Photographs are keeping me awake
I can't sleep tonight because visions of a show I saw last year keep running through my head. I saw Greta Pratt's Using History at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and it has been one of those shows that has really stuck with me.
Contemporary American patriotism is a devastatingly humorous thing. One longstanding tradition in patriotic expression is to bring forward a nation's history, and thus its foundation through stories and artifacts. In this series of photographs, Pratt explores connections to history by visiting memorials, museums and reenactment sites and photographing them as they are, tourists and all. By using the experiences of visitors and participants she captures humorous, astonishing and sometimes disgraceful displays of historical recollection and patriotic sentiment. The photographs reveal the fragmented nature of commercialized presentation and its prevailing jurisdiction over historic recounts.
The blatant humor laced with a dark undertone of a patriotic insincerity is what really hit me. Plus the pictures are quite well made. If you haven't see them take a look and if you have, take another.
Contemporary American patriotism is a devastatingly humorous thing. One longstanding tradition in patriotic expression is to bring forward a nation's history, and thus its foundation through stories and artifacts. In this series of photographs, Pratt explores connections to history by visiting memorials, museums and reenactment sites and photographing them as they are, tourists and all. By using the experiences of visitors and participants she captures humorous, astonishing and sometimes disgraceful displays of historical recollection and patriotic sentiment. The photographs reveal the fragmented nature of commercialized presentation and its prevailing jurisdiction over historic recounts.
The blatant humor laced with a dark undertone of a patriotic insincerity is what really hit me. Plus the pictures are quite well made. If you haven't see them take a look and if you have, take another.
posted by Allison Grant at
12:38 AM
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