1. CONCEPTUAL ART
photography

2. DEFINITIONS & EXAMPLES
The inception of the term in the 1960s referred to a strict and focused practice of idea-based art that often defied traditional visual criteria associated with the visual arts in its presentation as text.
Conceptual art or Conceptual Art - Art that is intended to convey an idea or a concept to the perceiver, rejecting the creation or appreciation of a traditional art object such as a painting or a sculpture as a precious commodity.

3. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
The French artist Marcel Duchamp paved the way for the conceptualists, providing them with examples of prototypically conceptual works -- the readymades, for instance. The most famous of Duchamp's readymades was Fountain (1917), a standard urinal basin signed by the artist with the pseudonym "R.Mutt", and submitted for inclusion in the annual, un-juried exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York--it was rejected.[5] I

4. DUCHAMP Marcel The Fountain, L’urinoir 1917

5. Conceptual art emerged as a movement during the 1960s.
Conceptual art also reacted against the commodification of art; it attempted a subversion of the gallery or museum as the location and determiner of art, and the art market as the owner and distributor of art
The first wave of the "conceptual art" movement extended from approximately 1967 to 1978.

6. BELLOCQ Ernest James Storyville Portrait, 1912
Portrait of prostitute of Storyville, New Orleans.
Conceptual? Face erased, butterfly drawing

7. DRTIKOL Frantisek The Soul, 1930
Figure cut from cardboard representing the soul.
Drtikol was interested in Theosophy and Buddhism.
He was in touch with Rudolf Steiner: according to Steiner we absorb through the limbs the movement of the world into ourselves, which he calls the Spirit.

8. MAN RAY Tears, 1930
Trained as a sculptor and a painter in New York, was a co-founder of the New York Dada group. In 1921 he went to Paris, where he became acquainted with the Surrealists.
Glass tears are a sign of insincerity.

9. EDGERTON, Harold E. Milk Drop Coronet, 1957
Dye transfer print.
A drop of milk falling onto a thin layer of milk on a plate makes a nearly symmetrical splash.
Edgerton worked as an electrical engineer; he began experimenting with this particular figure in the early 1930s. In 1931 he introduced the stroboscope, a device able to produce quick bursts of intense light.
Edgerton’s experiments and invention coincided with Cartier-Bresson’s idea of the ‘decisive moments in photo-reportage.

10. TOMATSU, Shomei Ruinous Garden, 1964
Shrimps, feathers, seeds and dried leaves make this composition.
Tomatsu gives larger meanings to the feel of things and to their appreciation.

11. HEINEKEN, Robert Costume for Feb’68, 1968
Before Photoshop and digital imagery.
Constructed photography. This collage has been achieved by projecting negatives onto a collection of pictures mounted on a wall.
American cultural commentators in the 1960s to remark on the conjunction between sex and violence.

12. BERMAN Wallace Untitled (A1-Cross), 1970
Verifax collage: early photocopying process.
Hand-held transistor radio plus verifaxed images from popular culture.
Berman’s art was premised on the idea of a national consciousness somehow held together by representative popular imagery.

13. VAN ELK, Ger The discovery of the Sardines, 1971
Tragi-comic staged photographs.
Dutch Fotografia Buffa movement.
Sardines in both pictures; the passing car on the right is there to suggest that cars can also pass on the left. If this happens the sardines will be pulped into the road.

14. GRESTER, Georg Labbézanga, Mali, 1972
Gerster was a specialist aerial photographer; he spotted this village during a reconnaissance flight along the bend in the Niger River.
This village looked like ‘the most beautiful village”.
This government wanted to move this village to a more convenient site but because of this photograph the plans were dropped.

15. BALDESSARI John Throwing Four Balls in the Air to get a Square (Best of Thirty-Six Tries), 1974
Why?
For the sake of serendipity or to prove that things can work out the way we want them to.
Baldessari’s proposal is that ordinary time is readily available, and that it might well be used to enact miracles, no matter how small.

16. FURUYA, Seichi Izu (Japan), 1978
This picture introduces Furuya’s Mémoires of 1989, a book devised in memory of his wife, who died in 1985.
Performance art: the passage towards death is interspersed with snapshot incidents and motifs from their life together.
In this picture the woman has a scar on her neck, and as the book progresses the scar heals, although it is often obscured by shadow. However as the scar heals. Christine’s health deteriorates and her features appear more and more drawn and wasted.

17. MICHALS, Duane I Build a Pyramid, 1978
Michals is here making his own mark in the face of the kind of timelessness represented by the ancient pyramids.
His photographs are often put together in sets like this.

18. GROOVER, Jan Tybee Forks and Starts (K), 1978
Abstract photograph: fragments of objects.
Picture is an arrangement; the objects speak about touch and pressure.
Jan Groover was originally an abstract painter.

19. LELE, Ouka Lemons, 1979
Peluqueria is a series of portraits of people oddly coiffed (model aircraft, books, irons…).
This picture is an allegory to taste.
Ouka Lele takes black-and-white photographs and then hand-colours them, giving them vivid saturate or unnatural backgrounds. The end result looks like advertising images.

20. BECHER Bernd & Hilla Industrial Facades #23, 1980
From a book on industrial buildings Anonymous Sculptures: A Typology of technical Construction.
The Bechers like to draw attention to the grandeur of industrial buildings, but their chief aim is to invite audiences to pay attention to the processes under consideration – and to become aware of that often involuntary attention.

21. DATER Judy Ms. Cling-Free, 1982
Tradition of Californian avant-garde.
You have to go along with the combination of fantasy and intimacy.
Personal and autobiographical art.
Artist is posing for her own pictures.

22. CALLE Sophie The Hotel, Room 44, 1983
The importance of Sophie Calle’s work has been to raise questions about what is that interests us: the ordinary fabric of others’ lifes for instance.
For this project:
Venetian hotel room ; February 1983; Temporary chambermaid in charge of 12 bedrooms for three weeks.

23. BOONSTRA Rommert Untitled, 1984
Dutch installation photography
Staged photography using painted models and back projections (no Photoshop)
Represents last days of civilization.

24. SIMMONS, Laurie Pink Stonehenge, 1984
Unique colour photograph.
From Tourism series.
A cast of model characters pose and appear to move against a back-projected view of reddened Stonehenge, symbol of timeless antiquity.

25. DEN HOLLANDER Paul Untitled, 1984
Subject: perception of time

26. KLEIN, Astrid Night Matter I, 1985
Photogram: a form of printing that displays the negative.
Large scale photo-work: h245xw428
German artists were often concerned by claustrophobia.

27. VILARINO, Manuel Sula Bassana, 1985
From publication Bestias Involuntarias
A preserved specimen is placed with tools and equipment, prompting ideas of striking and cutting.
Vilarino brings into conjunction the fact and the idea of death.

28. GRAHAM, Paul Franco’s Head on Coins, Vigo, Spain, 1988
Graham has always chosen to work with symptoms, and with scarcely inscribed evidence such as this which will tell another story bearing on life beyond the headlines.
Story: a bench near a public telephone in Spain. Smokers, preoccupied by the problems of dialling and inserting coin, have left their cigarettes to burn onto the painted surface.

29. LEVINTHAL, David Untitled, 1988
Polaroid.
From Wild West series.
Uses toys and models.
Fight between cowboy and Indian.
Purpose: audience is forced to reflect on ideas: heroism, struggle, action, catastrophe.

30. ARNATT, Keith Object from a Rubbish Tip, 1989
From a series of pictures of discarded objects called The Tears of Things.
‘Arte Povera” art contrived from despised materials.

31. SKOGLUND, Sandy Fox Games, 1989
22 red foxes; a single grey fox.
‘film in a frame” , arrangement flawless, no supports or wires visible.
Questions about art and its objects.

32. KAILA, Jan Untitled, 1991
Collaborative artwork between the photographer and Eli Sinistö, an acrobat, dancer and magician.
From book: Elis Sinistö.
The model acts expressively in response to Kaila’s prompting:’greedy”, ‘proud”…
Improvisation from material on hand; here the model lies beneath a blanket of daisies in the sunlight.

33. BLUME Anna & Bernhard Transcendental Constructivism, 1993
Staged photo-narrative
This pair of pictures is part of a series in which the photographers appear as <medium and victims of involuntary construct>.
In this picture, artistic creativity – as represented by a work of art by the Russian painter Kasimir Malevitch – has surprised a housewife in the thick of ordinary life.

34. FLORSCHUETZ, Thomas Triptych #77, 1993
Large scale C-type prints: total h150xw300cm
These pictures are intended to be shown in gallery spaces, and to challenge audience responses.
Florshuetz’s aim is to draw attention to the sort of things which are easily taken for granted: physical processes for example.

35. HAMMERSTIEL, Robert F. make it up, 1994
Doll’s outfits packaged in transparent plastic are part of everyday commercial reality. Hammerstiel’s tactic is to photograph and reproduce such miniatures on a scale large enough to make them objects for thought. His strategy is to show how what we think of as reality is produced.

36. KRIMS, Les Stilted, 1996 Iris print, assembled from several pictures.
From the series The Decline of the Left.
Strong use of symbols: hammer and sickle fading, vintage images echoes of the past, women on stilts is his mother.

37. THE PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK Phaidon Press Limited 1997
The end
THE PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK
Phaidon Press Limited
1997