Beyond Photography: Persistence of the Photographic in Contemporary Art
Friday, January 17, 2014, at 18:30
Concordia University, EV-1.605
Clifford Owens, Photographs with an Audience (Houston), Hold no. 1 and no. 2 (detail). 2 C-prints, 20 x 24” (each), 2011. Courtesy the artist.
Lucy Soutter
Critical and Historical Studies, Royal College of Art
This lecture will consider works of art that combine photographic elements with aspects of painting, sculpture, video, performance, audience participation and installation, pointing to an expanded field or post-medium condition for photography. Examples include works by Walead Beshty, Rachel Harrison, Clifford Owens, and JR. While the separation between photography and other art forms may have eroded, the photographic endures as a set of specific reference points and conceptual strategies as well as technologies and forms. This talk argues for the continuing relevance of photographic ideas within the broader arena of contemporary art and offers some speculations about the future of photography as art.
Lucy Soutter is an artist, critic, and art historian. She teaches in the Department of Critical and Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art and has written about contemporary art and photography for publications including Afterimage, Source, Frieze, and Aperture. Her essays have appeared in anthologies including Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art (Intellect, 2011), and Appropriation (Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2009). Her book Why Art Photography? (Routledge 2013) provides a lively, accessible introduction to key debates at the heart of contemporary photography.
