Abstract
<p>This thesis uses Toronto artist Max Dean's performance Max Dean: Album, produced in conjunction with the Art Gallery of Ontario, as a case study to investigate the complex issues involved in the display and recirculation of private family albums in the public space of the art gallery.</p> <p>A survey of the critical literature that addresses the placement of vernacularobjects such as family albums and snapshots in the art gallery functions as a preamble to a series of interviews done with scholars, academics and curators in the fields of photography and art history. Drawing on the results of these interviews, this paper examines the challenges that arise when family albums are publicly displayed and exhibited. Terry Barrett's methodology of investigating the context of photographs is considered and applied to family albums and to Dean's Album project, analyzing how his public performance provides a creative solution to the issues raised. </p>
Highlights
To what extent does Dean's giving away of family albums raise questions concerning the value of these objects, their reception and their contextualization in private and public contexts? How can an institution such as an art gallery provide an appropriate contextual space for a private family album? These are the questions at the heart of this thesis and in answering them this essay uses Dean's performance Max Dean: Album as a case study in conjunction with a series of interviews conducted with scholars, academics and curators in the field of photo and art history. These interviews focus on issues of contextualization; when private photographic objects are brought into the public art gallery, as these albums have been, a “complicated shift in meaning occurs when family photographs are moved from the private to the public sphere.”3 Drawing on the responses of Geoffrey Batchen, Alison Nordström, Sophie Hackett, Elizabeth Smith, Vid Ingelevics, Daile Kaplan and Martha Langford,4 the aim of this paper is to examine the issues regarding the contextualization of private family albums in the art gallery as well as in Dean's public gesture of giving his collection away
Dean’s Public Gesture Max Dean: Album consists of four parts: the Waiting Room, the Foto Bug, the facebook page Album: A Public Project and the exhibition of a portion of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO)'s collection of albums from Dean in the Isadore and Rosalie Sharp Gallery, at the AGO
This paper has sought to outline the issues and difficulties that surround the public presentation of family albums, looking at the problems that arise when these objects are relocated to the public space of the art gallery
Summary
[T]he age of photography corresponds precisely to the explosion of the private into the public, or rather into the creation of a new social value, which is the publicity of the private: the private is consumed as such, publicly. There are no written captions or a title, by looking through the album itself (internal context) the snapshots appear to be placed chronologically giving the viewer a sense that the story the album's maker was telling was that of the family settling into their new home in America This seems fitting if we consider the original context of the time period the album appears to be from, as many Europeans immigrated to America after the Second World War. This seems fitting if we consider the original context of the time period the album appears to be from, as many Europeans immigrated to America after the Second World War Considering this is of key importance because, according to Barrett's model, “[o]riginal context is history: social history, art history, and the history of the individual [album] and the [creator] who made it.” Analyzing original context means considering the intent of the album maker – that is, the motivations behind the objects' creation.
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