A Gust of Photo-Philia: Photography in the Art Museum

331 Pages·2021·17.74 MB·English

by  Alexandra Moschovi

A Gust of Photo-Philia
Photography in the Art Museum
Alexandra Moschovi
Leuven University Press
A Gust of Photo-Philia
Photography in the Art Museum
The Lieven Gevaert Series is a major series of substantial and inno-
vative books on photography. Launched in 2004, the Series takes into
account the ubiquitous presence of photography within modern cul-
ture and, in particular, the visual arts. At the forefront of contemporary
thinking on photography, the books offer new insights on the position
of the photographic medium within art historical, theoretical, social
and institutional contexts.
The Series is produced by the Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for
Photography, Art and Visual Culture (www.lievengevaertcentre.be)
and covers four types of approaches: publication of outstanding mono-
graphic studies, proceedings of international conferences, book length
projects with artists, translations and republications of classic material.
The Lieven Gevaert Series is published by Leuven University Press,
and distributed in North America by Cornell University Press.
A Gust of Photo-Philia
Photography in the Art Museum
Alexandra Moschovi
Leuven University Press

To Alex and Andromache

Contents
Preface 9
Acknowledgments 12
Introduction 15
A Foot in the Museum’s Door 17
A Gust of Photo-Philia 22
The Question of the Medium 28
The Structure of the Book 36
1. Photography Itself 39
What is “Camera Esthetics”? 41
A “Universal” Language 46
Photography Itself 52
“More Than One Photography” 67
New Stories of Modern Art 73
Navigating an “Ocean of Images” 78
2. The Art(s) of Photography 91
Art Education for “All Classes” 93
A Collection for the Art of Photography 99
Between Form and Function 106
Toward the “Bigger Picture” 112
Pluralism and Participation 124
3. Art as Photography, Photography as Art 138
Art as Photography 139
The Unique Original Copy 145
Who’s Afraid of Contemporary Art? 152
A Photo-Philic Turn 157
Embracing the Vernacular 162
Photographies and Histories 167
Engaging New Audiences 176
4. Postmedia Pictures 182
A “Postmedia” Collection in the Making 184
A Global Museum 191
Hybrid Images 199
Accommodating the “Polymorphous” Photographic 202
A New Poetics of the Photographic Image 213
5. Between Images 220
Photography and the French State 223
A Postmodern Museum 227
A Collection for the Nation 234
Episode 1: Plasticity and Hybridity 239
Episode 2: Passages Between Media 248
Episode 3: What is (Museum) Photography After All? 256
Postscript 266
Notes 276
Bibliography 294
Preface
The idea behind this book goes back a long time, to the mid-1990s when,
as a photography practitioner, curator, and viewer, I witnessed first-
hand the tensions between the hybridization of practices and media in
artists’ photography and creative explorations of the medium itself by
photographers. In 1996 I found myself in London pursuing postgradu-
ate studies at Goldsmiths College. The same tensions informed the de-
partmental segregation in British academic institutions, whereby pho-
tography as image and communication was taught in Communications
departments, while photography as a strand of the visual arts was
integrated into Fine Arts programs. This ambiguous position of pho-
tography largely prevailed in British art institutions, too. The Tate
Gallery at Millbank did not include photography in the displays of its
permanent collection, though Tate Liverpool had organized Witness:
Photoworks from the Collection in 1995, and English a rtist Craigie
Horsfield made the shortlist of the 1996 Turner Prize with his evoca-
tive black-and-white portraits. That same year, the Hayward Gallery at
South Bank was showing a touring retrospective of American photo-
grapher Robert Mapplethorpe, albeit with the controversial photo-
graph Rosie, which featured frontal nudity of a little girl, censored. In
the west of London, the Victoria and Albert Museum was the last stop
of the grand European tour of American Photography 1890–1965 from
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by the newly appointed
Director of MoMA’s Department of Photography, Peter Galassi. The
Photographers’ Gallery inaugurated the Citibank Photography Prize
at the beginning of 1997 with the young artist Richard Billingham.
Billingham’s photographic work Ray’s a Laugh would feature, along
with those of photo-based artists Gillian Wearing and Sam Taylor-
Wood, in the exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi
Gallery at the Royal Academy in London later that year.
On the other side of the Channel, the exhibition La photographie
contemporaine en France, which was staged at the Centre Georges
Pompidou in Paris, also in 1996, offered visitors an eclectic view of con-
temporary trends. Bernard Plossu’s and Yves Guillot’s black-and-white
photographs that registered the flux of life were juxtaposed with Tom
Preface 9