To meticulously reproduce a photograph by hand is to know it most intimately—to pore over its details and devote inordinate amounts of time to re-creating a moment captured in a flash. Such exacting realism commits to the specificity of its subject, elevating its significance in turn. And yet, despite the level of care and determination relating to the practice, Photorealism has largely been looked down upon as cheap illusionism, slick eye candy, or conservative fluff in the art-historical canon of the past half century. Though long associated with crass commercialism and advertising, Photorealism’s easy legibility and apparent superficiality belie more complex depths. Turning purported deficits and liabilities into strengths, curator Anna Katz has staged a thoughtful reappraisal of American Photorealism, both as an historical movement (emerging in the late 1960s and ’70s, when cameras became widely available) and as an ongoing strategy prevalent among contemporary artists.
In “Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968,” Katz undertakes a recuperative project, positioning Photorealism in its American flowering as an extension of progressive political impulses.
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