PROPOSED
TITLE: Has Deadpan Photography changed throughout
the years? OR
Deadpan Photography: Why so popular
today? (CHOOSE ONE)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC AREA:
The topic area that I have chosen to write my essay about is
Deadpan Photography. I am going to explore further into how the ‘deadpan’ image
came around and why it is so popular today, also why we can see it staying in
photography for a long period of time. The
style that dated back to the art world approach of the Dusseldorf School of
Photographers, which included members Bernd and Hilla Becher, Thomas Struth and
Thomas Ruff, has had some hugely impressive work come from the school,
including a lot of what would be considered ‘deadpan’ image’s due to the time
photography was going though. The
deadpan image is not just one of a person, but can also be architecture,
landscape and even still life, but one genre of photography that has definitely
used deadpan, and more commonly now, is fashion photography, with the likes of
Juergen Teller creating imagery with such neutral flat expressions of the
‘blank fashion-model look’ that fills magazines, billboards, television and the
Internet. The fashion photography deadpan look is something that I will include
within research to see the differences between what would be a fashion deadpan
look, to a documentary portrait.
Deadpan photography originates from a style of recording
documents only, presenting evidence or specimens, study types, structures and
forms, and yet it has progressed throughout many years, travelling through art
and on to photography. Neutral expressions and head-on compositions have become
very popular and the ‘expressionless’ image today is something we see almost
daily. So, why is ‘deadpan’ so popular at the moment? Maybe its because that
through many digital manipulation imagery that is in today’s world, we no
longer trust the truth of a documented image, and by having a deadpan manner
that takes away the answer of the image, leaves us thinking about how posed
photography can change our thoughts from one to another.
According to Charlotte Cotton in her book, ‘The photograph
as Contemporary Art’, she calls the deadpan aesthetic, ‘a cool, detached and
keenly sharp type of photography’. Meaning that the deadpan look is
dispassionate, not bias and that there are so much left inside the image that
can be revealed by a viewer. What I am going to look for within my research
towards this essay is how the different types of deadpan photography can be so
completely different but include the same purposes at the same time. How there
is historical sites, landscapes, portraits, industrial sites, street and social
and architectural deadpan images yet they all reach to some of the same
purposes of, for example, to set the stage for questions to be asked, to record
a document, to remove the rhetoric or persuasion that can influence the
audience and to show a ‘changing world’.
Images that I have looked and researched about before in
previous projects include the work from Rineke Dijkstra and Yann Gross whose
work really interests me, and work from Alec Soth and August Sander. Each in their own completely different but
all have similarities in certain series to the certain style of ‘deadpan’. By
using the different works from different artists and photographers, I plan to
unveil some sort of meaning behind what deadpan is, and what I think it does in
the photography world today.
So, are all deadpan images the same? Do they still have a
purpose like they were once made for? Will they always be as popular as they
are now? Questions that may seem like they have no answers, but to everyone’s
opinion, the ‘deadpan’ images are worldwide and I would like to take a detailed
journey through how they have developed.
(Word Count: 607)
Identify the Resources you will need to
complete your work: Library, Viewing, Images etc.
There are not too many resources that I will need to be able
to complete my essay but the ones I do need should hopefully be easy to access
and easy to use for my work. For my
practical side towards this module there will obviously be more resources needed,
but will include these resources too. The
most Important source for my research towards my essay will be the University
Library. I will use the Library to looks
for books that include Deadpan photography but also key texts about popular
artists and photographers that shoot in that particular style. The second most important source for me is
the Internet, where I will be able to access online blogs, articles and
books. I will also be using my Visit to
galleries as my sources for my essay as there are a lot of works that I have
seen that can help me within my research.
Images will be sourced from anywhere that I will see inspiration or
ideas but mainly from any books / articles that I find.
Do a library search and identify KEY TEXTS/BOOKS and/or ARTICLES.
- Boston.com; Article
‘Here’s Looking at You’
By Greg Cook, Globe Correspondent /
November 4, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2007/11/04/heres_looking_at_you/?page=full
- The Telegraph; Article
‘The new passion for Deadpan’
By Sebastian Smee, Citibank Prize,
February 11, 2003
- Mary Pearson Blog; Article
‘Deadpan Photography’
By Mary Pearson, December 2, 2012
- Book 1
‘The Pleasures of Good Photographs’
2010
Essays By Gerry Badger
- Book 2
‘Photography after Conceptual Art’
2010
Edited By Diarmuid Costello &
Margaret Iversen
Chapter 3, Photography and the
Deadpan
- Book 3
‘The Body in Contemporary Art’ 2009
By Sally O’Reilly, Thames &
Hudson, world of art
- Nightworkers; Article
‘Deadpan Photography’
By Karen Hope, April 5, 2010
- Book 4
Water Towers 1931-2007
Bernd Becher, Hilla Becher
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press 1988
- Book 5
‘Positions in the Life World’
Martha Rosler; M Zegher; Ikon
Gallery
Birmingham, England: Ikon Gallery
- Book 6
‘American Prospects: Photography’
Joel Sternfeld; Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston
San Francisco; Chronicle Books 1994
- Cotton,
Charlotte (2009)
‘The Photograph as
Contemporary Art: New Edition’
London: Thames and
Hudson
- Vinegar, Aaron
(2009)
‘Ed Ruscha,
Heidegger, and Deadpan Photography’
Art History
Magazine, Volume 32, Issue 5, Association of Art Historians 2010
CCCU
Library Search
Joel Sternfeld, ‘First Pictures’ 2011.
Location; Broadstairs, 779.092 STE(OS)
Kevin D. Moore, ‘Starburst: Color photography in America’
1970-1980
Location; Broadstairs, 778.60973 MOO
Alec Soth, ‘From here to there: Alec Soth’s America, Walker
Art Center, Minneapolis’
Location; Broadstairs, 779 SOT
Rineke Dijkstra, ‘Rineke Dijkstra: Portraits’ 2004
Location; Broadstairs, 779.2092 DIJ(OS)
August Sander, ‘August Sander: Photographs from the J. Paul
Getty Museum’ 2000
Location; Broadstairs, 770.92 SAN
List the KEY PHOTOGRAPHIC TEXTS you will need.
IMPORTANT - if you have a
problem getting hold of resources from within the University are there
alternative sources? LIST THEM.
All of the Key Photographic Texts that I will use within and
for my essay will be sourced from the lists above of the books, articles and
Internet pages that I have researched. I
have looked at resources within the University and have done a Library search
to find key texts that will help me in my essay. My lists from above do not just have
resources from the University but also alternative sources, journals, articles
and Internet blog pages that I have found on the Internet.
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