Misunderstandings (A Theory of Photography)

1970

Mel Bochner

(American, 1940–2025)

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Culture

America

Medium

10 offset lithographs and envelope

Credit Line

Gift of Barbara Tannenbaum in memory of Carl Schneider 2023.132

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Location

Not on view

Did You Know?

Mel Bochner has stated that the quotations in Misunderstandings “might (or might not) suggest the impossibility of a ‘theory’ of photography.”

Description

When Mel Bochner began producing photographs, he explored historical and critical writings on medium and found that “the more I read, the more I began to see it all as a colossal misunderstanding.” This artwork juxtaposes quotations from his reading that present contradictory views of the medium and its relationship to reality and reproduction with a photograph: a negative of the artist’s forearm and hand alongside a measuring stick (a symbol of verifiable fact).