When I speak of the well-made photograph, I use that phrase to describe a recurrent type of photograph produced according to strict if unstated guidelines — and, beyond that, a recurrent type of photography project built around such pictures. I use trope similarly, in its meaning as “a common or overused theme or device: cliché.” These pictures and projects resemble each other to such an extent that, with minor adjustments, the images, their accompanying texts, often even the project statements, are hot-swappable and interchangeable. In short, they all look basically the same. […]
|
|
Conceptually (I use the word advisedly, and charitably), the vast majority of photography projects I encounter nowadays seem to represent some welling-up of archetypes from the collective unconscious of the academically indoctrinated. Something’s in the academy-filtered air they’ve breathed, or the academy-blend Kool-Aid they’ve imbibed. […] Unimaginable that — except as explicit satire — 100 writers and artists from the former Soviet Union would inscribe by hand today the loathesome principles set forth by Zhdanov and enforced thereafter by his goon squads. What a bizarre reaffirmation of a long-discarded set of prescriptions and proscriptions this book represents, then — a self-abasing modern version of the obligatory “loyalty dance” performed under his portrait as a morning ritual by all mainland Chinese citizens at the height of Mao’s cult of personality. […] My own bit part in this transformation, via involvement in the touring exhibition “The Silent Strength of Liu Xia,” came to the foreground last Saturday, June 9, in Hong Kong. The show, for which I now serve as co-curator and tour manager, had its first-ever opening on Chinese soil: a featured role in the 2012 Annual Event of the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC). […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Slow Boat in China (3)
Because Liu Xia now lives under house arrest, incommunicado save for periodic visits with her mother, I can’t run any decisions past her, as I would automatically in organizing a show by a living artist. Thus I have to trust to my instincts, along with my sense of what I’d want others to do with my work if I were in her shoes. […]