POSTMODERN CATALOG ESSAY

The assignment was to write a catalog essay in the postmodern tradition of excessive citation to an exhibition of our own work. Here it is:


What is a photograph (for “photography” see “Photography for Dummies: Second Edition” by Russell Hart)? To understand the work of Taylor Martin we must find an answer to this question, so we can therefore gain an understanding of underlying concepts (for “concept” see “The Big Book of Concepts” by Gregory L. Murphy). When we have come to a reasonable conclusion to this problem, we can then begin to unpack the work. Everything we see in Martin’s photographs is real (for “the real” see “Desert of the real, five essays on September 11th and related dates” by Slavoj Zizek). Taylor is the author (for “the author” see “The Death of the Author” in Image-Music-Text by Roland Barthes) of photographs that question our standard conventions of processing information (for “information” see “Information: The New Language of Science” by Hans Christen von Baeyer) and put all other preconceived modes of representation (for “modes of representation” see “Les Modes de Representation Dans L'Union Europeenne by Sabine Saurugger) to shame. All of a sudden, after viewing this exhibition (for “exhibition” see “What Makes a Great Exhibition” by Paula Marincola), our place in the world seems to make sense. Maybe our human (for “human” see “Human, All Too Human” by Fredrich Willhelm Nietzsche) condition (for “condition” see “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge by Jean-Francois Lyotard) really isn’t so bad.