I don’t know how often you guys check out the blogs on our blogroll, but you should definitely be reading Christian Patterson’s blog, which includes clever insights into the state of contemporary photography. Most recently he quotes articles on the topic of the deadpan aesthetic in photography:
A few selected quotes from The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton:
More photography has been created for gallery walls in the last decade than in any other period in the medium’s history. And the most prominent, and probably most frequently used, style has been that of the deadpan aesthetic: a cool, detached and keenly sharp type of photography.
The adoption of a deadpan aesthetic moves art photography outside the hyperbolic, sentimental and subjective.
In hindsight, it is clear that this form of photography contained elements that matched the gallery and collecting climate of the decade to such a degree that it shifted photography to a more central position in contemporary art.
– Charlotte Cotton
And from “The New Passion for Deadpan,” a recent article in the London Telegraph:
This sort of thing was done well in Germany between the wars by August Sander, at a time when many people still had genuinely strange and revealing responses to the camera. These days, people are so used to having their photos taken that hardly anything interesting jumps out.
Why is “deadpan” so popular at the moment? Perhaps because we no longer quite trust the truth-telling capacity of photography. The deadpan manner, by removing any hint of rhetoric or persuasion, does its utmost to avoid making any such claims for itself. The style scoops art-world cachet from the sternly objective approach of the so-called Dusseldorf School of photographers.
From “Here’s Looking at You,” an article by Greg Cook in today’s Boston Globe.
There are just a lot of artists today who are all starting to look alike. One of the problems I’m having is distinguishing one artist’s eye from another. I don’t know what it means. It means they all went to a good college and they bought good equipment.
– Bernard Toale.
So why are so many photographers adopting this style? Does deadpan photography’s detached, distant, analytical approach somehow distill our cultural mood? Does its uniformity reflect the uniformity of our mass-produced, chain-store world? Does it represent the way people feel disconnected from one another, even as technology makes them more interconnected than ever? And could deadpan photography be a refuge from emotion at a time when many of us are overwhelmed with worries about terrorism, war, ecological disaster? Is it about slowing down? It doesn’t hurt that it sells.
– Greg Cook.
It’s become popular because it’s become popular.
– Bernard Toale.
Why deadpan? Thoughts?
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first of all it was pretty annoying trying to type this out when everytime i tried to type it went to that persons blog. buuuuut. please define or give an example of deadpan instead of just labeling a majority with this style and letting us figure out what it is.
Miguel,
It might be wise to avoid offending individual photographers by using their images as examples of the so-called deadpan style.
Take a look around — the deadpan style is everywhere. Think dead-on, centered, frontal, emotionless interiors, landscapes and portraiture, usually shot with a large-format camera (the camera iself, and the process involved in using it, often contributes).
Dynomite,
J.J.