In a follow up to discussion on the Richard prince post, Struan Gray linked to this body of work: Iconic Moments of the Twentieth Century .
I like the somewhat subversive use of humour. A couple of tatsers (click the little forward > arrow there to view):
"The series of photographs entitled The Iconic Moments of the 20th Century emerged in the processual work with the pensioners in a home for the elderly in Glasgow emanates the same impression. A group of aged volunteers pose in their everyday outfits and in their daily environment (the vicinity of the Home) to re-enact the scenes from well-known newspaper photographs taken from history books and encyclopaedias. The images in question depict ‘historical moments’ that took place in their lifetime: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference during the World War II, the Napalm Attack and the killing a Vietcong from the Vietnam War, or the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, which was depicted live on a TV programme. Each of these images represents an immediately recognisable cultural leitmotif of its époque, the representation that overshadows the event it documents."
(P.S. - on Prince's work - and his comments on thinking the original adverts didn't really have an author - as copy photographs of 2D artwork aren't generally protected by copyright, his photographs could very well be in the Public Domain... something to think about...)
3 comments:
for me this is altogether different from what i've come to think of as the richard prince/copystand work. (If i could get through the week without hearing about the Newsweek/Is Art Dead article; Richard Prince; and Annie Leibovitz I would be one happy camper). This work uses different subjects, which bear no resemblance (for the most part) with the originals, and relies on our collective understanding to fix meaning to the recreated symbols. I find it wickedly clever.
Susana, apart from the concept of "re-photographing" something in the broadest terms, I posted these because the are very different - and to my mind, infinitely better the the Prince work.
And I promise to ignore the Is Photography Dead article (or should that be are articles about the demise of photography a dead horse) - I've been resisting all week...
gotcha. well done.
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