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HOW WIRES ARE COVERING THE WHITE HOUSE NOW

I'm not sure if you've heard, but there is an election happening soon in the United States, and the future of democracy might be at stake. This week, we spoke with Karen Irvine, one of the curators of "What Does Democracy Look Like?" — an exhibition on display at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago (and soon to be online!).

HOW DID THIS PROJECT COME ABOUT?

This was in the works for at least a year — we wanted to do something that related to the election, so we planned this a while back. We had to postpone it, as our summer show was extended to give that a fair run with the pandemic, so we ended up opening this show in early October, and of course it will still be relevant after the election.

Gordon Parks / The Museum of Contemporary Photography

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE CURATION OF THE SHOW?

We don’t have a ton of images showing voting or ballot boxes, but from the seven curators we do see different approaches; some people are a little bit more literal in terms of what democracy looks like in historical imagery, and other people are abstract.

For example, Ames Hawkins’ installation is really an infographic that depicts voting patterns over the past 10 elections prior to 2020. It also depicts the void, the lack of voter participation, just in the way that they’ve installed the exhibition with red images overlaying a bar graph, which depicts the percentage of Republican voters, and then a blue infographic depicting the percentage of Democratic voters over the years. And then there’s a white strip in the middle, which shows people who either choose not to vote or, even more urgently, are prevented from voting in various ways. It has less to do with the content of the images than it does with the overall concept of democracy. At first, Hawkins was looking for primarily red or primarily blue images — but even within those images, there are a lot of issues that are addressed in terms of housing, the environment, science, etc., issues that are really important in the election.

Then compare that [selection] with a curator like Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin, who is picking artists who have really illustrated some of the most pressing issues of elections and who look at photojournalism and the importance of a free press to create a healthy democracy — so in that case, [her selection] is more based on what the images are depicting.

Greg Stimac / The Museum of Contemporary Photography

We were thinking along very American lines in terms of the timing of the exhibition — but democracy is a global concept, and that is something that we did want to be a part of the show. Onur Ozturk’s installation is really nice in that way; he uses a Turkish phrase above the installation and looks at people banding together across the globe.

Between the seven curators overall, it took a quite hopeful approach to the concept of democracy; there are points that are critical, but overall it harkens back to the ideals.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE SHOW’S TITLE?

It is unresolved by design. We knew that the seven curators we invited are very deep thinkers, very creative, and often are artists in their own right, and we wanted to really leave that question as open as possible to encourage expansive thinking. We did not give them a lot of direction. We just said: Here’s the collection. How would you approach that?

In the invitation of titling it this way, one of our goals is that people will walk through and consider what the question means for them.

It does touch on the American dream, as we see in Joan Giroux’s installation, which was inspired in part by an activist as an example of a politically engaged citizen, so there is a lot of inspiring imagery.

Carlos Ortiz Javier / The Museum of Contemporary Photography

HOW DO YOU SEE MUSEUMS FITTING INTO THE DEMOCRATIC IDEALS, PARTICULARLY THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION?

In a very broad sense, we’re a socially and politically engaged institution, and throughout all of our programming we are trying to bring issues of social justice and equity to the forefront. We do consider part of our mission at the museum to engage with topics and to bring information to people in a way that perhaps traditional media does not, and a lot of artists are interested in that as well. We’re always looking for topics that will get people thinking and will engage them with social justice.

ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT THE CURRENT MEDIA CLIMATE?

I am concerned, yeah. And that is what, in part, drives Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin’s installation — the importance of information and the open flow of truthful information to all people. People tend to take photographs more literally than they should be read, and I think many of us are concerned about access to good information these days. Just due to the nature of photography itself as a medium, that is a constant question in all the work that we do and a constant point of all our educational efforts, to just make people aware that photographs are not always as truthful as they appear. It does relate in a poignant way to this exhibition, in talking about the press and access to reliable facts, and some of those are of course visual. Now more than ever, people are getting their news from images.

Stefan Chow and Hui-Yi Lin / The Museum of Contemporary Photography

📸THE WEEK'S PHOTO STORIES FROM BUZZFEED NEWS 📸

We are less than two weeks away from the presidential election in the United States, and basically everyone is tired of hearing about it. Regardless of who wins, structural issues within the country will still need to be addressed, from healthcare to childcare to inequalities of all kinds.

Find more of the week's best photo stories here

WHAT DOES THE AMERICAN DREAM EVEN MEAN?

Ian Brown

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📸SOME HOPE 📸

Franklin Park Zoo/Handout via REUTERS

A male western lowland gorilla baby rests after being delivered by Cesarean section in Boston. How cute is he!

"That's it from us this time — see you next week!" —Kate

“We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.”
— Ralph Hattersley