Exercise 2: Photography in the museum or in the gallery?

Krauss, R. (1982). Photography's Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View. Art Journal, 42(4), p.311.

I’m glad this was an article and not a book as the text was not terribly reader-friendly.  The argument here is whether pre-photographic art discourse categories are relevant to photographic discourse, with particular emphasis on 19th and early 20th century examples.  Where painters referred to landscapes, for example, 19th cent photographers most often used the term view, a word Krauss finds uncomfortably laden with commercial connotations.  She wonders if the word artist is capable of describing what she might call photographic dabblers, people with extremely abbreviated careers and no long term commitment.  What does oeuvre mean, she asks, when your output amounts to less than a handful of images, or, in the case of Atget, a library of over 10,000?  While she concludes that Atget was a subject of the state cataloging system he sought to fill,  she is mute on her own cataloging imperatives.  Perhaps Szarkowski’s comment, quoted by Krauss, is truer than most, that Atget and his work (and by extension the idea and practice of photography) was many things, and that all ideas to encapsulate him and them are at best partial.  

#