The Klein Group

At the very end of his essay "Photography's Expanded Field" and after spending eighteen pages explaining that very notion, George Baker notes the major problem in his essay by quoting Foster's critique of Krauss on the same subject. The danger, we learn, derives from the theorization of postmodern artistic practice as merely an expansion (perhaps a reworking) of earlier mediums. Thus, Foster writes that "Though no longer defined in one code, practice remains in one field. Decentered, it is recentered: the field is (precisely) 'expanded' rather than 'deconstructed.'" The Klein Group, though it may elucidate certain practices of postmodern artistic practice, also reduces it by pigeonholing it. The attempt to define the practice goes against the very project that the theorization wished to analyze (i.e. postmodernity).

Baker responds to this criticism by noting that the Klein Group isn't as monolithic and closed as it appears. In fact, he seems to suggest that the work that the Klein Group is meant to accomplish is the very questioning of the boundaries that it appears to create, or as he says it, the Klein Group (and theorization more broadly) can "further open [contemporary photographic practice's] multiple logics."