Seeing is (dis)believing: A reading of thomas demand’s “modell/model” (2000)

Abstract

In this commentary I interpret Thomas Demand’s photographic work “Modell/Model” (2000) as undermining the strong temptation to think that when we view a photograph - a light-capturing mechanism - seeing is believing. Demand provides a regress of models of models (recalling Plato’s skeptical view of art as unknowing copies of copies) that ultimately proves unfathomable, hence, uncanny. Demand is the Socrates of contemporary art photography: here seeing is not-knowing. What we do not know is that Demand’s photograph is based on a partially erased paper and cardboard model of the scene depicted in a Nazi era photograph of a model of the German Pavilion (Hoffman, 1937) - which recalls the global ambitions of Nazism and the aesthetic connection Hitler wanted to make between neoclassical fascist architecture and the �new man� of the Third Reich.