ABSTRACT
The temporal reference in Michael Fried's 2008 book, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before, will have an immediate double implication for readers of his work on the history of painting and on contemporary art. Contemporary art photography "matters," in other words, because of some understanding of the way visual art "matters," or should matter. Art is such as to exist as, only as, its own self-understanding, self-understanding shared by artist and historical world. Fried goes on to complete the summary with claim from Rosana Marcoci: that because Thomas Demand's photographs are laminated behind Plexiglas and displayed without frame they are triply removed from the scenes or objects they depict. Fried will make use occasionally of what Demand has said in interviews but only to support points made by interrogation of the work. Demand takes photographs of paper models that he and his assistants have constructed of scenes, many famous or infamous, some as ordinary as a kitchen sink.
