Changing places: The rebranding of photography as Contemporary Art.
Author: Alexandra Moschovi
Spoiler Alert: Photography IS Art
Alexandra Moschovi discusses within this excerpt the reasons and ideas behind the exclusion of and prejudice against photography from the rest of the art world and how those views have been refashioned through the emergence of photography as contemporary art. She starts by explaining that major Art galleries such as the Tate Gallery would prefer to collect an array of artists rather than photographs. This is evidenced with a quote taken from a published interview; in which the then director of the Tate Gallery Alan Bowness states rather retrogressively that unless the artists were to use photography as an immediate and natural extension of their usual practices, their photographs wouldn’t be collected.
A further point made, focuses upon the concept of ‘Monopoly Rent’. The justified ‘Monopoly price’ for a specific commodity that is based upon varying criteria. Reproducible, widely available, easily distributed and marketable are some of the qualities that a photograph hold, which are said to erase any given Monopoly advantages. Photographs are seen to be particularly commonplace, easily created due to a wide array of photographic technologies, and the elitist community of artists and galleries couldn’t place the value within photography when copies of the same photograph belong to more than one museum.
Photography has now been rebranded as a form of contemporary art. All lens-based Media is now sectioned under the same thematic as it has become a more affordable and available art form.
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