A Contemporary Record of Photography. The show creates a different, far more specific pictorial panorama: Drawing on 590 documentary shots taken by Chinese photographers over the last 50 years, it presents people in China against the background of social modernization. The exhibition addresses four major topics: Existence, Relationship, Desire and Time.
A Contemporary Record of Photography
In 1955, the photographer Edward Steichen organized the now legendary photo
exhibition on “The Family of Man" in New York’s Museum of Modern Art - it was meant
to paint a comprehensive picture of humanity. In 2006, the exhibition “Humanism in
China - A Contemporary Record of Photography" creates a different, far more specific
pictorial panorama: Drawing on 590 documentary shots taken by Chinese photographers
over the last 50 years, it presents people in China against the background of social
modernization. Organized by the Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, the exhibition
addresses four major topics: Existence, Relationship, Desire and Time.
Behind the outer glossy sheen of the economic boom in China’s metropolises, Chinese
photographers seek to identify the inner side to such cultural upheaval, something
that in terms of its temporal compression hardly seems tangible as regards a single
person’s biography. The exhibition “Humanism in China - A Contemporary Record of
Photography" describes everyday life in the cities and in the country. Images that
deliberately refrain from distorting or staging events document the immense social
changes of the last 50 years. Precisely because it was not some foreign eye behind
the camera, as these photographs instead express the perception of the world by a
generation that grew up in China, this exhibition is more than a photographic show -
it is truly a document of the times.
The show is now going on display outside China for the very first time since it went
on show in the Guangdong Museum of Art in 2003 and in the Shanghai Art Museum in
2004. In a quite unique form of cooperation, five German museum institutions have
joined forces to make this possible: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and Museum fu;r Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. After the
opening in the MMK in Frankfurt, the twin city of Guangzhou, the show will then
travel on to the other cities - it will thus be on show for a period of two years.
As a museum for contemporary art we can investigate the documentary and artistic
nature of photography, explore the fundamental issue of “What can images achieve?"
and can and shall repeatedly intervene in current social debate. Steichen’s wish
back then was to create an exhibition that, through the medium and language of
photography, fostered understanding between people, different peoples and different
cultures. This idea, and it is so compellingly topical, is being taken up today with
the presentation of “Humanism in China - A Contemporary Record of Photography" in
Germany in the MMK.
A comprehensive catalog will be published by Edition Braus im Wachter Verlag to
coincide with the exhibition.
Museum fur Moderne Kunst
Domstrasse 10 - Frankfurt am Main
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