“Fact or Fiction: The Hand in Photography” and Information examines interventions in photographic and digital processes with paint, sculpture and technology.
In the digital age attitudes towards photography are increasingly shifting from a means of expression and verification to one of skepticism and sensory overload. This change is due, in part, to declarations of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” as well as the ubiquity of editing software and proliferation of cell phone cameras capturing the details of everyday encounters and events for social media. Consequently, images are reduced to pictorial information detailing our interactions online and in the real world. The expansion of photography and information into nearly every aspect of our lives significantly dilutes its unique power and veracity creating, instead, an ongoing cycle of confirmation and doubt.
The artists in “Fact or Fiction” infuse photography and information with meaning and visual force through recontextualizing, scratching, marking and dissecting photographs, or completely transforming them into drawings, paintings and sculpture. Technology is also addressed as a means of disrupting and expanding our understanding of imagery and information through digital manipulation, coding, and the visualization of algorithms with paint and inkjet. Moreover, Fact or Fiction brings clarity and humanity to issues that are too often consumed and discarded, or overlooked all together in the daily barrage of information. Susan Sontag points out in her 1977 essay, On Photography, “Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.” The artists of “Fact or Fiction” take Sontag’s idea a step further by honing in on the power of gesture and disruption in their utilization of images and information as both content and raw material.
The exhibition is on view October 7-28.