Posted by Foto Care Editor | Posted in Photo Exhibits in NYC | Posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010
In 1999, MoMA had an exceptional exhibit called Fame After Photography. Following is an overview of the exhibit with part of the museum’s exhibit essay. It is a fascinating essay with an historical overview of fame and the role photography has played in helping to establish today’s obsession with celebrity and fame. If you want to read the entire essay - just click here.
In 1997, when Diana, Princess of Wales, died from injuries suffered in a car crash, media pundits were quick to blame the paparazzi–and by extension photography itself–for her untimely death. Following the broadcast of Diana’s funeral to a rapt, worldwide television audience, other cultural observers suggested a more complex relationship between Diana and the media that hounded her, and between photography and the construction of fame. Through discussions on talk shows and in print, all with varying perspectives, people recognized that the most photographed woman in the world was as much a collaborator with and a beneficiary of photography’s power as she was the medium’s victim. Ironically, when motorized cameras whirred, strobes flashed, and videotape rolled, it was the Royal Princess who became a subject–the favorite subject of photographers–the focus of both sanctioned and invasive images that were devoured by a public that adored and outlived her.
The complicated, symbiotic relationship between photography and fame is at the heart of the exhibition Fame After Photography. Bringing together for the first time more than five hundred cultural artifacts and presenting them as the public first encountered them, the exhibition tracks how, since photography’s invention in 1839, the representation and the meaning of fame in Western culture, and most particularly in America, have been changed by the medium we now all take for granted.
Before photography, fame was typically accorded for excellence of achievement or bestowed on those born into an aristocratic lineage. Fame was paid homage in epic poetry, and in prose and the famous were immortalized when their images were minted on coins, memorialized in massive architecture and sculpture, or captured in paintings, drawings, and prints commissioned for the moral benefit of and appreciation by elite audiences. But that all changed after the introduction of photography in 1839. Who could become famous, how their fame was recorded, and who would be remembered was revolutionized by the new medium.
Fame After Photography let visitors gain a perspective on how, since 1839, fame has been driven and transformed by photography. Are we desperate to elevate the importance of celebrities in our lives because, as some psychologists believe, so many of the institutions that give purpose to our lives–the family, education, and religion–are in flux? We are no more addicted to pictures of the famous than people were in the nineteenth century, but because of their stimulating and often oppressive presence in the visual culture we live in, there’s no relief from fame.
Fame After Photography raises the questions that resound in our heads each time we sneak a peek at the latest cover story about Diana, Monica, or the celebrity of the moment: Why do photographic images of the famous continue to have such a powerful impact on their audiences? How has the boundary shifted between what was once considered private and what is public? What fascinates us so much about the portraits of the famous that are replaced so speedily that there’s little time to reflect on their meaning? Given that we learn from our own experiences of being photographed, what do we register when we look at images of the famous and celebrated with a knowing eye? Finally, in a culture that demands that photographic images be constantly restyled and refreshed, how long can fame of any kind possibly last?
What are your thoughts?
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