"Postmodern culture is often characterized as an era of hyper-representation, in which abstract, formalist painting has been replaced by experiments like photorealism, and reality itself begins to be experienced as an endless network of representations (Mitchell 16)."

Photorealism is the genre of painting resembling a photograph, seen throughout the hyperrealism movement. However, the term is primarily applied to paintings from the photorealism art movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

http://www.the-artists.org/MovementView.cfm?id=FE89B7EE-E538-4152-BA676BBD1CB91EB7, http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/p/photorealism.html