The Epic and the Everyday
- contemporary photographic art
published 1994, south bank centre, london
isbn 1 85332 131 1
Foreword - by Henry Meyric Hughes, Martin Caiger-Smith, Director of Exhibitons, Exhibiton organiser
complexities of contemporary experience
Different Times -Essay by James Lingwood
Jeff Walls sudden gust of wind
Braudel multiplicity of times: geographical, social and biological - HISTORY
ground floor of history = history of humanity in relation to environment, climate + demography
over this a second layer, history of habits, - customs, beliefs ways of living, thinking a social time
over this, barely perceptible, the biological
"In the living world there are no individuals entirely sealed off by themselves; all individual enterprise is rooted on a more complex reality ... The question is not to deny the individual on the grounds that he is prey of contingency, but somehow transcend him ... to react against a history arbitrarily reduced to the role of quintessential heroes."
- Braudel, 'The Situation in History' in On History, op.cit., p.10
'The value of information does not survive the moment in which it was new. It lives only at that moment; it has to surrender to it completely, and explain itself to it without losing any time; a story is different. It does not expend itself. It preserves a concentration of strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time'.
- Walter Benjamin, 'The Storyteller', 1936 republished in illuminations, London 1973 p90
"Is the photograph not always, first and foremost, a record of what has been and is no more?" p12
A lot of this is now concerned with history etc... skimmed
John Coplans - seems to have a lot of self portraits... naked ones
1992 / 1990 diptychs / triptychs
 |
| Self-Portrait (Frieze No.2 Four Panels) |
Research Braudel + Walter Benjamin's Storyteller + John Coplan
Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk
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