Postmodern photography replaced image-to-referent matching with internal visual differentiation

Evidence

Photography, then, in its contemporary and even postmodern version, would seem to have evolved in the opposite direction, renouncing reference as such in order to elaborate an autonomous vision which has no external equivalent. Internal differentiation now stands as the mark and the moment of a decisive displacement in which the older relationship of image to referent is superceded by an inner or an interiorized one (where, as a consequence, none of the “bands” in Wasow’s images has any referential priority over the other). To speak more psychologically, the attention of the viewer is now engaged by a differential opposition within the image itself, so that he or she has little energy left over for intentness to that older “likeness” or “matching” operation which compares the image to some putative thing outside. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 416

Categorization

• XREF: The shift from matching-to-referent toward internal differential play parallels pastiche as style-worn-internally; useful for the parody/pastiche distinction. — connects to: Postmodern art severs images from meaning into random nonrelational fragments — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 67; Electronic reproduction stores images detached from context for instant mass retrieval — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 2153