Recalling the recent thread about Aperture and how the current output of contemporary artists seem to depress some, and/or baffle others, I would like to ask the question: Can a photograph be funny AND be a work of art at the same time? I stand on the ground that a photograph can be a work of art, but I could not for the longest time think of having ever laughed during an exhibition. Many great photographs are contemplative, touching, moving, provocating, but which of them make you laugh? Have you ever peed your pants watching a great print? If not, why would laughter be evacuated from the range of emotions that good photography and art in general should convey to their viewers? Is it even possible to tell a joke with a picture?
James Joyce is one of my favorite author not jut because I'm a geek and actually bother to follow the arcane details of his writing, but also because he's so damn funny while being a brilliant writer at the same time. Great satirists like Swift, Sterne (also Irishmen, come to think of it), Voltaire, Dickens can be hilarious, but writing and other narrative art have the benefit of temporality, which is often essential to buildup a situation leading to a punch. Photography is not essentially temporal, though you may appreciate separate elements of the picture in a succession ("diachronically" if you will) rather than simultaneously ("synchronically"). I presume it is harder to create a reaction like laughter, that needs a buildup, with a medium in which everything is visible at once. However, I stand convinced of the humorous expressive power of pictures after having seen a great photo spread of the Little Britain actors in UK Vogue last month (for those foreign to the series, LB is a BBC sketch comedy act figuring various impersonations of British type characters).
So who laughs in the museums?
