Well the typologies show is up and running. I wanted to write something about it but in the end I didn't want to direct people too much in their reading of the show.
So instead I decided to write something over here.
The whole purpose of the typologies show was to see how far the limits of that genre of photography have been stretched and whether or not it is still a valuable and critical tool for contemporary photography. Now I am no rocket scientist, but I do know that the definition of a typology lies more in the hand of the artists who want to work with it than it does in some dictionary. Like a ball of clay, it can be molded and formed by the artist into a million different things.
I tried not to give to much of a definition of what it was in the call for work because I knew that the artists who think they are working with it would know what it was. It was a whole case of the the "if you have to ask, you'll never know." I received a wide range of entries. Some sent in many different varieties. I picked three as the number because, well it is the magic number, and also because it is enough to get the idea without being overwhelming and due to constriction size of a website.
I tried to arrange it in a manner that flowed, but to be honest the work covered such a wide variety that it was quite impossible. But that very problem got me thinking about the wide range and instead I decided to focus on that range. Everything from portraits to landscapes. Even performance was represented.
Now I know the typology has come a long way. Even before the Bechers. The typology, before it was even defined, was used for racial and social profiling in the 1800's. At the time, physiognomy and phrenology were quite popular as science. Scientists would use the photograph to define characteristics of criminals and try to predetermine the facial structures that could predict certain sorts of social misfits. While in the end, the experiments turned out to be a failure, the typology became a part of photography.
In the end, I felt like the typology has become almost a gimmick. Not that there aren't good typologies out there, there are, but from the amount of entries I received and the overall quality, I wonder if artists use it as a guaranteed way of being taken more seriously? I can remember going through school and seeing these pop up quite often in critiques.
I still think the typology is a viable tool for contemporary artists. We just need to learn to move the dialogue and the genre forward. It like most things in contemporary art suffers from a staleness.
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Throughout history artists have often come back to the same theme, a singular idea of paradise. Where does it exist and how to capture it has been tackled by painters and photographers alike. Think of Casper David Friedrich's "Monk by the Sea" or "Wanderer Above the Mists". Look at Ansel Adam's "Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake, Denali National Park" or any one of the half million photographs that now exist of Antelope Canyon. Artists are obsessed with paradise. We all do it. We can't help it.
National Geographic’s latest book Visions of Paradise tackles this very theme and offers exactly what you have come to expect photographically over the years. Geographic employs some of the most talented photographers in the world and they have the photographs to prove it. The list of names goes on and on, from documentary photographers to photographers who are considered fine art by most.
This book is in essence, a conglomeration of many different ideas of paradise. A simple idea, yet one that delves into varying complexities. Each photographer was asked to provide their own ideas of paradise, some were sheer beauty, some more spiritual. In the end one wonders if it is possible for there to ever be a singular and spectacular paradise. I, for one, have never been a firm believer in a single paradise. If it existed, everyone else would be there.
The book is divided into three different sections; land, water, and air. While I sometimes appreciate having lines drawn for me, in some places during the book it makes the photos seem rather redundant. Each section has an introduction written on the theme, though the intros are thought provoking and meaningful recitations on the current situation of the planet, they seem to be incongruous with the photos and the theme of the book.
What is most interesting to me about this book is that approximately 80 photographers were asked to share their vision of paradise and very few images of cities exist within the book. Everyone has a vision of paradise but according to the images, very few of us live there. What seems to make up paradise is a lack of people, a lightly treaded upon wilderness. Does this mean that our existence in great numbers negates the vision of paradise? After thumbing through this book one would begin to believe that this is the case. Maybe in the end our vision of paradise is still biblical in nature.
National Geographic has always been to me a purveyor of the unaltered image. They have begun to break from that stance ever so slightly and include images that, while are not heavily Photoshopped by any means, are moving into the realm of not being a “straight documentary image”. Colby Caldwell’s image St. Mary’s City, Maryland, is an image with the appearance of being taken by a plastic camera. The photo is listed as being an inkjet print mounted and hand waxed on wood panel. Caldwell is quoted, “heaven is in the process of making photography”. While I wouldn’t expect Geographic to take this sort of photographic approach on a story in the magazine, I do applaud them for finding a place for something different.
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