... from the struggle of photography for autonomy ...
through the digital ... and the spectacular ... into LIFE
Maja Škerbot

If we were to follow the current legal interpretation determining the commercial treatment of photography in Germany, photography would still not be recognised as an autonomous form of art. In a country which has as one of larger European states for centuries co-shaped the so-called western system and western history of visual arts, photography is still ascribed a tax rate equal to that of – for instance – cars, yachts, massage chairs and all sorts of cosmetic anointments, and not the 7 per cent tax rate ascribed to food products, books and all other art media which have enjoyed recognition for centuries. Where to look for reasons behind such outdated legal provisions, when today one would be hard pressed to find a person claiming that photography is not an integral part of the visual arts and as such an art product? Nowhere else but in the history of the photographic medium itself. In particular it is necessary to understand the nature of its first steps as it became renowned as an optical-mechanical invention and had to walk a long way before it irrevocably wrestled from the other, so–called classical art media, the status of a independent form of artistic expression.

Classical painting was the form of art which has for decades felt particularly threatened by photography, regardless of the fact – or perhaps just because – photography has since its prehistoric stages (camera obscura [1] ) been of tremendous assistance to painting. Painting refused to grant to photography an independent status in the field of visual arts. It may well be that the inventors of photography in the first half of the19th century were not so much concerned with photography being taken for a form of art. Perhaps it really was science and technology that lay at the heart of their enthusiasm. But nevertheless their efforts were channelled toward the one goal which was to transfer the visible reality onto a solid platform (glass) – a goal towards which camera obscura has provoked for centuries. Written correspondence reveals that certain individuals like the Niepce brothers managed to achieve this goal through the usage of photosensitive stuffs (stuffs sensitive to light) as early as in the 1820s. The official birth of photography, however, dates to the year 1839, when in Paris dagerotyping (after Louis Jacques Daguerr) was proclaimed public property [2] . No doubt that the initial stages of photography were concerned with reproducing the reality.

It is crucial to observe that in painting, the 19th century was the period of realism. With the advent of photography, painting thus gained a competitor. This makes it easier to understand why painters and their supporters felt under threat. The older brother simply wanted to claim what was his. Taking into account, however, that competition fosters quality, is it safe to say that in their evolution, painting and photography have been an ideal and enriching counterpart to one another. The struggles between the two have ceased and artists on both sides as well as theoreticians now recognise the fact that both media have their own aesthetic and expressive values which in combination as well in collaboration with other contemporary visual media are ideal in their complementarity and capable of producing brilliant artistic statements.

The emancipation of photography becomes apparent also in the fact that photography has undergone a similar evolutionary process as all other classical media. The mid-nineteenth century realism „was merely one of the coats in which a medium could clothe itself“ [3] . Already the photographers from this period consciously tried to part with, go beyond or build upon the realist concept of photography. The efforts progressed in the photographic production of the 20th–century modernism. Let us recall the futuristic photo dynamism of A.G. Bragaglia who integrated in a visual experiment the sensory and spiritual levels of perceiving the visible reality. And then there are the dadaist photographs in which the final descent into the „inner“ laboratory becomes apparent (C. Schad, M. Ray, G. Grosz, J. Harfield, R. Hausmann, H. Hoch and others). Finally there is the surrealist photographic production of Brassaio, H. Cartier-Bresson, M. Ernst, A. Kertesz, M. Ray and others who went even deeper into the spiritual and introduced dream images and the subconscious into the pictorial depot. These photographic works of art from the first three decades of the 20th century speak to the fact that by then photography has became emancipated from ist original burden of realist tradition and became autonomous as a medium of artistic expression which, in turn, completed the separation of photography from „nature“ and integration into „culture“ [4] .

If not before, photography definitely became a medium of expression in its own right with the modernist photographic production, expressly concerned with its own subject. In this way, photography experienced a strikingly similar evolutionary path as all other forms of art known in the western system of visual arts. Since the 1960s, when artistic styles to the tune of 'isms' cease to be, photography as well as other art media face a freedom of pluralism, to draw on one of the central concepts in the theories of philosopher and critic A. C. Danto [5] . Art becomes a reflection of individual expression and conveys numerous ideas that excite the artist – ideas that are socially critical and deal with problems relevant to many different fields of human activity.

Before we move on to focus our thoughts onto the content of photographic language, let us wrap up the brief evolutionary overview of photography as an independent and particular medium completely. Having agreed upon the fact that photography is an autonomous form of artistic expression, some conservative thinker may draw our attention to the final threatening fact that at the turn of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century, analogue photography lost to digital photography. The era of classic photography as a chemical image – an image created by lighting conditions at the moment when the photographic lenses captures the external reality which is then later on transferred to a platform – is over. This, however, is not tantamount to artists quitting the use of this technology in their creative efforts. Photography will continue to excite with its particular technique and possibilities, especially in the modern world that is so prominently characterised by plurality and appreciates quality as part of originality beyond all else. It will be quality that will determine the new, so-called digital era of photographic production. Everything created digitally is certainly not artistic and will not be treated as such. But as it has become apparent in the case of analogue photography, some digitally created photographic works of art will sooner or later become commonly accepted as icons of their time and then turn into mainstream. They will no longer represent originality and we may not even notice them anymore. A new era will dawn, perhaps marked with technological progress. Let us recall MMS photography. Perhaps this is the way of the future. Perhaps not.

Let us now continue with the content of visual language while not forgetting the media, particularly their „impurity“. Consumers of visual art today welcome particularly those modes of expression that convey their subject in a spectacular fashion. This is a fact. Spectacularity is a broad concept with an implicit notion of self-negation, referring in particular to the spectacularity of the pure, meaning that which is reduced to the minimum, something which oftentimes becomes manifest in the formal language. And is it not photography with its specific characteristics such as reproduction, composition, manipulation, conceptualisation, mixing with other media and techniques, to name but a few, that is ideally suited for the creation of visual messages that aim to touch their audiences in a spectacular way? Spectacular in all of its dimensions. Perhaps it is precisely in the name of the spectacular that media-mixing emerges (photography and painting, photography and installation, photography and performance and installation, photography and sculpturing an dinstallation, photography and video, photography and print ... there exists an infinite number of such combinations). But certainly mixed techniques emerge in order to transmit the treatment of problems in a clearer fashion. An increase in mixed-technique is also due to our desire for more good artwork, spectacular or not. And one more thing. What could be more spectacular than LIFE itself?

The aim of the exhibition at hand is to engage in a close examination of life. Life can be varied, terribly boring, or merry, terrified, optimistic, happy, unusual, horrific, disgusting, chilling, funny, easy-going, wonderful, bright, dreamy, soft ... oh, what a wide field life really is. Is it limited only to the organic realm? As one of custodians of this exhibition, my focus was on the human being. Human being, living his or her life as something quite special, whether this be known to him or her or not. Human being, seeking and finding pleasure in the small things of everyday life. Human being, who changes the course of history, whether he or she wants to or not. Human being, doing his or her best to adapt to (political) change. Human being, going with the flow of history or against it. Human being, who is special and feels the need to express this to others. Human being, who simply by being is the creator of histories great and small. Human being, so small which paradoxically makes him or her a great HUMAN BEING. I hope that my colleagues and I along with the selected artists and their works of art have succeeded to demonstrate these qualities of the human existence in a special, definitely very eclectic way.'