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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.

On Photography Summary

        In Susan Sontag’s “On Photography,” the author examines photography as an art form, as well as the various places and roles it has taken up throughout its history. At first, photography belonged only to a select few—those inventors and experts who could operate the unusual contraptions that were the first cameras. However, technology has evolved in such a way that now photography has come into its own as an art form, but also has become something practiced by the masses as a social tool. In the latter area, Sontag describes how photography is used in tourism, as well as within the familial setting, as a way of memorializing and chronicling life and experience. Sontag writes on the power of photography, of how it provides most of the knowledge people have of the past and the present, acting as slices of time and space that are miniatures of reality. Photographs, while on the one hand are seen to be accurate portrayals of reality, still maintain an ability to act as interpretations of the world, the same as paintings and drawings. The world has become crowded with images—of suffering, horror, momentous events, or everyday life—and in the process, the world seems far more accessible than it truly is.

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