Selena 9:10 am on August 31, 2015
What does all of this mean?
Reply
zoestrauss 3 hours ago
Thank you for asking! Honestly, there’s no easy description of this project. The basis of Trump Plaza Representation is viewing a single photograph, “Trump Plaza, 1987,” thinking about the many ways this photograph might be read, and then offering a response to the image. It can be summed up with “Take a look at the photo ‘Trump Plaza, 1987,’ and define or interpret what this photo is about.”
For example, one of my first thoughts about “Trump Plaza, 1987” is that the photo is about commercial signage. Pushing the meaning of “commercial signage” a little bit further, I began researching the specifics into the Trump Plaza signage, which led to this, “Donald Trump and Carl Icahn just struck a deal to keep Trump’s name in Atlantic City”
zoestrauss 2 hours ago
So the photo remained static, but the meaning of the photo changed for me after researching recent litigation about the specific signage in the photograph and that shift brought up more questions about what “Trump Plaza, 1987” is about. Does the photo have historical value, and how would that be determined? Is nostalgia a component of the new reading? Because I can verify that I made the photo, and know the year the photo was made, is it possible the photo might be part of a larger empirical collection of documents related to Atlantic City’s “boom and bust,” or is the worth of the photo solely aesthetic?
zoestrauss an hour ago
This site is primarily an exploration of what Trump Plaza, 1987 is about. And come from the most basic explanations of what the photo means, asking more detailed questions about the ways meaning has been assigned to “Trump Plaza, 1987,” and then moving forward in any direction. What might come out of the answer “Trump Plaza, 1987 is about commercial signage,” could be a project about trademark litigation related to “Trump v Trump.” Or about commercial signage as a long-standing photographic trope to indicate “boom and bust.” Or something about how photographs need contextual information to be “photographic evidence” of any kind -is the sign going up? Or coming down? If the photo wasn’t made with the intent to be photographic evidence, or to record an event… you get the idea.
Trump Plaza Representation Forum 