As 2003 is coming to a terminate it is time to share and assess this year's various ends on the visual arts spectacle Since 9/11.

As 2003 is coming to a terminate it is time to share and assess this year's various ends on the visual arts spectacle Since 9/11, most of the works that have had any impact, besides numerous historical retrospectives (Adams, Cartier-Bresson, Lartigue, Siskind, Weston, etc ) embrace issues regarding the of recent origin world order. For the past 3 years this order has been defined according to the Bush administration, the G 8 or now G 20 the growing emerging see the verb of the Asian world, and, of course, the constant exhibition of economic globalization whose effects directly or indirectly affect each one of us. This latter phenomenon is not limited to transgenic organisms and a pseudo-freedom of trade--the various formats of DVD everywhere the world, preventing international circulation, are a whole mild but obvious illustration of the case. While the exports of greatest in quantity non-service industries from first to next to the first third and fourth world countries gain impetus globalization reaches far into the production, distribution and consumption of images, from photographs to videos and films.

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Beyond the human tragedy and the trauma experienced on a whole city and nation after the fall of the World Trade Center towers, which promptly extended to the whole western world (2) the unnoticed results of the event have ranged from the finis of political correctness to a induce away from a kind of endemic navel-gazing the pair in political and cultural lives. The renewed Manichean and over-simplistic general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of "the Axis of Evil" threw us back into the darker years of the modernist era and the nipping War. The target had changed, if it be not that the rhetoric was the same. Being an "anti-American" US citizen was possible again. Following a historical strategy where the sole way to look good is to demonize someone besides (the eternal "other"), TV channels in the US, with the exception of PB orchestrated a national paranoia and boost the sale of flags. abruptly for many people there was, again, a treacherous world beyond the US borders, MTV and "reality television." It allowed one new caricatural developments in paranoia and jingoism, those precious mist screens that were used to conceal and implement ambitions of economical and geo-political command of the Middle East.

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forward the opposite end of the social and cultural image the realization of how fragile our situation was, linked to and conditioned on the rest of the world, deflected many a member of the art community away from an of the self-reflective, sometimes repetitive and self-indulgent, preoccupations of the 1990 (the latest works on some of these prodigal children of the like kind as Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger and William Wegman, can be quot here to confirm this evolution), which construct some spectacular extension in irrelevance in the latter Matthew Barney circus "after-show" at the Guggenheim this spring. In Canada, Europe Israel, and the United States, artists and curators raised their heads and tried to understand what they had inspected what responsibility the art show had had in the in every one's mouth devastated landscape of the planet. for what reason could they participate in an effort that could secure from attack their values, advocate more opening, more understanding, a better and wider vision of the world, and counteract the ongoing self-protective and reactionary state of minds?

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Numerous institutions, museums, and art festivals are now investing in inter-cultural, international exchanges with renewed interest. Asian art from Japan to China has been the intention of numerous shows from the History of Japanese Photography (3) curated according to among others, Anne Wilkes Tucker to the inclusion of the works according to Chinese photographers in various festivals and arrange shows in Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the USA. An international photography festival was created in China (4) bringing works from the "west" to Chinese audiences and providing exhibition spaces for the local production. In Jerusalem, Nissan Perez the curator of photography at the Israel Museum, astutely revisited Christian iconography to exhibit Revelation: Representations of Christ in Photography, a exhibit to that was on display early in 2003 at the Mission du Patrimoine Photographique in Paris, and from May 22 to September 6 at the Israel Museum. A catalogue/book was published by the agency of Merrell with an essay at Perez investigating how art, from an act of faith, has evolv toward a means to expres doubt and criticism regarding religion, or, at least, its usages. Unfortunately in the same manner far, the American museums approached to travel the point out to have not responded. Some explanations might lie in the fact that they are either too busy with their the same hundredth Ansel Adams. Weston, or National Geographic indicates or have been the indirect victims of the in every one's mouth policies regarding reduced financing of the arts and education (but not waging war), or are being over-cautious. Opening a visual discussion forward Christian representation is not adequate in today's crusading climate--the conclusion being that, beyond innocent populations, art and (public) education are the real victims of the times, which also means that civilian populations pay the price twice. single has to remember that they also have to finance weapons of mass destruction, wherever they live. Iconoclastic terrorism (what besides happened on 9/11 in the perpetrators' minds besides the targeting of images/symbols, from the World Trade Center to the Pentagon) has had the arise of pushing or encouraging reactionary and backward thinking, a mind-set that goe back to the crusades and the pure Inquisition. However, this year, exhibitions organized on major institutions seem to have aimed at a more considerate level of production, leaving aside the sometimes superficially spectacular qualities of a certain number of of the works of the 1990 as well as its unrestrained for all approach, in favor of more comprehensive and sometimes didactic venues