Critical look at Dystopian Photographers.

 Dystopian culture is everywhere at the moment. It is in films such as The Terminator franchise and Blade Runner to painters such as Michael Kerbow and writers such as The Handmaids Tale by Margarat Atwood. The genre is everywhere. One reason for this is that society is not managed like it was in the modernist period of the early to mid-20th century. The ideas and philosophies which underpinned our existence were eroded and replaced with postmodernist thinking. We feel afraid also at this uncertainty. Globalisation brings about uncertainty and events that not just affecting one nation state, but the whole world. We are more connected now then we have in our history. This is due to the internet and global travel connecting us. All these factors create new opportunities, but also, it creates new fears which are personified through culture and the dystopian genre. 

I have chosen to look at this concept for some of my work this year. As a result, I have become interested in photographers who work with this genre and understand why they do. I have come across an article written in Blind in 2021, that explores some photographers who work in this genre.

The genre began in the early C20 with novels such as Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984. Films such as Fritz Langs Metropolis to Margarat Atwoods The Handmaids Tale seems to be the modern dystopian novel according to the article. 

According to Blind "Dystopias depict societies which, faced with a shortage of resources, have veered into totalitarianism, enforced systemic surveillance and mass manipulation, and gave free rein to technology at the expense of the environment" Dystopian Visions: When Photographers Create Uncanny Futures — Blind Magazine (blind-magazine.com)

Some of the depictions mentioned, we have mass surveillance and the beginnings of shortages at the present. So, it is not hard to understand why people feel some anxiety which is manifested in film and culture. 

Photographers who use the scarcity of resources to illustrate points are Fernando Montiel Klint, Lunar Dystopia. 

Dystopian Visions: When Photographers Create Uncanny Futures — Blind Magazine (blind-magazine.com)

His image shows a lack of vegetation and a land which is like a moonscape. His image gives credibility to the view we are in a dystopian present.  

Evelyn Beucicova shows us a hue of red representative of totalitarianism in the former Soviet Union. Her images show buildings in Russia that were built during this period, with a view to modernist design elements of utilitarianism. The buildings in her collection look huge and intimidating, making the individual look insignificant. Constructivism was an artistic, political and social movement of the early twentieth century. Artists like El Lissitzky saw themselves as not just artist but along with politician such as the new communists government, constructing a new society. Constructivists and modernists redesigned art, architecture and social planning. Evelyn Beucicarva's images represent that social planning by the communists.  

El Lissitzky in the Light of the Modernist Movement | by Nahum Yamin | Medium

El Lissitzky. Beat the Whites with a Red Wedge. 1923

Evelyn Beucicova 

Dystopian Visions: When Photographers Create Uncanny Futures — Blind Magazine (blind-magazine.com)