Guest Lecture: Lucy Soutter

Lucy Soutter, Course Leader, MA Photography Arts, University of Westminster

Expanded Photography

Contemporary artists transforming our understanding of photography by combing it with painting, sculpture, installation, moving image, performance and audience participation. This talk explores the current extensions of photography within the expanded field of contemporary art. It looks back to the 1970's to explore precedents, and also illuminates the current cultural conditions driving this area of practice.  

In the middle of her photographic practice, when she was due to have a child, Lucy decided to write a book about how photographing is expanding. How the tradition of a photograph can now be viewed as variety of things outside of photography itself, such as a sculpture, installation and more. 

She presented to us a range of photographers who have the photographic idea however produce something of a 3D piece. Lorenzo Vitturi manages to work between the expansion. Producing a photograph alongside a sculpture formed together by objects found within a market he visits regularly. He then presented the sculptures at The Photographers Gallery in 2014. 

Matthew Brandt works over the top of his images in Greys Lake, 2013. The image itself is partially visible, with what seems to be red paint going across the image. 

Anne Hardy previously re-created the environment and then photographed it. Her practice has expanded as she now presents these re-creations in 3D for it to be seen personally. Esther Treichmann is another who also works like that, presenting a large scale hand painting, alongside photographs and video as a layered visual message. 

At the time it seemed I was being with information as I scribbling down important notes. However coming away from that it is very true and obvious that photography is perhaps becoming the past and the expansion of illustration, sculpture, moving image, painting, performance and audience participation is the new photography. Following a brief I'd recently completed for BA2a, Rough Cuts, it was revealed then to me that photography is gradually becoming fine art. The brief required us to work on top of the images, and those images didn't necessarily have to be of our own which says it all for me. The brief was more about the mark making and how it combines with the subject rather than the image itself. It's very interesting to look back and finally see that, whereas before I did wonder whether this was a new thing for photography.