Photo Modernity

Modernity is simply the state or quality of being modern. It has come to express periods of great change in the 20th century. Modernism represents the thrill of the new, the sanguinity that some how problems will be solved and life will be made better by the newest and latest inventions, fashions and trends. That new technology is embraced with enthusiasm and explored to its fullest extent and pushed to its limits.

In particular, one period of modernism in the 20th century which best evokes this sense is the period after the First World War. There was, unsurprisingly, an optimism that things would be different and that science and technology would lead to a better life. During this period, the artists and photographers; Man Ray, Lee Miller, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia working in Paris did much to exploit the boundaries of what could be done technically in photography and art and capture the modernist philosophy in their work.