Don’t Say Cheese: Why Do the People in Contemporary Art Photographs Look So Blank?

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by

Trent
in

Don’t Say Cheese: Why Do the People in Contemporary Art Photographs Look So Blank?

The A Smith Gallery isn’t in New York, London or Berlin. The town of Johnson City, Texas, where the gallery is located, is an hour’s drive from Houston and has a population of under 1,500. It’s a homespun place where people greet each other by name, and t

via Feature Shoot: http://www.featureshoot.com/2013/11/dont-say-cheese-why-do-the-people-in-contemporary-art-photographs-look-so-blank/

Why are contemporary-art photographs so devoid of smiles? In many cases it’s not just an absence of joy, but a total lack of emotional affect. Walk into a high-end gallery in any major art city today, and—if photographs are on show—you’re likely to see images of people wearing blank, zombie-like expressions. The style, called deadpan, is ubiquitous.