That ain't much of a self-portrait mate. :)

It's not that hard---the photography

Cam,
I'm not much in favour of the romantic conception of the photographer as the genius or author.I downplay it in favour of the language system or world of circulating images on the internet.

WOP,
the mechanics of taking photos, working on them and posting them to a weblog, Flickr, Picassa or Facebook are are simple. It is difficult to keep producing good images on a daily basis. Life intervenes.

Gary
I struggle with distinction between avant garde and neo avant garde. If there is Dada (European pre-1945), then what is neo-Dada apart from American, post 1945? Is it this Guggenheim definition---Robert Rauschenberg or Claes Oldenburg as held by the Guggenheim collection, and affirmed by Wikipedia

If so, then this kind of art is a long way from the European style Dada.

What makes neo Dada avant garde?

How does this American neo-Dada attempt to get to grips with the relations between art and life, art and institution?

I much prefer pre- and post-war avant-garde ---it's a better description.

Pam,
your Guggenheim link says that:

The unifying element of Neo-Dada art is its reinvestigation of Dada’s irony and its use of found objects and/or banal activities as instruments of social and aesthetic critique.

I guess that the art historical crowd would highlight the widespread use of so-called 'junk' materials by the Neo-dada artists indicates different kinds of assemblages articulated oppositions between recognisable objects and trash; the processes of consumption and disposal themselves; the use of everyday and throwaway materials to focus on change and mobility, and the desire to invite a greater involvement on the part of the viewer.

Neo-Dada, which lies between abstract expressionism and Pop art, is interpreted as a critical reflection on modernist avant garde , then it can be interpreted as " an attack on the whole concept of Modernism and the idea of "High Art" -- art that was involved on a higher plane than mundane everyday life and focused on the creation of a visual philosophy that would lead humankind to a better future.

By the mid 1950's it seemed to many of the younger artists that the Modernist dream had failed... despite all the rhetoric, they had not changed the world or created a higher "spiritual" reality.

Robert Rauschenberg opened the "door" by challenging the Modernist view of painting and sculpture as a spiritual journey and instead believed that all of life is open to art. So they challenge the concept of art---ie., undermines art with humour----that's the connection with both Dada and contemporary street art.

Maybe the avant garde does more ---it questions the commoditization of art in late modernity and it challenges the cynical instrumental of late capitalism.

Gary,
My problem with the post war American "avant garde" is the early 1960's is that artists such as Robert Rauschenberg in the 1950s were living the "Romantic" life of the artist in a loft in New York and attacking the entrenched forces of the art establishment. So they looked avant garde.

By the 1960s the art institution had sucked theme into the very "Art Market" they were suppose to be attacking whilst lauding them as avant-garde visionarys, praised by critiques and academics and collected by museums. It's mythmaking.

By the 1960s art was finding itself overrun by the hyper-intense, synthetic experience of endless perceptual stimulation (or more simply: television, billboards, magazines, neon signs, etc.).