ABSTRACT
A formalist approach to art emphasizes visual aspects above all else, including paying special attention to the way the work is made and what it looks like. That is not to say that visual appearance is without psychological or political impetus. In fact, throughout the history of photography many artists have turned to the medium as a means of engaging a radical form of aesthetics that was specifically motivated by ideology. Film critic Okada Susumu presents the term eizo as a break away from a simplistic understanding of realism, and a move towards a more complex definition of the role of subjectivity in the image: ‘the word eizo has two meanings,’ he explains, it is a visual medium of expression, as well as the image emerging mentally for the viewer.
