PETER EDEL
A NEW FORM OF PHOTOGRAPHY
The strange relation between visual art and photography has always fascinated me. Photography as a visual art is still problematic and although I have always wrongly presumed that artistic freedom has accepted photography as an art-form, I recently became aware that many borders still remain to be crossed.
The problem focuses on the so-called objectivity of the photographic medium. The main purpose of photography has always been to register reality. In other words, photography has never more to offer than is seen on the picture itself. The standards of modern visual art though are quite different. Here, it is widely accepted that a good artwork always covers more than is to be seen in the artwork itself.
This probably became the most important condition for modern art, while a photograph is still not expected to contain more than its "outside". While nowadays it is never a problem that art sometimes can only be understood by explaining the concept behind the artwork, a photograph is still presumed to be self-explanatory. Or, as my teachers in art-school told me: "A good photograph doesn't need a text underneath." This outdated idea prevents photography from becoming an accepted art form such as painting, sculpture or more modern forms like installation. With this I don't want to say that there isn't a place for photography in visual art, but always according to the standards of photography, which are in total contrast to the classical art-forms.
All art-media once used to have the function of reality-registration and although there has always been art with a hidden meaning, the role of visual art definitely changed with the introduction of photography. Since this new technique monopolised a direct relation to reality, the other art-media had to respond with a new form of art that had more to do with the immaterial part that cannot be seen. Thus modern art was born out of photography.
The problem I have with all of this is whether photography really gives an impression of reality. I don't think so and the reason why I say this can be found in modern physics. Here the world was confronted with a new concept of reality that is not as objective as had been previously thought. How, then can photography be an objective way to register a reality that is subjective?
Even when reality is understood as objective, photography doesn't have a lot to offer anymore as a way to register it. In the computer-age where we have arrived it is quite possible to manipulate a photograph in a way that even scientific experts cannot determine whether a photograph is genuine or not. In the future for example it won't be possible to use photography as evidence in criminal court cases. Basically all forms of documentary photography will lose their objectivity, because a photograph of an event can be faked so easily through digital manipulation. The world of photography will soon become aware that the grip on a (presumed) objective reality is lost for ever.
The question of an objective reality and the possibility of digital manipulation will change photography in the same ways as photography changed visual art. It will open up the way for a new form of photography, which follows the standards of modern visual art instead of those of classic photography. In this vision of photography a photograph is not any longer expected to explain itself. Here photography becomes a source for imagination and not a flat attempt to reproduce reality.
My photography has a strange relationship to reality. Many themes in my work are referring to religion, politics and other ideologies that people use to derive meaning from, but that are going to be lost in the post-modern era. In these themes I want to give the minimum of information needed to create a strong suggestion that there is a meaning (because there certainly is one!), but by far, not enough for someone to come to a full understanding. The observer will experience that meaning is essential, but at the same time beyond reach.
Traditional photography would demand a full explanation here, but that would kill any possible interpretation by the observer and thereby art! It would become propaganda. Instead, I've tried to create an analogy between the quest for meaning in life that is happening in so many of us and the quest for meaning that is going on in the observer when confronted with my work.
