McDermott & McGough: A History of Photography

Casting themselves as latter-day dandies of an era gone by, the artist team of McDermott & McGough have mined the history of aesthetics as a means to illuminate the present condition of art and culture. With biting irony, and an unmistakably camp sensibility, McDermott & McGough have long employed a visual language that draws heavily from earlier movements; Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelites, Symbolism and Decadence, and Pictorialism, to name just a few. But their work is closely tied to the present day. This, the first retrospective monograph of their photographic work, underscores the tenacity of their mission to seek a future in the past. Included are the duo’s portraits, nudes, still lifes, and architectural pictures utilizing such archaic processes as gum-bichromate, cyanotype, platinum palladium, and salt printing.