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Anonymous File :-(, x)
>>284974 >>285118
This. There's lots of stuff ("This random urinal is ART! Because I says it is!") that was good and useful to make in its sociohistorical context, and maybe (often) even still great, but if you're doing it now you're being dumb.
Nudes (or urinals) aren't necessarily this; big generalizations are only useful up to a point. But it has to be more than it used to. Jörg Colberg wrote recently on his blog that he thinks the conventions of classical photojournalism have become stale and that's why immensely good works aren't having a broader political impact, which I'm not sure I agree with but it's a sound thesis. Like that. Nudes are definitely stale; I mean, the last time they shocked anyone, anyone was Robert Mapplethorpe, and he had to put a bullwhip up his ass for that. Which doesn't mean that people shouldn't do nudes, or employ the conventions of nude photography, just that they have to expect a cool reaction unless they go the extra mile in awesomeness and creativity, and they have to count on the shock attention-grab value of the work just not being there. It is true that an image of (say) a starving African doesn't shock us anymore, even if it overwhelms or moves us. The same is true of nudes; you could do a photographic recreation of L'Origine du monde and print it eight feet on a side and it'd be just another big large format nude, whereas when it was first painted L'Origine was groundbreaking. Not that it's a bad painting- it's great and hugely erotic- or that the photographic equivalent would be a bad photograph, but it wouldn't be the same thing it was.
Erwitt pic related to the discussion.
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