Uneventful: The Rise of Photography
Consider the United States where everything is transformed into images. Only images exist and are produced and consumed.
—Roland Barthes. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
One of the surprises that comes with getting old, I mean older and wiser, is having lived much of my life during what is now “history.” When I was young I read about it and studied it, but hadn’t lived it. It was abstract. Now it is more than just a memory. Some events have affected my life today. Growing up, Pearl Harbor was “book history.” September 11th was very real.
Recently, I had cause to reflect on this as I listened to three photographers, Elaine Mayes, Steve Fitch, and Robbert Flick, talk about their work, all done in the 1970s and 1980s. I was shocked to realize that was 30 to 40 years ago. It seemed like just yesterday. I reflected on time past and passed. What were contemporary photographs and ideas are now locked in their own time. And, like any other history, how we look at and interpret them is based on the present.
So, what is our present? As I listened to these photographers talk, the conversation drifted to this notion of time. Mayes spoke about her early 1971 series of images, all taken during a cross-country trip, and then again about a later group, taken decades later on a similar journey. Her early work…
