Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Photography in the News, Incessant Hack Edition

To be said in best Inigo Montoya voice: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Look, there's a long tradition relating to installation art. It means something. It's not just a word you can slap onto hackwork and expect it will improve it.

Spencer Tunick keeps doing the same thing. Over, and over. Often, when an artist does that, the work grows in context and gets deeper, more meaningful, getter. Not in this case. It's just the same thing over and over, and it becomes less interesting each time. Except he's taken to calling his snapshots "installations."

Tunick's work is now less remarkable than a Geico ad, and twice as annoying. I've written about his always-the-damn-same work previously, and I guess I can stop hoping it will ever stop, grow, improve or vary in the slightest.

Nude volunteers needed for Opera House strip
"New York photographer Spencer Tunick is looking for thousands of Australians to disrobe in the name of art on the steps of the Sydney Opera House."

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