Application and Its Typological Classification of Photographs Shown in Contemporary Art

현대미술에 나타난 사진의 활용과 그 유형학적 분류

A photograph, which was applied to contemporary art, plays a very important role in the whole of the multiplied and diversified contemporary arts today. The application of photos, which were shown in contemporary art following the 1950s, can be classified into five types according to role and function of a photo in the process of developing a work. However, this classification is shown a little ambiguously. That is because photos of being utilized by artists are indicated very diversely depending on their artistic strategy and situation. As the first type, a few painters utilize a photo as mirror of reality in order to materialize a challenging and revolutionary idea with going against traditional picture in their pictorial practice. As the second classification, especially American painters utilize a photo as material component of forming their picture like photo-montage or collage. The combined application of this medium is first doing genre de-construction and hybridization of post-modernism in the 1980s while ultimately aiming at social criticism or political satire. The third type implies particularly a case that avant-garde artists utilize a photo as evidence of a work. In this case, a photo is employed as evidence of a work, which disappears in the temporal space essentially like body art, land art, and performance. Also, as the fourth type is a case of utilizing a photo for artistic concept of a work, not pictorial practice of picture, it is utilized often as important artistic strategy of conceptual artists. The final type of utilizing photo is a case of applying photo as formative tool on behalf of dye-stuffs or crayon in order to record a section of reality, which always continues regardless of event or meaning any more, in the traditional picture. In this case, a work is indicated as a photo of having a form of picture, namely, as Forme-tableau. The main subject is indicated there as a daily case of being repeated always the extremely common and revived theme.