Soutter starts by looking at Duchamp and especially his urinal and in the way it pushed the boundaries of art. She then also talks about a series of found photographs of a person called Michelle deBois by Zoe Crosher, where she constructs an entire identity through these images but the viewer is unsure wether the identity is true or fictitious. I like this idea of where the truth of photography is played with and how it uses identity to show how subjective the truth is.

I feel that the main theme of this chapter is ambiguity. Soutter also gives examples of how by using ambiguity it engages the viewer and helps to raise questions within the viewer and is summarised well when she states:

Post modernism in art involves a loss of belief in the truth or unique value of the photograph. If modernism prizes singular images that reflect the world with great beauty or penetrating truthfulness, postmodernism rests on the idea that reality is constructed and unstable (P25)

This ties in nicely with the concept that I got from the introduction, that truth is another man made assumption, that it is a matter of perspective. It also summarises how post modernism evolved out from modernism and the difference between them. I thought it was something to do with ambiguity, but it also shows how the photographic style changed, that it became less concerned with realism and more with a shifting reality. I like the emphasis on “reality is constructed and unstable” which basically means that its all from a personal perspective and everyone’s reality is different.