Cotton Chapter 7 Summary

In chapter 7 of Charlotte Cotton’s The Photograph as Contemporary Art, entitled “Revived and Remade,” the author explores the idea of postmodernism within photography. This idea presents photographs as images that are dependent on the viewer’s previous understanding of social and cultural symbols. These photographers rely on a context much bigger than the photograph itself—the images created by these photographers acquire significance from external sources. In this way, the photograph acts as a mediator between viewer and culture, enabling the viewer to expand what he/she sees to include their knowledge of cultural coding and signs. Cotton provides examples of how postmodern photographers have revived historical photographic techniques or created archives of photographs. In doing this, the photographers allow the viewer to gaze into the past as well as connect history to the present. One photographer mentioned includes American artist Cindy Sherman, whose photographs appropriate and speak about various generic types of visual images. An example of archival photography is The Atlas Project made by Lebanese artist Walid Ra’ad, in which a fictionalized account of a historian is presented as real.