Paper short abstract:

This presentation uses aspects of the method and most influential works of the photo-journalist, Donald McCullin to explore contributions that considering such topics (as well as recent innovations in the ways they are interpreted and addressed) can make to key aims of the panel.

Paper long abstract:

The impacts of photography on painting and sculpture since the 19th century have not only been extensively studied. Starting already in the early 20th century, claims that the social roles of art had reached the 'end of the road' when photography created a 'crises' for art's functions of representation - and, especially, historical representation - have been deeply enmeshed in disputes over utopic and dystopic characterisations of modernity. For Weibel (2002), throughout the latter half of the 20th century, "critiques of the aesthetic practices of modernity and of the object status of the work of art" ran "parallel to political critiques" of "the exploitation of the third world" and critical reflection on traumatic recent historical relationships between art and politics. For some, key tenets of strongly anti anti - redemptive paradigms have been seen as providing the only satisfactory responses to 'crises over representation' of modern times, and the traumas of recent and contemporary history. This presentation uses aspects of the method and most influential works of the photo-journalist, Donald McCullin to explore contributions that considering such topics (as well as recent innovations in the ways they are interpreted and addressed) can make to key aims of the panel.