paulr
30-May-2013, 11:53
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323855804578509150906497888.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet
"Photography has established a fruitful dialogue with other media," he said. "With film, with architecture, with sculpture. What I'm really interested in is this dialogue with other techniques." His 2009 history of Surrealism at the Pompidou stressed movies as much as photography, and a 2011 retrospective on Constantin Brancusi, "Images sans fin," presented his films and photographs, alongside his sculpture.
Rather than suggest what it would prefer artists to be doing, a photography department, in Mr. Bajac's view, has to reflect what they are actually doing. "Photographers can be nostalgic. Curators cannot. We have to follow the artistic practice."
In his opinion, the museum will in the future "not only be collecting prints but also media installations, files, images made especially for a website. We will have to adapt. Photography is no longer about the wall. The book form is basic to photography. Young photographers are self-publishing. We must be aware of that and work closely with the museum library. There are all these forms that we should collect."
Keeping abreast of the digital revolution, he realizes, will not be easy. "Historians and curators are facing a situation quite different from what John Szarkowski faced in the 1960s. Then, it was about access to images. Today, it's the opposite problem."
He worries about a "surfeit of images." With some 250 million photographs posted on Facebook FB +5.92% every day, "we have to educate the eye and establish a hierarchy." The relentless pace of artistic production does not always require an instant response either.
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Mr. Bajac knows, too, that eventually he will have to issue a pronouncement on the situation of his art. "MoMA is no longer the judgment seat that it used to be in the '50s and '60s and '70s," he said. "It doesn't have that monopolistic situation. But because of that long commitment, people expect it to make a statement about photography."
His views on the subject have been shaped by his training as a historian. "There is no such thing as photography," he believes. "It is a series of technological processes. It is always changing, always young."
"Photography has established a fruitful dialogue with other media," he said. "With film, with architecture, with sculpture. What I'm really interested in is this dialogue with other techniques." His 2009 history of Surrealism at the Pompidou stressed movies as much as photography, and a 2011 retrospective on Constantin Brancusi, "Images sans fin," presented his films and photographs, alongside his sculpture.
Rather than suggest what it would prefer artists to be doing, a photography department, in Mr. Bajac's view, has to reflect what they are actually doing. "Photographers can be nostalgic. Curators cannot. We have to follow the artistic practice."
In his opinion, the museum will in the future "not only be collecting prints but also media installations, files, images made especially for a website. We will have to adapt. Photography is no longer about the wall. The book form is basic to photography. Young photographers are self-publishing. We must be aware of that and work closely with the museum library. There are all these forms that we should collect."
Keeping abreast of the digital revolution, he realizes, will not be easy. "Historians and curators are facing a situation quite different from what John Szarkowski faced in the 1960s. Then, it was about access to images. Today, it's the opposite problem."
He worries about a "surfeit of images." With some 250 million photographs posted on Facebook FB +5.92% every day, "we have to educate the eye and establish a hierarchy." The relentless pace of artistic production does not always require an instant response either.
****
Mr. Bajac knows, too, that eventually he will have to issue a pronouncement on the situation of his art. "MoMA is no longer the judgment seat that it used to be in the '50s and '60s and '70s," he said. "It doesn't have that monopolistic situation. But because of that long commitment, people expect it to make a statement about photography."
His views on the subject have been shaped by his training as a historian. "There is no such thing as photography," he believes. "It is a series of technological processes. It is always changing, always young."