In summary:
Sander's seven archetypal categories fitted his purpose in terms of filing and grouping; at the same time as suiting a very sensitive and dynamically changing Germany. The "Last People" is undoubtedly the most telling, unfortunately, it is possible to imaging the Nazi's reviewing Sander's images of these people whilst looking to round up their next victims. In terms of categorisation, I would suggest that they were probably flexible enough for Sander's alter as required, particularity when you consider the sub-categorisations within.
The exercise asks us to make comparisons with contemporary artists such as Zed Nelson. Nelson's categories focus upon employment or hobbies and whilst fox hunting is controversial its less offensive than the 'last people'. The style of imagery is very similar, an individual or small group in their uniforms but removed from their environment and thus decontextualised. The variation in engagement between the sitter and the photographers appear to be about the same.
Referring back to exercise 17 and Meadow's bus trip, its interesting to think that his most successful images and those that were revived, were the ones of people taken in front of a blank wall. Perhaps context is genuinely only of use when the viewer has an ability to fully understand that context. I'm not exactly sure what this means about our ability to deconstruct images - perhaps denotation is in and connotation is out...
No comments:
Post a Comment