Photography's Expanded Field

Photography's Expanded Field by George Baker is putting to terms how the digital world has transformed the world of contemporary art. One of the main themes was that in todays world, photography has become "infinitely malleable" because our definition of image based work always goes back to being refered to as photography. It's like saying a poster with text on it is photography when obviously it is something completely different, it speaks differently then how we render the photograph. Baker uses the phrase, "photography itself has been outmoded technologically and displaced aesthetically" (122). His argument is that while some artist still revel in the old forms of photography and image making there is a new counterpart to the photograph being a video, a moving scene or some kind of motion embedded in the imagery. He uses the term "insufficient" for describing the photograph as a bridge to video/film/moving image. I don't think that Baker is saying that the photograph has lost it intrigue but that now we are seeing the trend of images that are directly linked to something in motion, or have been set up like a moving image although remaining static.

He mentions a few artist like Rineke Dijkstra and Cindy Sherman as two end of the spectrum. Rineke Dijkstra includes a video (sometimes) next to her image of the same person and allows the image and video to work as a team almost as though one is your reference point and the other is your in between. Baker made a really interesting point that seeing the final outcome of an image makes you wonder how the artist got to the point of saying, this is the image, and this is how I am going to portray my subject-and seeing this along side a video allows you to see the intermediate steps of choosing the right expression, pose and whatever else. I had never thought of a moving image as the precursor to the static image before and it seems...instinctual?

Ruth Drawing Picasso by Rineke Dijkstra

The other end of the spectrum he insinuates is Cindy Sherman and Philip-Locra diCorcia graze the lines of cinema while still only using the static image. Cindy Sherman's Film Stills are a great example of how you can achieve the look of cinema and motion in an image without actual motion. We are allowed to see a "clip" if you will of the action, Baker says a hiccup of indecision--not so sure I agree with that.  The next point that Baker is trying to make is that there is this duality of dedication in photography to both cinema and photography which he then asks if it is now an "expanded field of operation" meaning that we have more image based outlets to use and it has forever expanded what we think to be a photograph. 

Hustlers by Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Philip-Lorca diCorcia is an image based artist but as you can see, his work is very cinematic and is often compared to Gregory Crewdson for his lighting aesthetics. Baker says, "the image as suspended between neither narrative nor fully static" (127). Baker says that there is an inherent war between the construction of  a narrative while being disrupted by the mediums "stasis." He uses this word over and over again in order to bash it into our heads as an undisrupted image, a photographic term used to describe a non-moving object (in our case, the photograph). 

Rosalind Krauss author of, Sculpture in the Expanded Field is on-page debated with in the essay by George Baker using her essay as a primary source of information to pick apart and glue back together. They both have ideas that work together but I think Baker is simplifying what she has already said. 

"Thus to paraphrase Krauss one last time, "[Photography] is no longer the privileged middle term between two things that it isn't. [Photography] is rather only one term on the periphery of a field in which there are other, differently structure possibilities" (136). This quote seems to say that the practice of photography in the contemporary art world today is given many different arena's or outlets for play. Then Baker asks the question or rather states that our practices have deconstructed and potentially opened the medium to many different facets of life. The photograph is no longer just a photograph when it is put to audio, or made into an installation and this is exactly what the expanded field of photography means. The photograph is being outmoded by other forms of technology but will never cease to exist because without the static image there is no record of our history, no understanding of our cultures. While there are still newspapers, online new sites and magazines in print we will not see the demise of photography to the video.