to the grade of printing paper was introduced as
compensation. Occasionally the technique of poster-
ization was used, advantageously, on indoor subjects.
By the 1970s, Wladyslaw Marynowicz, (who came
from Poland but worked in England as a photo-
graphic instructor), had conducted experiments at
Ealing Technical College, Middlesex, England, and
was producing posterized prints in full colour.
Because of his mastery of photographic printing, he
was able to select subject matter, such as animals and
simple portraits, which responded to his techniques.
Nowadays, posterization can be achieved at the
press of a button on computers, which will just as
readily provide the results in two, three, four, or
more levels of posterization...and in full colour. As
a photographic process, with justification, it re-
mains rooted in the twentieth century.
R. M. CallenderSeealso:Contact Printing; Darkroom; Film; Film:
High-ContrastFurther Reading
Aubrey, Ralph. ‘‘Tone Separation.’’Amateur Photographer
156 (1956).
Callender, R.M. ‘‘Two Photographic Techniques Applied
to Lighting Research.’’British Journal of Photography.
vol. 108, no. 636, (1961).
Callender, R.M. ‘‘Pictorialism Turns Scientific.Amateur
Photographer793 (1963).
Callender, R.M. ‘‘The Case for the Moderns.’’ 390 (1963).
Romer, Witold. ‘‘Izohelia.’’Kamera Polska36 (1932).
Romer, Witold. ‘‘Isohelie, eine neue Technik der bildma ̈ssi-
gen Photographie.’’Cameravol. 10, no. 291 (1932).
Zeman, W. ‘‘Posterisation.’’Photographyvol. 12, no. 31
(1957).POSTMODERNISM
It is important to distinguish between a postmo-
dern style and the postmodern age. Even after
distinguishing between these two ways the term
can be used, it remains an elusive concept, as the
tenets that characterize postmodern are still evol-
ving The use of this termvis-a`-visphotography
does not so much distinguish a style, such as Pic-
torialism or the f/64 group, but an aesthetic envir-
onment in which images are produced, presented,
and consumed.
A Sociohistorical Age
As Richard Appignanesi and Chris Garratt point
out, the Latin origins of ‘‘post’’ and ‘‘modern’’
translate ‘‘postmodern’’ into ‘‘after just now.’’ As
a historical period, many consider the postmodern
age to have origins alternately in the 1950s or 1970s,
though some place it even earlier. Postmodernism
has numerous other designations, including des-
cribing consumer society, image society, informa-
tion society, society of the spectacle (Guy Debord),
postindustrial society (Daniel Bell), and what Fred-
ric Jameson calls multinational, or late, capitalism.
In all cases, however, what is described is a change
in the way we think about society and our place in
it. Jean-Francois Lyotard describes a cognitive
paradigm shift from the age of ‘‘metanarratives’’
(grand theories or stories upon which the West has
predicated itself) to an age in which these narra-
tives, which privilege the western, white, male sub-
ject, have been decentred, or deconstructed (see
Jacques Derrida for his concept of trace, ordiffe ́r-
ance; Judith Butler on gender theory; and Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak on postcoloniality). Generally,
this means that today many people in the West
believe there is no absolute authority or system of
values or beliefs that retains validity across all cul-
tures and nations. The legitimization of one subjec-
tivity and subsequent subordination of others is
spurned; the validity of traditional approaches is
radically challenged and subverted. So-called objec-
tive truths are shown to be couched in elaborate
ideological constructions that invest power in the
order of history, hierarchy, and episteme. Another
way of thinking about postmodernism is to draw
shapes with a stencil, and then remove the stencil:
the resulting figures seem to be floating in space,
disconnected from markers that would invest
them with a sense of original or comparativePOSTERIZATION