Essay - Post-world War II Photographers Because Post-modernism Does not Have a...

Post-World War II Photographers

Because post-modernism does not have a standard definition or set of common characteristics it is basically best described as the rejection of modernism (http://members.tripod.com/ambro32/postmod.html).The world has been changing in terms ***** pol*****ics, economic and social systems since World ***** II as it rapidly moves into ***** Information Age (http://members.tripod.com/ambro32/postmod.html).Modern photographers recorded life from their perspective, while advocates of post-modern photography claim that photographs simply confirm the power relationships in a society (Norfleet 1995).

***** W*****r II modern ***** challenged ***** "existing notions of what a photograph should look like, what it could contain and ***** it might mean" (Turner 1987). Gone were "all the woolly, successful photo-sentiments about human-family hood" of ***** previous half a century of *****. Modern photographers ***** not replacing the old, *****y merely had a new landscape to view, one that was of "concept, where what ***** pho*****graphed took on a lesser role when set against the fact of how ***** *****ed as a photogr*****ph"(Turner 1987). Photography of the 1960's and 1970's was based "less on judgmental views of society or an unraveling of the hum***** c*****dition and more on the act of photographing itself" (Turner 1987).

Diane Arbus once said, "I think there are things that nobody would see unless ***** photographed them" (Turner 1987). Arbus drew attention to ***** the average "American might ********** ***** subjected to photography's undiscriminating record, how bizarre were ***** ritual of Middle America and how divided was *****" (Turner *****). Her portraits of nudists, sideshow performers, transvestites, crying children, gave one a reason to pause and realize "her pictures of '*****,' her ***** of 'us' - something of consequence is at stake here" (Lacayo 2003). Arbus' work caught ********** *****tention, and not from sentimentality or sympathy f***** the subjects, *****or she worked at the point "where the voyeuristic ***** ***** sacramental converge" (Lacayo 2003). One ***** not help but be drawn into her photographs, whether it was a small child with a toy hand grenade or a Jewish giant at home ***** his parents (***** 2003). No matter what she photographed, "Arbus was situated between complicity and awe, a pl*****ce where irony is beside the point and mere compassion ***** been left behind for ***** like mordant communion" (Lacayo 2003). There is nothing false ***** Arbus's work, it is ***** in its rawest form. She is "qu*****tessentially modern" and ***** a pivot*****l force in the era of modern photography (Lacayo 2003).

By ***** 1980's post-modernism ***** arrived and with it the an acknowledgment ***** all the "complexities that social scientists had long known about photographs" (*****rfleet 1995). These ideas came from philosophers, psychoanalysts and semioticians ***** Europe, believing that all photographs were a lie *****nd that no truth could be found in photographs (Norfleet 1995). *****fore, post-modernists decided that there was ***** ***** to photograph the real world, since all documentaries were lies, and moreover, everything had already been seen and there was no such thing as originality (Norfleet *****). Moreover, they felt ***** it