calendario eventi  :: 

X

14/11/2000

Snapshot

Contemporary Museum, Baltimore

An exhibition of 1000 artists.

A snapshot serves its purpose. You take a picture of your grandmother, class reunion, or vacation trip to forever preserve that personal event in photographic emulsion. The photo may be underlit, or you may inadvertently chop off Uncle Frank's head with your spur-of-the-moment framing. Even if the photo is less than perfect, it'll look just fine in the family photo album. And that's where most snapshots reside.

You don't expect to see snapshots in an art gallery, because they're, um, less artful than what you expect from photography. This distinction between snapshots and art photography is taken for granted to such an extent that the Contemporary Museum's new exhibit is something of an eye-opener.

For Snapshot: An Exhibition of 1,000 Artists, the museum asked artists, art professionals and other art-world figures to submit snapshots. And, boy, did the photos pour in. Surpassing its title, the exhibit actually presents 1,300 photographs from 24 countries. Some of the photos the museum received were taken by those solicited; others are merely snapshots these people happened to possess. Some correspond to common ideas about what a casual snapshot is, while others are sufficiently arty or ironic enough to call into question the difference between snapshots and professionally composed shots.

Rows and rows of photographs cover the museum walls. Other than specifying that the photographs not be larger than 4 inches by 6 inches, the Contemporary otherwise left it up to the mob to submit whatever they felt like. Indeed, the photos are arranged alphabetically by contributors' names, with no other obvious curator's influence over the shots' selection or installation.

"We're trying to explore the relationship between fine art and nonart imagery, and the relationship between things of personal value and images that could be aesthetically valuable in a public context", Contemporary Museum associate curator Adam Lerner says. "We also want to explore the rituals of ordinary life engendered by a snapshot." The sheer number of photos makes it difficult to generalize their meaning.

Besides, the show, by its very noncuratorial stance, is meant to raise questions rather than answer them. At best, it might be possible to divide the photos into two broad categories: the straightforward, often sentimental portraits of babies, pets, and others, akin to what you'd find in any family album; and the shots whose offbeat subject matter or deliberate compositional qualities make them seem like the product of an artistic sensibility.

Contemporary Museum - Baltimore

stampa

permanent link