Phillip Chee

El Natura Lista

Strictly speaking, photoconceptual art does not necessarily refer to photography that has a conceptual intention, but rather to photographic work that originated in conceptual art and the late modernist tendencies most closely associated with it. But even though photoconceptualism grew out of a modernist aesthetic, it simultaneously critiqued it, favouring a heterogeneous mix of practices and an emphasis on representation and subject matter. In opposition to the hegemony established by mainstream modernism, it counterposed heterogeneity and marginality. This is what made photoconceptualism from the very beginning also a “postmodernist” activity; and in this it identified with regionalist challenges not only to the domination of the art centre but also to the authority of histories conceived from those centres — the “grand narratives” so to speak.
— Ian Wallace, Photoconceptual Art In Vancouver