Landscape and Documentary: Questions of Rephotography

This article seems to be primary a book-review. It concerns Bill
Ganzel's ""Dust Bowl Descent'' (1984) and Mark Klett's e.a.
""Second View: The Rephotographic Survey Project'' (1984). But
the author argues much deeper. Both books are the result of a
photographic excercise started around 1976, and both are
historicistic in concept as they are both concerned with
""masters'' of the photographic history. Ganzel rephotographed
FSA-photographs from the heyday of the documentary (Vachon,
Rothstein, Russel Lee). Klett e.a. rephotographed a sample of
photographs made by representatives of government scientific
teams in the American West about a century ago, in particular
W.H. Jackson and T. O'Sullivan. Two landscape photographers who
not so long ago were placed in the ""space of art''. The
argument of Hales' article is that these two modes,
""landscape'' and ""documentary'' were at the start of Klett's
and Ganzel's project (1976) two unimpeachable areas of
""serious'' photography, but by now are very much in doubt, and
that these two books justify these doubts. The argument runs as
follows: research done on the documentary and the FSA in
particular (Stott, Sekula, Stein and Stange) dismissed much of
the integrity of documentary photographs and highlights the
rethoric and propagandistic use of the documentary. On the other
hand, the inclusion of ""historic landscape'' in the art-space
was refuted and commented as ""the composition of a false
history'' (Rosalind Krauss). The two modes of ""straight''
classical camera practice seemed doomed from that moment on. A
new permutation or new hero seems necessary. In search of a
""new documentary'' or a ""new landscape''. A quest that is
pertinent to the two books. The Descent from Ganzel is
interpreted as the failure of the documentary, defending
classical camera practice and its professed connection to
humanist ideals of social and economic justice. Ganzel's own
documentary do not have the desired effect, no moving
""documents'' and show perhaps a ""Descent'' of the medium as
well of its objects. The Rephotography Survey Project (RSP)
started the way around: they did not want to make an hommage to
the old ""masters'' like Ganzel did. The RSP wanted to outdate
the celebrated old ""masters'', rejecting concepts of
originality, individualism and artistic expression. The RPS
wanted in a 20th century artistic way appropriate the landscape.
The result of this minimalistic concept is ""photography as
documentation''. Hales' question: Did they save the medium?
Hales conclusion: landscape and documentary has been moved from
the center of artistic and intelectual culture in America to its
edges - or beyond?


Citaten:
Stott, William
Sekula, Allan
Stein, Sally
Stange, K.
Krauss, Rosalind
Ganzel, B.: Dust Bowl Descent (1984)
Klett, M.: Second View; Rephotography (1984)