Lateness and Longing – on the afterlife of photography describes how a generation of female artists is transforming photography - with analogue techniques. This applies to works by Zoe Leonard, Tacita Dean, Sharon Lockhart and Moyra Davey - who have collectively transformed the practice of photography by using analogue technologies and have resisted the transition to the digital in their work.
The artists return to earlier, incomplete or unrealized moments in the history of photography, and move towards the analogue basis of photographic media. The artists' work suggests that photography has been - not obsolete - but "lately" opened up by the potentially critical forces of anachronism.
Through a strategy of return – refusing to let go – these artists' work suggests an afterlife and a survival of the photographic in contemporary art, a formal delay where photography finds its way forward through resistance to the contemporary itself.
George Baker is a professor of art history at UCLA and editor of October magazine. His most recent books include The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris, the edited anthology Paul Chan: Selected Writings and Dive Bar Architect: On the Work of DE May.
Dimensions: L: 25.4 x H: 23 cm
Pages: 520
Language: English
Author: George Baker
Publisher: The University Of Chicago Press