Why have I been fascinated with Edwardian/Victorian photography?  Because this was at the birth of paintings new conception.  It was a period that involved not just the invention of photography, but, Darwinism and the release of Freuds new theories.  Shaking the foundations of the wests once secure philosophical and theosophical footing.  At the same time challenging paintings representational authority and opening up avenues for different thought.

Painting in the century after photography’s invention was, in effect, painting in the throes of a type of death.  New possibilities were created, but they all led towards an end.  Then, the period we begin to know as post-modernism was painting taking on a new form from bits of the past.  We raise the dead, stitching various required parts together to create a bastardization of old forms.  Frankensteins Monster.  Something decomposed and unholy.

An interesting footnote to this is whether a new period of classicism or modernism will be found in the future, or indeed, whether we are already in one.  I suspect the latter may be true.  I look at Peter Doigs work and I see a new religious painting.  Works that believe in the dogma of their own environment.  Are we in the midst of a new classicism, if so, it makes me believe that the future could have a new modernism, a new death, the most exciting of all journeys.