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Feb. 21: Week in Photography
Your lens to the internet's most powerful photographs.
📸For Your 👀 Only: On Photographic Encounters Curran Hatleberg I'm not sure how I feel about the show But Still, It Turns, and that is perhaps the point. The exhibition, featuring recent (pre-pandemic) work of nine artists from around the United States, is showing now at the International Center of Photography in New York.
The exhibition has gotten some glowing reviews, and the work included is genuinely great. The show is centered on the idea of documentary non-narrative, which is is stressful to me, a Capricorn, perhaps because narrative provides structure and structure is reassuring.
But maybe just the act of observing how the world is and once was and maybe could be, is enough. "For these artists, all is in play and everything matters—here is a freedom, hard won, sometimes confusing, but nonetheless genuine: a consciousness of life and its song," the exhibition summary says.
In any case, it was a pleasure to talk with the exhibition director, David Campany, and I am grateful that curator Paul Graham responded to my questions via email.
Can you talk about how this show came together, and why it is important now? PG: The exhibition came from conversation with friends about how photography had become contorted in an attempt to fit in with the cool kids of the artworld, and needed gently navigating back to being itself, to what was unique about it: engaging directly with life, and trusting the importance of what it perceives. Hence our title, from Galileo, who was forced to recant his observations of the world, and as he left the inquisition, reputedly tapped his foot on the ground and mumbled "but still, it turns..."
DC: Observation has always been a very strong strand in American photographers, right back to Walker Evans and Berenice Abbott, Gordon Parks. For some reason, it is a kind of work that is not exhibited as much as it used to be, but it happens to be really strong right now, and has been for the last decade in American photography. We are putting a stick in the sand and saying, "This is an important part of photography." It's not overtly theatrical or constructed or synthetic. It's really based on photographic encounters with the world. Ramell Ross Can you talk about some of the photographic themes that you sought out for this show? PG: All the photography is from the USA in this century, so clearly that is the rubric under which all of this happens. Life. Here. Today.
The work had to engage directly with the world, so...nothing computer generated, nothing from the studio, no Hollywood production staging with actors, props, crews, etc. Equally we tried to avoid work that forced the world into simplistic editorialised narratives: photography need not be reduced down to illustrations. It can do that, sometimes well, but that is not all it can be. It had to be expansive, free of linear narrative and production trickery, it had to engage with the world outside of a solipsistic self.
How does the response of the viewer tie into the idea of photographic encounters? DC: Never mind what they do with their camera, how a photographer is in the world as a person, as a social being, is going to shape the kind of pictures that they make. With portraits, it is always a kind of psychological record of the encounter — there is someone behind the camera and the portrait hasn't happened by accident. It's always an exchange.
The idea of encounter has become quite fraught within the field of photography: Who should be photographing? Who is a photographer? Is a photograph an adequate representation of someone? Is a portrait of someone more about the photographer than the subject? Complicated.
RaMell Ross, one of the artists in the show, has written a beautiful text called "Renew the Encounter." He is thinking very much about what encountering is, and who is making the encounter, and who with, and what kind of image results, and whether the image can be read as a trace of that encounter. That spirit runs through the show.
We're surrounded by photographs all the time, but that doesn't make us think about what's happening when a photograph gets made, particularly in a moment of fairly spontaneous encounter with someone.
The more you look at a photograph, the more engrossing that can be, and sometimes the stranger that can be, and that all feeds into the openness. Gregory Halpern This show feels like a time capsule of the Before Times. Can you talk about that?
DC: A number of visitors have said this — I think that everything that museums are putting on is bound to have a resonance in relation to what we've just gone through, and are still going through, because that is the mindset and the perspective that people bring. It just shows you that in the end, the meaning of the work is never just in the work itself. It's always with the audience. An exhibition is not complete until it gets its audience, whether it's online or in person, and one is always surprised at how an audience interprets things.
With this show particularly, this is very open, generous work. I can imagine two people standing in front of the same project and getting different things out of it. It's very nuanced, it's very subtle, and it's very respectful, actually, of what the viewer can bring. Any other thoughts on this show? PG: Our title, our theme, But Still, It Turns, came to us pre-COVID, but of course with what has happened over the past traumatic year, it has magically become very relevant and in some ways, reassuring. We need to be reminded of the world outside of our quarantine — how life was before, and will be again — people gathered, embraced, welcomed, strangers touched each other. That is a balm for us, a salve for our frayed souls. Vanessa Winship 📸THE WEEK'S PHOTO STORIES FROM BUZZFEED NEWS 📸 This week, we watched in horror as Texans tried to cope with an unprecedented snowstorm, as the cold that killed dozens and an inept power utility that left millions without heat and water.
As always, here are some of the best photo stories from around the internet, and what we loved from our desk. HOW AN LA FUNERAL HOME IS HANDLING COVID Robert LeBlanc for BuzzFeed News SEE THE FULL STORYTHE WOMEN MAKING SPACE FOR BLACK JOY Jay Janner / AP Images SEE THE FULL STORYTHE WOMEN MAKING SPACE FOR BLACK JOY Aspen Cierra SEE THE FULL STORY
📸SOME HOPE 📸 NASA This still image is part of a video taken by one of the cameras aboard the descent stage as NASA’s Perseverance rover as it touched down on the planet Mars in the area known as Jezero crater on February 18, 2021. “We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.”— Ralph Hattersley That's it for this week! Kate + Pia Want More? Go To JPG Homepage
đź“ť This letter was edited and brought to you by the News Photo team. Kate Bubacz is the photo director based in New York and loves dogs. Pia Peterson is a photo editor based in Brooklyn. You can always reach us here.
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