Expert's Eye: T.J. Demos on Contemporary Photography

T.J. Demos on Contemporary Photography

Photo courtesy Phaidon

T.J. Demos, "Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography"

Photo courtesy Murray Guy

Matthew Buckingham, "New Amsterdam" (2003)

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Demos is currently a lecturer in the History of Art department at University College, London. In addition to his expertise in photography, he has written widely on modern and contemporary art, and his next book, The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp (MIT Press), will be published in March 2007.

He spoke with ArtInfo from his London office, and we invited him to cast his expert eye over the whole field of contemporary photography.

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On why so many contemporary artists are working with photography:

I think that the insistent presence of photography in artistic practices owes to the fact that [in general] photography is a dominant medium today—particularly as it relates to globalization—and there are a number of reasons behind this.

It’s often an affordable medium, something that anyone can do. Among amateurs, photography acts as a democratizing force in terms of who can be an artist and who can create images. I know that’s not a new development within modernity, but I think it’s absolutely true today.

Another reason is the fact that the presence of the image in today’s society has become incredibly important and pervasive. The image, within television, film and video, as well as magazines, has become a dominant force in our society—even displacing things such as books and physical experience.

I think that many artists are not only engaging with photography creatively, but also utilizing it to make themselves heard beyond the mass media that are increasingly centralized and Western oriented.

Another aspect of this [pervasiveness of images] is digitization, the Internet and the tremendous growth of communications technologies. Today it’s common for people to take photographs on their cell phones and send them to someone else instantaneously, and this can happen around the world.

It is a fact of our culture that the level and speed of the transmission of images seems to be continually accelerating.

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On the different contexts for contemporary photography:

I don’t know if there’s an ideal context for photographic viewing.

The book is one context for photographic distribution that has a long history. A book of reproduced photographs can be circulated and function as a museum without walls that can be packed in a bag and taken on the road.

There is the installation context, in which artists draw on digital projection technologies to create spaces where photography can be viewed.

Of course, there is also the actual museum. I was impressed by “Ecotopia,” the current show at the International Center of Photography [in New York], in terms of the presence of large-scale, glossy, photogenic prints. Many of them were in very high resolution, and you couldn’t imagine getting that kind of detail out of those photographs in a book reproduction. You have to stand in front of the actual photograph.

In many cases, the ideal viewing space for photographs is a well-lighted, contemplative, quiet environment, where you can have the time to really look at them. The object basis of photography is still important to many photographers, from Thomas Demand to Andreas Gursky to many others.

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On a couple of artists he finds particularly exciting:

Of course, it’s an impossible question. There are not only a couple, there are many. But here are two that I’m interested in right now:

One is the Palestinian photographer Emily Jacir, who would not claim to be ”a photographer,” but engages with photography in a really provocative way. In her series of images called “Where We Come From,” she uses photography to document actions that she fulfills on behalf of Palestinians who have been displaced or who are unable to go to a place where they want to go. She uses photography within an ethical or political context, which I think is very interesting.

Another photographer, who is quite fascinating to me, is Matthew Buckingham, an American who places photography in a relationship with text.