Breaking the Code

Photographers and artists have gone outside the mark so to speak to try to do other things. If you were pursuing photography as a profession, you would probably be trying to develop your own style, or trademark or vision. In the contemporary photography scene, it seems as though every artist has their own aesthetic that they have created, because essentially that is what their art requires. Walter Benjamin explains that “Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work.”

Juergen Teller

"In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuge for the cult value of the picture. For the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face. This is what constitutes their melancholy, incomparable beauty. But as man withdraws from the photographic image, the exhibition value for the first time shows its superiority to the ritual value."

Peggy Sirota

Guess who

Peggy Sirota plays with the element of spectacle (especially with regard to celebrtity) in her project that she compiled entitled 'Guess Who'. In this book she photographs celebrities in the most absurd of fashions and completely re-contextualizes the image to leave you 'guessing'. She stated that most celebrities were eager to participate, but on occasion there were ones who pulled out when the scenario of their particular photograph was revealed to them. Creative differences perhaps? "I knew that it would be a book, but I didn't know that it would be respected as a fine art project until I got accepted by people that I very much respected. It just sort of happened."