Sugimoto immediately sprang to mind when I was reading the text, specifically the discussion regarding the paradox inherent in representation which can be viewed simultaneously as an attempt at truthfulness or a fundamental falsehood.
Sugimoto's photographic series Dioramas and Wax Museums was started in the 70s, and ellucidates this paradox rather well I think. He made this statement about the diorama series:
Upon first arriving in New York in 1974, I did the tourist thing. Eventually I visited theNatural History Museum, where I made a curious discovery: the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by taking a quick peek withone eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I'd found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it's as good as real.
He uses simple lighting methods and a large format camera. Essentially, he photographs a "fake" scene, thereby making it "real", or as he states, "as good as real", maybe even better. But it was already in a sense real (you can't photograph what was never there). It is a real diorama, of which the purpose to represent ,in as life-like a manner as possible, a real scene. He takes this real fake thing and makes it into a fake real thing.
So he produces a photograph (a mimesis) of a mimetic object, and in doing so makes the subject of the photograph appear no longer mimetic.
Sugimoto's work is technically in the medium of photography, but I think the strong conceptual element overrides this to a point where it can still be included in this blog. It's all post-medium nowadays anyway i guess.
http://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/
Sorry no pictures, the library computer won't let me upload and I have not the internet at home...
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