Category Archives: Criticism

Tagg on Documentary photography

February 15, 2013

“Documentary is not documentation. While documentary practice may have traded rhetorically with the quasi-scientifc techniques of nineteenth-century documentation, it no longer functioned as a jealously guarded technical discourse produced by experts for experts. While the authority of documentary may have… Continue reading →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Art, Criticism, Photography, Theory, Thought

Mauron on Mallarmé

February 8, 2013

“All who remember the day when first they looked into the Poems or the Divagations will testify to that curious feeling of exclusion which put them, in the face of a text written with their words (and moreover, as they could somehow… Continue reading →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Art, Criticism, Poetry, Thought Tags , , , , , ,

Steiner on Art

February 1, 2013

“Whatever enriches the adult imagination, whatever complicates consciousness and thus corrodes the clichés of daily reflex, is a high moral act. Art is privileged, indeed obliged, to perform this act; it is the live current which splinters and regroups the… Continue reading →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Art, Criticism, Photography, Poetry, Thought

Cavell on Photography

February 1, 2013

“To say that photographs lie implies that they might tell the truth; but the beauty of their nature is exactly to say nothing, neither to lie nor not to. Then what purpose may be served, or disguised, in attempting to… Continue reading →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Art, Criticism, Photography, Theory, Thought Tags , , , , ,

Sante on photography

December 29, 2012

“Sometimes, looking at these cards, you come upon a picture that makes you feel as if its maker had just discovered photography, had made it up by himself from scratch. The American real photo postcard is a laboratory for the… Continue reading →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Art, Criticism, Photography, Thought Tags , , , ,

Adams on Form

December 29, 2012

“Why is Form beautiful? Because, I think, it helps us to meet our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and that therefore our suffering is without meaning. James Dickey was right when he asked, rhetorically, “What is… Continue reading →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Art, Criticism, Photography, Thought Tags , , , ,

Banham on landscape and legacy

November 23, 2012

“We have become so paranoid about our capacity to spoil and despoil that we are unwilling to look with honest eyes at what we have wrought upon our deserts, especially those almost domestic deserts of the Southwest that were once… Continue reading →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Art, Criticism, Photography, Politics, Thought Tags , , , , , , , , , , ,

O’Sullivan & Adams

November 23, 2012

“We know, as we recognize the commonness of places, that this is our world and the the photographer has not cheated on his way to his affirmation of meaning.” — Robert Adams, “In The Nineteenth-Century West”, Why People Photograph Photograph: Timothy O’Sullivan, Sand Dunes,… Continue reading →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Art, Criticism, Photography Tags , , , , ,

W.J.T. Mitchell on the image

September 16, 2012

If the stakes seem a bit lower in asking what images are today, it is not because they have lost their power over us, and certainly not because their nature is now clearly understood. It is a commonplace of modern… Continue reading →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Art, Criticism, Photography, Poetry, Theory, Thought Tags , , , , , , , , ,

Hampl on Looking

September 16, 2012

“[My father] liked to look across the river, watch for Canada geese rising in formation over the great flyway. He appreciated a muddle of pastel light and mist across the wide water. He knew how to bow his head to… Continue reading →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Art, Criticism, Photography, Thought Tags , , , , , , , ,