There was much information offered in this essay on contemporary photography, yet the information was not easy to interpret. George Barker makes the vivid point that contemporary photography and art of today always seem to “focus on an object in crisis, or in severe transformation.” This idea goes along with the conceptual topic of postmodernism and how photography was changing during this time and continues to change today. I find the exact definition of postmodernism hard to comprehend because there are many elements that make it complete. The basic meaning I receive from postmodernism is that the focus and purpose of a photograph is continually being altered as time goes on, and postmodernism is a common stage for photography. Barker claims that traces of traditional photography are no longer apparent as evidence of it once being a popular artistic practice.
Barker brings up an interesting and very important topic concerning photography in which he argues that if the exact object and purpose of photography today is getting blurred, it is our job to discover what this field of photography means in order to understand why it is important today. Why do we care about photography at all? This topic is again jumping back to earlier discussions that we have semi-covered in class but didn’t necessarily resolve. These topics covered and related to the meaning of photography and basic but often boring questions of why it is important and subjects similar to this. Overall, I think Barker has a very interesting perspective and take on contemporary photography. At certain moments in the text although, the tone of the essay seems a little angry about the fact that photography has come to this point and has succumbed to this stage in art. This was a difficult essay to get through and I made my best attempt to understand Barker’s message.
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