The Met’s Photography of Photography Fails to Capture Its Audience

With the smorgasbord of images thrown at us on a daily basis in the form of advertisements, book covers, and pop-up ads, one would think that most of us would be aware of the extent of the persuasive powers of photography. A current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Photography on Photography: Reflections on the Medium Since 1960,” offers a glimpse at the self-critical strain of photographic practice. The most pertinent issues addressed here are those of identity construction and the shaky representative nature of the photographic image.

A quite stark, if not spectacular, portrait by Thomas Ruff is one of the main showpieces. The subject is cropped at the shoulders and stares at the viewer intently, unblinking. What we get is a purely objective account—the picture is captivating in its details yet ultimately reveals nothing about the subject. Despite the descriptive intensity, viewers are frustrated. The point seems to be that all an image can ever deliver is a persona, never a person.

A nice counterpoint to Ruff’s portrait is a set of photo booth self-portraits by Andy Warhol. Unlike the protective stance of Ruff’s subject, Warhol revels in the opportunity to re-imagine himself in front of the photographic lens. He thus points toward the very brilliance and cunning of the photographic medium, which offers the opportunity not only of self-creation but of world-creation—the opportunity to deliver lies.

Lutz Bacher’s delusional fall into a paparazzi dreamscape in Jackie & Me perhaps best embodies the show. Bacher presents shots of Jackie Onassis taken by the paparazzo Ron Galella with accompanying text. Bacher’s framing of Galella’s pictures attest to his as well as our own involvement with the torrent of media images. Here the artist and viewer become insatiable predators. It is ultimately the lurid voyeuristic delight implicit in these pictures that is at once fascinating and disgusting.

“Photography on Photography” is a small show, which makes it all the more surprising that some photos simply fail to relate to the viewer. Roe Ethridge’s boating scene, for example, fails as a stand-alone piece, leaning on the wall text in order to connect to the rest of the show.

What the show does best is hint at the ever-growing distance of the photographic image from the reality that it is supposed to represent. The message is brought home by Hiroshi Sugimoto’s portrait of Fidel Castro. One first wonders exactly how the artist got the notorious leader to pose for him, until one realizes that the picture is merely a photo of a wax figure. The effect here is uncanny and estranging—we’ve entered a world where the distinctions between the real and the reproduced are blurred. It is the image that has become the reality.

“Photography on Photography: Reflections on the Medium Since 1960” is showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through Oct. 19.