Notes From Nowhere

None of the art/photo blogs ever seem to ask the most obvious question: Is there a downside to everybody looking at everybody’s work constantly? Technically, one nice effect for reasonably talented beginners is that you can get to a decent skill level faster by looking at a lot of work; and the web makes this easier than ever. But what happens then? Now, I know that even the most revolutionary new styles often were not conceived by some brooding, tortured genius in a basement; copying ideas and styles has always been a factor (Warhol-Lichtenstein comes to mind, among many others). But the question was: What if *everybody* looks at *everybody’s* work, and be it only for a second or two, *all the time*?

When I look at the photo blogs that – artistic pretense, grandiose platitudes, and predictable insertions of political positioning aside – basically just copy and post the photography that is out there, I cannot help but think that there is something infantilizing about the state of ‘instant everything.’ And I can think of only few escapes from the equalizing pull of the web. After all, there are still those who think that most art on display sucks anyway, and are not influenced by it, even if they keep looking at it as part of their daily visual diet. And yet, I wonder: Did you ever think of not visiting photo blogs for a year or two, just as a little experiment of what will happen? What would you miss? And would you gain something, perhaps even the most precious thing of all: independence?

As an architect, I find myself in a field almost free of theory. But many of my dear artist friends love theorizing. This has, in turn, made me think, and come up with a hypothesis: postmodernism has some kind of touristic appeal here in the United States.

Americans don’t really live in a culture of literati who – Gauloise in hand – happily explain everything (imperialism, gender, the world soccer championship) in a series of ‘-isms’. They haven’t grown up reading the 19th century novels where a student in Paris lives in a chambre de bonne, reads Marx and Nietzsche and so on (today, Foucault would have to be added), loses his parent’s money, and drifts aimlessly into nothingness. Most European students face a moment of truth, when they recognize themselves as this cliché, around the age of 21 or so. And then they move on. But US students, fewer of whom seem to have a chance to adopt this mode of life in early youth, perhaps haven’t had enough of a chance to get sick of it. Anyway, that’s my psychological speculation. Some of them seem to be hit – much later – by a longing for the romanticisms of this kind of life. A dose of postmodernism is like a brief trip to Paris. The colors of the Jardin de Luxembourg, the street cafés, the wideness of the boulevards – wouldn’t it be nice to get away from it all and be another person there?

My artist friends would certainly hate the bluntness of it, but I hit on something that is, in its own way, just as refreshing: an ingenious web page that generates a new postmodernist essay on the fly every time you visit it, here.

A number of photography blogs have linked to Platon’s latest photographs of world leaders, taken in a tiny studio that he set up right next to the General Assembly at the United Nations this past September; the project was commissioned by the New Yorker.

I join the chorus of those who recommend seeing the excellent interactive presentation, here. There is a nice interplay between photographer and subject: Platon is one of the few contemporary portrait photographers who have found a distinct voice of their own – a breath of fresh air amidst much of today’s “portraiture,” where each and every “sitter” has to display the sad signature look of just having lost her rubber duck. With the United Nation’s project, and whether you like Platon’s aesthetic or not, you see someone at the top of his game. So are his subjects: The Quaddafis, Medvedevs, Netanyahus, Berlusconis (“My first job [as a cruise ship compere and crooner] told me everything I know about working a crowd”) and, yes, Mugabes of the world, who obviously have found their voices, their brands, their takes on human nature, too. Platon has been obsessed with the human (sur)face for many years. His portraits reflect that. However, in pushing himself over the years, his photos have become more like images made by a radiologist. So there it is: The funny, sophisticated, smug, envious, human, “wicked,” personal, brutal, and, occasionally, outright criminal world of politics, where it all boils down to the old power-structures when everyone was a fifth grader: Who is in demand most? Who gets the most attention? Who is the smartest? Who is strongest? Who has the nicest lunch bag? And now, most importantly: Who looks best?