Deadpan Photography: Enjoying the Pretence | Hacker News Reader

Deadpan Photography: Enjoying the Pretence

photoni.st

54 pointsNaOH16 comments

Several of the examples in the article are from the Dusseldorf school of photography (which I am a big fan of in general).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCsseldorf_school_of_phot...

My gateway photo was Cabbage Field by Simone Nieweg

https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/...

I feel like that term could also be used to describe Wes Anderson's filming style. The static shots and dead-centered framing are as much of a deadpan comedic character as anything happening in the scene.

To some degree, yes, except that Anderson's sets and costumes are highly stylized to the point where they come across as contrived and artificial, which is at odds with the naturalistic deadpan aesthetic.

I am confused. My understanding is, that deadpan photography is a very neutral way of photographing things. 99 cents on the other hand was highly digitally altered by gursky, it is not neutral at all. How is it an example for deadpan photography?

Reminds me of New Topographics, but not mostly in black and white.

> Now notice that you are being watched. The image is watching you look at it. It knows what it is doing.

That's when I stopped reading

I had a similar reaction. If someone could chime in and explain how this isn't absolute nonsense, I'd be grateful.

If the parent had kept reading, they might have discovered the retroactive explanation of that sentence:

"This is the form’s real operation. Deadpan does not convince you it is neutral. It performs neutrality in a way that lets you enjoy both the performance and your awareness of it. You are in on the joke. The image says it didn’t choose, and you know it chose, and both of you agree to pretend otherwise because the pretence produces something valuable: attention."

So, normal art-writing nonsense.

Or maybe I should say that, in presenting the problematic sentence first, and the putative "retroactive explanation" some distance later, the author has engaged in a form of dialectic which invites the reader to ask the question for themselves, or, in presuming the answer, become part of the joke.

That only makes it worse.

I can’t tell if it’s just normal art-writing nonsense or AI-helped nonsense anymore

AI-helped nonsense is nowhere near a peak, I wish I could place a bet on the ascendancy of AI-assisted nonsense

I don't know why I like that first photo so much, but damn it's great.

“Now notice that you are being watched. The image is watching you look at it. It knows what it is doing.”

What in the SCP…

The point is that the image is composed in a particular way to appear entirely un-composed, spontaneous, but plays with that appearance. The artistic part of the image is that relationship between you, as the viewer, and the composition of it.

Sort of like a person with an amazing taste in fashion, dressing shoddily - but in such a camp way, it's very obviously purposeful in its shoddiness, making it a fashion statement again.

...but yeah, I stumbled across that sentence too.

Yes, that sentence is completely ridiculous. It tries too hard to make a statement, but it doesn't adequately reflect the article's subject matter. It is overly pretentious and vacuous.

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