Nancy Foote
[Writer and Critic, lives in America.]
Ironically, a medium which started out as an image recorder and replicator came to look on itself as a producer of sacred objects. But the strength of photographs lies in their unique ability to gather, preserve and present outside information, not to “make art.”
For every photographer who clamors to make it as an artist, there is an artist running a grave risk of turning into a photographer.
(1976)
Oddly enough, conceptual art has never been plagued with accusations that it belongs on photography’s side of the tracks, yet the condition in which much of it would or could exist without photography is open to question.
What it [photography] reveals becomes important, not what it is. It doesn’t matter to conceptual art whether the photographic prints that testify to its occurrence come from a fancy darkroom or the drug store; the view’s the same.
Despite its dependence on photography, however, conceptual art exhibits little photographic self-consciousness, setting itself apart from so-called serious photography by a snapshot-like amateurism and nonchalance that would raise the hackles of any earnest professional.
