Lately I’ve been going down a rabbit hole comparing vintage male nude photographs that strongly resemble one another — sometimes almost identically, other times more like riffs on the same visual idea.
The deeper I got into my recent Weimar Republic posts, the more I realized how connected these artists actually were. Herbert List clearly influenced photographers like Bruce Weber and Robert Mapplethorpe. List himself was influenced by Swiss sculptor and photographer Karl Geiser.
And suddenly you start seeing this whole chain of artists quietly borrowing, quoting, studying, imitating, and reshaping each other’s work across generations.
Art critics sometimes treat derivative work like a dirty word, but honestly I see it more like jazz. One artist riffs on another. Somebody picks up an idea and bends it slightly sideways. That’s basically what happened with Cubism when Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque practically started painting each other’s paintings until something new emerged.
Photography works that way too. In this first set we begin with black male backsides echoing each other across decades, then move into young men lounging, swimming, and hanging around oceans and cities like variations on the same dream.
Some similarities here may be direct references. Others may just reflect artists swimming in the same cultural waters at the same time. Either way, I love seeing how these images “talk” to one another — sometimes separated by continents, sometimes by fifty years.
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ReplyDeleteThank you;)
DeleteI liked this series, most enjoyable!
DeleteThank you, Pat! Glad you enjoyed it. bns
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