The Focal Press Companion to the Constructed Image in Contemporary Photography

6

Performing for the Camera: Postmodernism, Antimodernism, and the Performative Photograph¹

William J. Simmons

It is the goal of this volume to reconsider the variety of photographic methodologies that have proliferated since 1990.What critics and historians often forget, however, is that central to any understanding of the most contemporary methods, even what has been deemed “post-internet” art, cannot be understood without first reinventing the wheel a little bit. The fact of the matter is that the wheel, even though it has remained conceptually the same in the history of photography since the late 1970s, is caught in a rut.“Postmodernism” is no longer a useful tool for the discussion of photography. Even though conceptual photographers – ...