May 20, 2008
Tod Papageorge on contemporary photography
My friend Christine Smallwood interviews photographer Tod Papgeorge for the "Back Talk" column in The Nation. Here's part of the interview:
CS: What do you think of contemporary photography?
TP: This work, and work of this ilk, came out of a group of photographers who were working in the '60s and the '70s in New York who were all, I think, radicalized by the publication of Robert Frank's The Americans. So I guess consistent with all of this work is a kind of negative view of America, a critique of America, done, again, in the interest of nothing but aesthetic or artistic success. In other words, there's no money to be made doing this. There was something very pure about it. As Garry Winogrand once said, it's fit work for a grown man. Or a grown woman.
CS: I understand. It was a different time.
TP: [Laughter] That's right. And Diane [Arbus], Diane was working then! But with the success of the galleries, the defining energy became that provided by money. And so what do you see now when you go to a gallery that's selling photography? You see big, huge color prints, most of which really aren't about very much. They're illustrations. [Points to the cover of his book] No mind could ever imagine that concatenation of forms. I mean, maybe Velázquez could, but it would take him eight months to paint it out. So I'm not very interested in most photography today, because it is defined by the galleries. It's going to be very interesting to see what's going to happen with the economy going down the tubes.
To read the rest, click here.