Emerson's Essay: The World In The Ground Green

In his article "The World in the Ground Glass: Transformations in P.H. Emerson's Photography," author Charles Palermo argues for a more nuanced understanding of the alleged "break" that occurs between modernist and postmodernist photographic theory and practice. In order to do so he uses as his case study the work of modernist photographer Peter Henry Emerson, whom he asserts "had already come to grips with the challenges postmodernism was later to pose." Throughout this essay I will take a detailed look at Palermo's article in order to engage in a critical response to his argument. While the author certainly presents a fascinating and engaging argument for the role of Emerson's work in blurring the line between modernist and postmodernist

According to standard post-modernist critique, modernist photography does not accomplish its purported goal of "expressing an original and personal view of a subject." Instead, it "merely leads the beholder back to the original motif" or "refers the beholder to an [endless] chain of images." Thus the photograph itself is not admired or meaningful, but rather only the thing it's of or only as an element on a "chain" that itself continually defers meaning. Palermo follows in the footsteps of author Walter Benn Michaels in pushing back against this postmodernist critique, for as Michaels points out a photograph can in itself convey meaning by virtue of its "cutting off" or meaningful framing, the act of which distinguishes it from the object it represents in both of the above-mentioned senses. To its detriment what the postmodernist critique essentially ignores is this presence of the frame, which is the indispensable component required in order to be able to consider a photograph as a work of art, or as a kind of "pictorial speech act." The author further argues that the modernist photographer Peter Henry Emerson, though considering two theories of art that would have been defeated by postmodernist critique, ultimately develops a third theory of art that both heads off postmodernism and goes a step further in "emphasi[zing] the function of the