MODERNITY AND EXPERIMENT IN SELECTED REALISATIONS OF ARTISTIC PHOTOGRAPHY AFTER THE END OF POSTMODERNITY

The article is an attempt to examine the consequences which a renewed interest in modernity had for contemporary art of photography. What could be seen in artistic practice is that after the period of fascination with Baudrillardian simulations artists again are inspired by Dadaism, Surrealism or Constructivism. And although the achievements of modern photography and such artists as Z. Dlubak, Z. Beksinski or J. Robakowski have never been actually called into question by successive generations of artists, undoubtedly they have became a part of what is considered to be dead classics now. The article juxtaposes the works of art of some of the artists active in the field of art at least since the 1960s (A. Müller-Pohle, W. Prazmowski, J. Lewczynski) with the photographic test pieces of a new generation of artists (among others P. Orzechowska, T. Sikorski and A. Szwinta). Such a confrontation allows to see which trends of avant-garde art could still be attractive to contemporary photographers. The text is divided into two parts. The first one determines the extent of theoretical references within which photography could be analysed. The scope is defined by the concepts of 'photography as art' (in the ideas of, among others, L. Wells and A. Solomon-Godeau), avant-garde (with reference to the ideas of P. Bürger, R. Poggioli, R. Krauss and A. Erjavec) and modernity (Ch. Baudelaire, W. Benjamin, J.-F. Lyotard). The second part of the text analyses three aspects of contemporary photography which refers to modernity on the example of the selected photographic realisations. The aspects are: the role of artistic experience, relationship between 'novelty' and 'historicity' of a photographic picture, and a depiction of modern subjectivity.