This exhibition addresses photography’s influential role in contemporary art through a selection of recent major acquisitions, primarily multipart and serial works. Presented at MoMA for the first time, these works by 19 artists are grounded in diverse photographic traditions, suggesting the creative fertility of the medium from 1960 to today. They range from postwar experiments with darkroom processes (such as photograms and photomontages), to 1970s feminist performances conceived for the camera, to political and documentary engagements with labor history and globalization in the 1980s and 1990s, to forms of archival and historical reconstitution made since 2000. The international, cross-generational group of artists includes Yto Barrada, Phil Collins, Liz Deschenes, Stan Douglas, VALIE EXPORT, Robert Frank, Paul Graham, Leslie Hewitt, Birgit Jürgenssen, Jürgen Klauke, Běla Kolářová, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Dóra Maurer, Oscar Muñoz, Mariah Robertson, Allan Sekula, Stephen Shore, Taryn Simon, and Hank Willis Thomas.
The exhibition is organized by Roxana Marcoci, Curator; Sarah Meister, Curator; and Eva Respini, Associate Curator; with Katerina Stathopoulou, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography.
