Photography in 2003: Encompassing Globalization, ... Irenic (1) and Helpless

As 2003 is coming to a close, it is time to share and assess this year's various events on visual arts scene. Since 9/11, most of works that have had any impact, besides numerous historical retrospectives (Adams, Cartier-Bresson, Lartigue, Siskind, Weston, etc. ...), embrace issues regarding new world order. For past 3 years this order has been defined by Bush administration, G 8 or now G 20, growing emergence of Asian world, and, of course, constant development of economic globalization whose consequences directly or indirectly affect every one of us. This latter phenomenon is not limited to transgenic organisms and a pseudo-freedom of trade--the various formats of DVDs throughout world, preventing international circulation, are a perfect, mild but obvious illustration of case. While exports of most non-service industries from first to second, third and fourth world countries gain momentum, globalization reaches far into production, distribution and consumption of images, from photographs to videos and films. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Beyond human tragedy and trauma experienced by a whole city and nation after fall of World Trade Center towers, which soon extended to whole western world (2), unnoticed consequences of event have ranged from end of political correctness to a move away from a kind of endemic navel-gazing both in political and cultural lives. The renewed Manichean and over-simplistic concept of the Axis of Evil threw us back into darker years of modernist era and Cold War. The target had changed, but rhetoric was same. Being an anti-American US citizen was possible again. Following a historical strategy where only way to look good is to demonize someone else (the eternal other), TV channels in US, with exception of PBS, orchestrated a national paranoia and boosted sale of flags. Suddenly for many people there was, again, a treacherous world beyond US borders, MTV and reality television. It allowed some new caricatural developments in paranoia and jingoism, those precious smoke screens that were used to conceal and implement ambitions of economical and geo-political control of Middle East. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On opposite end of social and cultural spectrum, realization of how fragile our situation was, linked to and dependent on rest of world, turned many a member of art community away from some of self-reflective, sometimes repetitive and self-indulgent, preoccupations of 1990s (the latest works by some of these prodigal children such as Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, and William Wegman, can be quoted here to confirm this evolution), which found some spectacular extension in irrelevance in recent Matthew Barney circus after-show at Guggenheim this spring. In Canada, Europe, Israel, and United States, artists and curators raised their heads and tried to understand what they had overlooked, what responsibility art scene had had in current devastated landscape of planet. How could they participate in an effort that could defend their values, advocate more opening, more understanding, a better and wider vision of world, and counteract ongoing self-protective and reactionary state of minds? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Numerous institutions, museums, and art festivals are now investing in inter-cultural, international exchanges with renewed interest. Asian art from Japan to China has been object of numerous shows from History of Japanese Photography (3) curated by, among others, Anne Wilkes Tucker, to inclusion of works by Chinese photographers in various festivals and group shows in Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and USA. An international photography festival was created in China (4), bringing works from west to Chinese audiences and providing exhibition spaces for local production. …

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