Board_Advisors_etc 3..5

value. Jameson refers to this change as well when he
refers to modernism as being characterized by pro-
duction, and to postmodernism as being character-
ized by ‘‘the consumption of sheer commodification
as a process.’’ What we are driven to consume is no
longer the product, as much as the assembly line;
that is, the desire to desire goods and services.

A Characteristic Style

As products are mass-produced, the value, and sta-
tus, of what was once considered the ‘‘original’’
becomes redundant or irrelevant. For photography,
as well as in other disciplines, postmodern themes
manifest themselves stylistically in a variety of ways:
a mixing of high and low cultures. including pas-
tiche, bricolage, chance, ambiguity, parody, and
irony; a subverting of classical narratives leading to
focuses on multiplicity, fragmentation, schizophre-
nia, marginalia, minutia, and peripheries; and a
stretching of or playing with traditional forms or
codes, such as that which accompanies self-reflexive,
metafictional, and intertextual modes. These techni-
ques can result in a sense of ‘‘lived experience’’
which, postmodernists claim, is more representative
of reality than are the styles of realism that give
accounts of the mechanics of everyday life. There is
a sense of empowerment, as well as joy, that comes
from the reconstitution of historical or canonized
texts, such as, in literature, Joyce Carol Oates’s
rewriting of Henry James’sTurn of the Screw,and
Kathy Acker’s rewriting of Charles Dickens’sGreat
Expectations. In most cases, postmodern style exhi-
bits a ‘‘new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new
kind of superficiality in the most literal sense’’ (Jame-
son 1991, 9), a ‘‘waning of affect’’ that pervades
commodity culture. This can be seen in, for example,
Andy Warhol’s paintings and Laurie Anderson’s
performance pieces, which thwart viewers’ expecta-
tions. It can be said that postmodern style grew from
revolutionary thinking in architecture; indeed, Frank
Gehry’s ideas of creating an architectural subject
that cannot be adequately represented by a single
photographic angle suggest the postmodern proble-
matizing of perspectival frames. In her self-portraits,
Cindy Sherman uses the techniques of defamiliariza-
tion to subvert classical and patriarchal codes.

Postmodernism and Photography

The photograph itself can be seen as a defining
emblem of a postmodern aesthetic and age:

So it is that in our architectural histories and journals, we

consume so many photographic images of the classical or

modern buildings, coming at length to believe that these

are somehow the things themselves....All the more so is

this true with color photography, where a new set of

libidinal forces comes into play so that it is no longer

even the building that is now consumed, having itself

become a mere pretext for the intensities of the color

stock and the gloss of the stiff paper. ‘The image,’ said

Debord in a famous theoretical move, ‘is the final form of

commodity reification’; but he should have added, ‘the

materialimage,’ the photographic reproduction.

(Jameson 1991, 125)

The technology of photography, as well as the

reproduction itself, naturally addresses issues of

representation: the original and the copy, the

authentic and the fake. But it also problematizes

the issue of dominating discourse, power, and point

of view. Postmodern photographers, such as David

Hockney and Barbara Kruger, highlight these issues

using irony, parody, and doublecoding. The technol-

ogy of photography, of representation, is itself

acknowledged and often addressed, making visible

Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 1982. Original in color.

[Tate Gallery, London, Great Britain, Courtesy of the artist

and Metro Pictures]

POSTMODERNISM