The International Center of Photography is pleased to present the inaugural installment of a new annual series focusing on significant recent works by contemporary artists, photographers, and filmmakers. The “Perspectives” series continues ICP’s ongoing exploration of the most exciting projects b... Read more
The International Center of Photography is pleased to present the inaugural installment of a new annual series focusing on significant recent works by contemporary artists, photographers, and filmmakers. The “Perspectives” series continues ICP’s ongoing exploration of the most exciting projects by emerging and less familiar photographers initiated in its award-winning Triennial exhibitions.
“This is a critical moment,” states Wallis, “in which the questions about the constructions of history and memory are not just theoretical ideas but issues pertinent to daily life. Transformations in the making and interpretation of images, driven forward now mainly by digital technologies, have made ever more urgent our understanding of how historical meanings are invented in the present. What is impressive about this group of artists is their very diverse explorations of the contested relationship between the pulsing flow of images that define our daily life and the appropriated archive of historical imagery.”
Although the “Perspectives” exhibitions are intended to be non-thematic group shows, inevitably there are associations between the artists. Most notably, while these five are united in their reliance on the photographic image, their uses of photography often take unexpected forms. Some of them rely on installations or room- size ensembles of photographic objects to communicate their ideas. Found or appropriated images and concepts are often the raw materials of their practices, and they are often engaged with other mediums in addition to photography, including writing, drawing, sculpture, filmmaking, bookmaking, and performance.
These artists are not concerned only with the photographic medium, whether it is the formal qualities of photography in transition or the newly defined digital features of the photographic print. Instead, they focus on the subjects of photography, and its means of defining and describing critical social, political, or even philosophical issues.
