Changing of the guard

Interesting debate going on over at Alec Soth’s blog about some of the post-Katrina fine-art images by photographers such as Robert Polidori. You know your blog has achieved fame when Robert Polidori himself responds, from New Delhi.

Soth’s original post, Polidori’s response, and Soth’s follow-up are all worth reading, and I have my own take on the issue (i.e., post-Katrina images without people), but I think what’s more interesting even than that is the nature of Polidori’s response. He mentions something about the Great Lakes being a “Sour Milk Sea,” implying that Soth (from Minnesota) is somehow bitter. It seems to me that all Soth was doing in his blog was thinking about images by artists whose work he respected but that had left him wanting more. He was questioning not only the work, but also himself, trying to figure out why the absence of people in the images mattered. Isn’t that the point of art—to make people question?

At one point, Polidori mentions having had to “suffer through” numerous exhibitions since the 1970s that didn’t share his personal aesthetic. If Polidori represents the old guard (I realize that’s a big if), and if Soth represents the new (maybe another big if), then I think we’ve just witnessed the changing of the guard. Soth doesn’t seem to suffer through anything.

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball