Thursday posting

Topic: Deadpan Aesthetic

Descriptive word: objective

“The adoption of a deadpan aesthetic moves art photography outside the hyperbolic, sentimental and subjective. . . . Deadpan photography may be highly specific in its description of its subjects, but its seeming neutrality and totality of vision is of epic proportions.”

-Charlotte Cotton, The Photograph as Contemporary Art

CHARLES, HAGEN. "Review/Photography; Making Industrial Buildings Look Like Butterflies." New York Times (1993):15-.

The author Charles Hagen is a photographer, teacher and writer living in Brooklyn, New York.  Hagen works as an associate professor of art at University of Connecticut, as well as a writer for Artforum, Afterimage, and Aperture.  Hagen is also a critic for the New York Times.  In his article Hagen references Bernd and Hilla Becher as successfully applying the deadpan aesthetic to give their photos of buildings a cohesive neutrality.  It is Hagen’s belief that the Becher’s persistent and meticulous approach to photographing industrial structures reduces them to variations of ideal forms, and “arranged in their regular grids, the works seem like excerpts from a collection of particularly exotic mechanical butterflies.”  Hagen also states that through the Becher’s use of the deadpan aesthetic, they are only relying on the camera as a tool to record objectivity, instead of to express emotion. 

 

I am interested in using the deadpan aesthetic to remove traces of emotion in my photographs.  I think my photos will be much more successful if they merely record what is in front of the camera, instead of what I want the camera to capture and express.  Using the deadpan aesthetic will really enhance the mundane and banal scenes that I choose to shoot.

Image: http://www.masters-of-fine-art-photography.com/02/artphotogallery/database/becher_01.jpg