33/34 | 1990

THE NEW CONCEPT was the theme of the SYMPOSIUM ON PHOTOGRAPHY X which took place in the styrian autumn ’89, November 10th to 12th . The theme of a symposium of a series of lectures, discussions and presentations of photographic works can only make sense in terms of statement and question. The choice of the symposium theme which is also the theme of this issue of CAMERA AUSTRIA was preceded by the realization that photographic works in the context of contemporary art have increasingly been judged as conceptual works. Furthermore the informations normally demanded from a photograph and its mimetic function (whose point of departure is reality) or the interpretive approach starting from formal decisions within the individual image, apparently has come to  be replaced by the discussion about the artist’s attitude: outward reality, quasi redoubled by photography, is eventually, not being discussed in its own right but in its medial transformation. In contrast to conceptual art which focussed on concepts and thus granting the idea priority over its realization, more recent works demonstrate that conceptualization may also include aesthetic solutions guided by forms of the panel painting, by the aesthetics of advertisement and by abstract and object art. Apart from the plurality of the options (limited here only in the use of photography in all these works) we are also confronted with a process of multiple “encoding” within each of these single works for which a simple scheme of interpretation is no longer applicable.

The SYMPOSIUM ON PHOTOGRAPHY X hast again brought together theoreticians and practicing artists to discuss the theme from the standpoint of their various individual interest in the medium. (Ronald Jones made a contribution in “Kitsch and Avant Garde” , reserving a critical thesis by Clement Greenberg from 1939 and making it applicable to a younger generation of America artists and their way of dealing with reality. Herta Wolf’s text centered on a major aspect of contemporary photography: re-photography in Sherrie Levine’s or Jennifer Bolande’s work. In his treatment of “The Language of Fashion” , Gerhard Johann Lischka spoke of the human body- not an immediate approach but perhaps a detour to conceptual photography, considering to his analysis of contemporary expression.)

It is in keeping with the attitude of contemporary photographers with CAMERA AUSTRIA’s meanwhile policy that artists want to define a special form for the publication of their work: decisions about the design of an exhibition are different to those about the presentation of a lecture or the publication of a work in a magazine or book. Volker Heinze, Alfredo Jaar and Michael Schuster/Hartmut Skerbisch have developed their own concepts for the publication of their contribution in CAMERA AUSTRIA, the presentation of the contributions by Herwig Kempinger, Gerald Van Der Kaap and David Levinthal have also been developed in close cooperations with the artists.

We express our thanks to styrian autumn for making again possible the SYMPOSIUM ON PHOTOGRAPHY. The inclusion of photography in the festival’s program of contemporary art has been a matter of course – one good reason why major impulses of more than national scope in the debate about the medium have come from Graz: other than most photo festivals riding a wave of worldwide popularity we have managed to avoid the widely accepted segregation of photography and art.

We also owe a debt of gratitude to our readers for their numerous and scrupulous reactions to our readership survey. The next issue will contain a detailed report by Pia Lanzinger who has bade the dissertation for her diploma on this survey, but even now we can say that readers participation as well as their assessment of CAMERA AUSTRIA have been most encouraging. On the other hand critical remarks have highlighted areas of expected improvement: the topicality of our future event section (as the present issue shows, we are still struggling) has show an interest in CAMERA AUSTRIA beyond reading its content, and we hope that this issue will again stimulate an active interest in contemporary photography.

Christine Frisinghelli