The Minimalist Photographer

Postmodernism

Modernism was a minimalist photographic philosophy in many ways—the photograph was to be as close to an objective reality as possible. Of course, the photographer could choose and frame the subject or scene, but after that his or her duty was to ensure as faithful a reproduction as possible. Postmodernism, by contrast, is off in the other direction, denying the existence of a single unifying reality. It is a philosophy of relative truths, where each individual’s reality is unique and is based on personal experience. Of course this means the photographer is no longer a detached modernist observer but is now front and center, the focal point of the action, in many ways like a pictorialist on steroids. Whereas pictorialists had the ...