Photography in Art Museums

Photography in Art Museums

Considering my previous post, Documenting Life, it is curious to see how both major and minor art galleries are reacting to increasing photography within institutions. 

“You are fighting an uphill battle if you restrict,” says Nina Simon, director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History and author of The Participatory Museum. “Even in the most locked-down spaces, people will still take pictures and you’ll still find a million of these images online. So why not support it in an open way that’s constructive and embraces the public?”

Mike Kelley – Mobile Homestead

It will be interesting to watch how Mike Kelley’s posthumous Mobile Homestead is used by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Whether, in Kelley’s own words, it will become “a pleasure that is forced upon a public that, in most cases, finds no pleasure in it” or a community arts hub successfully utilised by MOCAD and the people of Detroit.

Glass Box Design

There is nothing I would prefer to living in a glass box.  Not just any glass box, but an international style, sleek glass box between planes made out of beautiful wood.

My first venture into architectural history occurred when I came across Le Corbusier.  Despite his obviously strong and somewhat futurist views towards tradition and the systematic destruction of Paris, Corbusier’s work inspired in me a love of architecture that I will never shake.  International style, with its sleek lines and glass curtain walls, exemplifies the combined practicality of architecture with simple style that can be manipulated through decor.

For those who are interested in historical architectural theory, the structure above shows us the tangible basics for Le Corbusier’s theories of building.  During 1914-15 Le Corbusier designed the Domino House (below), a design that could be manipulated by the owner or builder to create a structure for almost any purpose.  Using new materials such as steel frames and concrete floors, this design utilised pilotis to hold the above floors allowing curtain walls made out of any materials the builders or owners desired.

The real life Domino House, with the staircases on the right side of the structure, can be found outside of Angkor Wat in the Siem Reap province of Cambodia.  As one of the fundamentals of all modern and International Style architecture the influence of Le Corbusier’s design is more far reaching than I had expected. But this is not surprising as the century old design is so versatile that it can be applied in any environment, a low cost housing solution to a multitude of issues due to increasing populations.

In its simplicity the Domino House design has influenced so many beautiful buildings since. From Le Corbusier’s later works to Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe and Philip Johnson, the Domino House appeared as a new model for building that continues to be used today.

Documenting life

Photography has become one of the principle devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation.

Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977.

If only Sontag could see us now. Thirty-six years later and with not only the personal (now digital) camera but the camera-phone/ipad and the ability to instantly publicise our experiences and that which we participate in. While she establishes that cameras equalise all events that can be photographed, I wonder what she would think now. Today we cannot go anywhere without taking a photo to remember the event. Whether it be something as everyday as a meal or actual sightseeing there is no end to the amount of photos taken to prove that the photographer participated it what is now an event.

In my opinion the worst example of this participatory photography is by those at a museum or gallery who briskly walk around photographing art works to prove that they saw them. Most often the works are ones that are recognised as important/famous because they have been used in popular culture or are involved in some kind of controversy. Many also photograph works they think are amusing or grotesque – not aesthetically pleasing, interesting or that speak to them on an artistic level. After visiting MoMA in New York over the Summer on a free friday afternoon, myself and my friend had to leave due to the thousands upon thousands of people who were there partaking in this very activity. Admittedly, I wouldn’t want to visit any museum at its peak visiting time, but the amount of visitors in the contemporary exhibition taking photos of Ai Wei Wei’s work and ignoring everything else was extraordinary.

Laura Owsianka, Happy Snap iPad Tourist at the Louvre, Paris, 2012

On a recent trip to Europe my good friend and photographer Laura Owsianka took many of these Thomas Struth-like photos of museum visitors. The main difference between Owsianka’s work and that of Struth’s Museum works (1989-2001) is the visitor using their camera to record their experience of viewing art. By doing this they are also experiencing these works through the camera.

This process of the amateur photographer capturing everything they see has consequences. If we equalise all events through taking photos of them rather than experiencing them ourselves then our experiences will lose meaning all together. When we see art we will only have the second hand experience of viewing each piece. As well, each work is now seen not how the curator wanted us to view the work but in our own incidental, cropped view. If we visit new and foreign attractions our first instinct is to take a photo, but it is the times when no photos are taken that we are able to fully experience. And yes, we won’t have any physical proof or reminders that we did those things but in reality the experiences will change us as people and we will remember.
I’m not saying don’t take photos. There is no way we cannot. It is now in our instinct. Even Sontag realised that in 1977. But experience first, document later.

On Photography…

One of the very first artists I recall from my first 16-year-old forays into art history was Cindy Sherman. In this particular media class we were discussing Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and our teacher introduced us to Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills as an approach to the assessment – recreating moments and tensions from the film. This was probably the introduction to the arts that most tempted me towards art history.

As a fully fledged art history student I now see the impact photography has had on me. Always considered a lesser art form or a second class citizen, photography continues to develop and find ever reaching legitimacy. We now have a whole generation of art historians, critics, academics and artists who have been raised in a society that legitimises photography as a high art form and celebrates those who create it as high art producers. High schools now include photography as a form of art education that everyone can take part in to realise their talent. And maybe most incredibly we are introduced to Sherman and her contemporaries as artists and not simply as photographers.

I have just begun researching for a paper that I have tentatively titled How Critics and Collectors Helped Legitimise Photography and already I am beginning to realise how historically I view this issue. Even now photographers are still often seen as sub par artists, called photographers and not artists, regardless of high art institutions showing their acceptance of photgraphy in their collecting practices.

I have an excellent supervisor for this paper who, as a photographer of 40 plus years himself, has given me great insight in this process of legitimisation. Among other things he has gifted to me 10s of readings and papers he has been collecting since he began teaching at UCSD in the 1970s. The first of these papers that I have read has been Who Rules the Art World? by Carol Duncan (prolific art historian and critic).  I wanted to include this excerpt because it really moved me when I read it. I often have trouble writing about why I feel like I do about art and I feel like here Duncan gives some insight into how art affects those who are invested in it. As Duncan states: the educated and affluent.

Above all, it is they who are free to transcend the conflicts of everyday life. And no other group is better prepared educationally and by situation to understand and respond to the visual cues of modernism. It is to the elect and the many who identify with it that modern art delivers its spiritual load. Modernism gives comfort to worn and troubled minds. Sealed off from the horrors of daily life – the unsettling events on the nightly news, the danger, disorder and pollution in the world outside outside and feelings of loneliness and alienation within – modernist art reconciles us to modern life by showing us a realm of calm, resolution, and order. Modernist art redeems the spirit, confirms its existence, and provides a safe place for the exercise of emotions.

I do not recall the name of the teacher from this media class but she undoubtably impacted me through her teaching of the art education curriculum. It is because of her that I have Cindy Sherman and the accompanying views that are unique to my generation about the legitimacy of photography.

James Franco Does Cindy Sherman