Dave Bush (Professor at Bard)

Viviane Sassen (Currently on view at the MoMA)

“William’s work in relation to an act of deconstruction: it seeks to expose that which is undisclosed. It draws attention to the photograph as a cultural and social construction. It destabilizes meaning by revealing multiple and conflicting meanings. It brings to light that which was previously hidden, overlooked, or suppressed. William’s practice exposes photography’s repressions.”

Freud’s topic of repression is seen in the meanings of art according to Wyse. Photographic repression refers to the aspects of the art or photograph itself that are overlooked when observing the “meaning” in the work. Meaning is often just seen on the surface as the subject and the positioning of the work, but there are many deeper levels to the work that relate to topics in society and the culture of the people. An example of this is the relevance of corn in photography. Corn by-products are used in almost all products employed in photography and therefore when photographing an ear of corn there is much more meaning than what is seen on the surface. The deeper meanings are repressed until an artist like Williams comes along and exposes the undisclosed.

“Photographic meaning is never transparent”, but it may take a certain set of eyes or photographic intelligence to be able to come to certain conclusions about the art. This is the downfall of the neurotic in art. Wyse addresses the difficulty of the neurotic in displaying his art for public interpretation, but the real struggle is in hearing the interpretations of the mass public and that which is published by critiques. The true photographer must expose their desire in their work and allow for their love of the photograph to show through. Some meanings will always be lost in new interpretations of the work, but if the desire is present the true meaning will at least show through.

One side of me thought that Gary Gross was somewhat demented in creating the photographers he did. I thought that because, he was exploiting a young girl by sexually objectifying her. I also didn’t find the picture’s stylistic to my liking. Secondly, I was also split in my ideology, and thought of photographing someone else’s photo and calling it yours as being despicable. Youth exploitation, and art theft where the two subjects that were talked about in the article, and I was unable to hold one stance in both arguments. I was unable to answer the question, are these acts wrong?

Like I have explained previously, Yes it is wrong to make young, innocent youth as a sex symbol, and yes it is wrong to take someone else’s art and call it yours, but at the same time the other side of the argument was not heard. Artist have freedoms, and those freedoms are not limited as long as the subject consents in being a subject. Not to say I agree with child pornography, but the photo was taken as an art piece and not as pornography and ,therefore, Gary Gross should not be battered as being an evil artist. Art doesn’t have boundaries as long as it is not being inhuman and harmful. For example, Killing someone for the sake of art. Gary Gross as an artist has freedom to express his artistic view in anyway he wishes as long as it doesn’t implement harm. His motive in taking the picture was to “bring out the women in a child”. This notion might bring sickening feel to people reading it or hearing it, but we don’t think that when pornographers take pictures of women and sexually objectify them, that once in their life they used to be someone else’s little girl. I am not saying that was Gross’s first thought, but I am say we should look at that aspect as well. When doing more research I found a woman named Jane Feldman,who managed the studio on Broadway when the photographs were taken, and she said, “Garry saw it as art,” she said. “It’s an exploration, but it was done with great respect,” she added. “Yes, it’s intriguing, it’s provocative.”

When talking about art theft enacted by Richard Prince, in main stream photography perspective we can say that it was stolen art, but what does it mean to steal an art piece? If I walk outside,nicely frame a tree, take a photograph, and the next morning another person takes the same photo, do I have the right to say they stole my art piece, and that they should be able to do that? No! I don’t own the tree and how it looks, and in the same way, if someone scans or rephotographs my pictures, I can’t assert they stole my photo. But I am allowed to make the assertion that the photographer is not creative, but he is original in a sense that it hasn’t been done before. But the problem was (going back to artist’s limitation) Richard was the one that played the most important role in sexually objectifying Brooke, and made her stand as a sex symbol when the photos were distributed to playboy (which was not Garry’s idea but was blamed for it). Did Richard steal the photos? That is a question hard to answer in my point of view, because it holds with it the philosophy of morality, and that is a big subject to uncover.

Ed Ruscha while photographing 'Every Building on the Sunset Strip'

ASX