The American artist and author of the monographs Grapevine (1997) and Trip (2000) was never engaged with documentary in the true sense of the word, even though the former series of photographs in particular (of the residents of the town of Hollow in West Virginia, taken between 1988 and 1993) at least formally bears some features of the documen- tary genre. But in contrast to an approach which tries to minimize the manipulative quality of the shot and draw instead on the chosen environment, Lipper uses the faces of the inhabitants of the local demimonde merely as a platform for her own experiences.
Photography, as a medium that is objective by definition (if we take into consideration Barthes' relevant texts of the 1960s, in spite of a minor correction in Camera Lucida in the 1980s, the nature of the argument as well as the basic nature of photography has not changed) we will of course stumble into arbitrary features that necessarily imply the subjective dimension of the photograph. The time, place, framing and motivation of the shot must necessarily refer to an I, the one who took it. But this is not in the truest sense a concrete I; the subjectivity of photography remains formal, it is merely a kind of logical reference. Any I could have been in the place of the given I.(full article is available after purchasing a subscription - not available now)
Photography, as a medium that is objective by definition (if we take into consideration Barthes' relevant texts of the 1960s, in spite of a minor correction in Camera Lucida in the 1980s, the nature of the argument as well as the basic nature of photography has not changed) we will of course stumble into arbitrary features that necessarily imply the subjective dimension of the photograph. The time, place, framing and motivation of the shot must necessarily refer to an I, the one who took it. But this is not in the truest sense a concrete I; the subjectivity of photography remains formal, it is merely a kind of logical reference. Any I could have been in the place of the given I.(full article is available after purchasing a subscription - not available now)