This exhibition annually presents significant bodies of contemporary work of two to four artists. This year, New Photography has expanded to highlight the work of six artists.
This exhibition challenges the idea of many photographers that the creative process starts and ends with the press of a shutter button. For these artists this is only a starting point and Walead Beshty skips this phase and starts in the darkroom.
“As the photographic medium is rapidly transforming, the artists included in this exhibition question what it means to make a photograph in the twenty-first century. Diverse in their points of view, these artists collectively examine and expand the conventional definitions of the medium of photography,” said Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art.
The exhibits are the result of different working methods and pictorial modes ranging from abstract to representational. The pictures start in the studio or darkroom and involve processes including collection, assembly, and manipulation. Everyday materials and objects often get used in the creative process, and the photographers use images from the Internet, magazines, newspapers, and books.
Daniel Gordon
Creates some of the images by carefully selecting and arranging subject matter, forming a temporary sculpture for the photograph – in this case, the manipulation occurs before taking the photograph. While others re-present existing images using them as a base for their work, but subverting and commenting on the original with a range of changes from subtle to radical.
Carter Mull
Creates his pictures by rephotographing and altering existing images using digital and film techniques.
Walead Beshty
Produces images in the darkroom by exposing photographic paper to colored lights. This technique is rooted in the tradition of darkroom experimentation in photography, and is interesting comment on photography in the digital age when chemical photography is facing obsolescence.
Leslie Hewitt
Uses domestic and personal objects in creating still lifes that appears as if they are chance arrangements. However, each one is meticulously composed, using the photographic elements as part of a sculpture. The image featuring the 30th anniversary issue of Ebony , raises questions of race and contrasts the successful cover stars with a an image of less than rich and fabulous a home. This home touch is reinforced by the upside down mailing label suggesting the magazine is a family memento, particularly since Leslie was born two years later in 1977.
Sterling Ruby
digitally constructs photographic collages by collecting, reusing, and manipulating existing images. He often incorporates graffiti, and Artaud (2007) is based on graffiti found in the walkways of the Cinque Terre region of Italy. To make this richly layered picture, the artist photographed existing graffiti and then digitally manipulated the image by adding his own drips and spray-painted forms with Photoshop.
Sara VanDerBeek
culls photographs newspapers, magazines, and exhibition catalogues to incorporate into temporary structures that she photographs. Embedded in VanDerBeek’s photographs are references that explore the symbolism of the images, but the connections between the individual elements.
The exhibition runs from September 30, 2009, through January 11, 2010, in The Robert and Joyce Menschel Gallery, third floor at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Join the Conversation