Despite how much it reaks of the West Coast, John Divola’s work interests me because of how it is, to paraphrase Jan Tumlir, about the “deferall of aesthetic decision-making”. I actually agree with most of the points that Jan and John discuss during their interview, especially their discourse surrounding the idea that photography affords one the ability to change the context of objects within an image, whether artistic or not, and appropriate them as something with art context, making the photographic image less about transparency and more about the relationship to things in the world. Divola uses photography to excerpt objects that plainly exist in the world and give them aesthetic value through their “contextual replacement” ─ appropriating, essentially. But isn’t that ultimately what photography is? Appropriation? Photographers really have no choice but to appropriate the aesthetic sensibilities of the referent. Right? Anyway, I also found it interesting how John talks about how he prefers to work in series versus individual photographs. I’ve been feeling that way myself. However, I’ve found that a lot of photographers, specifically students, use the idea of a “series” as a scapegoat. It's the quantity of quality mentality that most photographers seem to adapt. If I had a dime for all of the terrible series that I’ve seen I could pay off my student debt... Actually, that’s probably not true considering that I go to a private art school. Needless to say, I’ve seen a lot of bad series. I feel hypocritical for making such remarks, however, because like John, I too prefer to have an ongoing engagement with my subject matter or concept over a period of time. I feel like John can get away with this process because the act of making his work is just as important as the work itself, and for that reason lends itself to a series that sufficiently documents the performative aspects of what he is doing. Whereas I have the tendency of fixating on specific concepts, normally not at all performative, and pursue only those concepts until I’ve exhausted all of my options.
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