and Webpage design.”[25] That is why this exhibition does not only present photography in the form of photographs, but also videos, found images, and other objects related with photography and images.

It is expected that works of photography in this exhibition can generate certain awareness among the public about the conditions and risks of the dominance of images in the contemporary culture—which has generally been dictated by capitalism. It is fitting for the photography artists to be at the forefront and create the awareness among the public about the various issues in the contemporary culture that tends to be controlled by the hegemony of images.

The main issue of this exhibition is naturally that of the visual culture, in which photography is one of the most significant agents. There are ranges of motifs for the artists to use photography—or for the photographers to create artwork—but most of the works of photography in this exhibition have been produced to provide us with signs about the onslaught of images, with a range of interests and motifs. “Crash Project: Image Factory” reflects the issues of the visual culture itself.

John Berger writes,

“…but all images, including photographs, involve a way of seeing by the person who has created the image. Further, when we look at someone else’s images, our understanding of it depends on our way of seeing.”[26]

I therefore leave it to the audience to signify and judge the works—of images—in this exhibition. The audience’s ways of seeing are formed by the different experiences, perceptions, and motifs of the respective members of the audience. I do not wish to restrict the audience within the limits of the meanings that the artists have created. You are free to assign your own meanings to the works on display in this exhibition.

Asmudjo Jono Irianto

___________________________
Notes:

[1] Margot Lovejoy, Digital Currents, Art in The Electronic Age, New York: Routledge, 2005, p. 8

[2] Jonathan E. Schroeder, Visual Consumption, London: Routledge, 2002, p. 3.

[3] Anne Celine Jaeger, Image Makers, Image Takers, New York: Thames and Hudson Inc., 2007, p. 6.

[4] Ibid, p. 67

[5] Schroeder, op.cit., p. 44.

[6] Lovejoy, op.cit., p. 157.

[7] Susan Bright, Art Photography Now, New York: Aperture Foundation, 2005, p. 8.

[8] Jennifer Blessing, “Notes on the sacred in Contemporary Art,” in Veronica’s Revenge, editor: Elizabeth Janus, London: Thames and Hudson, 1998, p. 148.

[9] Terry Barret, Why is that Art? Aesthetics and Criticism of Contemporary Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p 46-47

[10] Ibid, p 48.

[11] Ibid, preliminary.

[12] Marion Lambert, “On Revenge, Art, Artists, and Collecting,” in Veronica’s Revenge, editor: Elizabeth Janus, London: Thames and Hudson, 1998, p. 23.

[13] Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Photography after Art Photography,” in Art after Modernism: Rethinking Representation, editor: Brian Wallis, New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art.

[14] Andy Grunberg, “Art and Photography, Photography and Art: Across the Modernist Membrane,” in Veronica’s Revenge, editor: Elizabeth Janus, London: Thames and Hudson, 1998, p. 52.

[15] Ibid, p. 43.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid, p. 44.

[18] Bright, op.cit. p. 7.

[19] Tony Schirato and Jen Webb, Reading the Visual, Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2004, p. 106.

[20] Bright, op.cit, p. 8.

[21] John Berger, Ways of Seeing, London: Penguin Books, 1981, p. 3.

[22] Lovejoy, op.cit. p. 6.

[23] Ibid, p. 7

[24] Neville Wakefield, “Second-hand Daylight: An Aesthetic of Disappointment” in Veronica’s Revenge, editor: Elizabeth Janus, London: Thames and Hudson, 1998, p. 240.

[25] Schroeder, op.cit., p. 67.

[26] Ashley la Grange, Basic Critical Theory for Photographers, Oxford: Linacre House, 2005, p. 2.