ICP's 50th Anniversary is to Reinterpreting History
The exhibition is not just pushed the boundaries. It CRASHED the boundaries.
carte de visite exhibited at the International Center of Photography.
Photography history, or even history in general, is a deceptive story. They wrote down a few white men’s names and forgot the rest. That’s why when it comes down to us, I believe the majority of people cannot name at least 5 women or non-white photographers. Even though the situation has gotten exponentially better in the past couple of years after decades of scholar wrestling, women photographers or non-white photographers are still considered ‘alternative history’, and the most common photography history book, Photography: The Whole Story, doesn’t have any updated version from what I read seven years ago and non-white non-male photographer are mentioned less than what you can count with your fingers.
The real problem here is, that we missed many photographs, many milestones, and many references, in this exclusive representation of history. Have you ever seen Ishiuchi Miyako’s contrasted grainy photographs of her hometown? lingering with trauma memories? Have you ever seen Nell Dorr’s photographs of mother and child? with all that softness in the world? Have you ever seen Margaret Bourke-White’s industrial life photographs? where people are just the smallest things out there in the graphic-like scenario of man-made machines? They were always innovative, influential, and significant throughout 185 years of photography history. It was just the history that failed to deliver the expanded environment of the photography industry outside the boy club.
Man Sitting in the Corner (1978), Miyako Ishiuchi. Exhibited at the International Center of Photography.
Wind Tunnel Construction (1936), Margaret Bourke-White. Exhibited at the International Center of Photography.
That’s the photographs the 50th Anniversary exhibition at the ICP exhibited and that’s why the exhibition itself is so crucial. The show's main purpose is to celebrate 50 years of the institution by exhibiting photographs in the archives. With the ICP’s huge collection of ‘Concerned Photography’ or photographs that capture life and being in society, the curator couldn’t care less about putting out as many famous photographs as possible like retrospectives or celebrating shows trapped to be. They just care to put as many perspectives and as many approaches to this world as the collection can provide. Reinterpret what Concerned Photography is, Who captured them, and what do they look like. Raising these crucial questions subtle in the selection and sequencing, welcoming visitors to explore the answer for themself in the exhibition that is not driven by just dazzling, big prints, or wow factor, but by the story in photographs.
The first corner of the exhibition lays to us what the tone of the exhibition will be like. There’s a mid-19th century carte de visite and cabinet cards of anonymous people by anonymous photographers. While we may remember a few photographer's names who documented people and society; Weegee, Robert Frank, Robert Capa, Marc Riboud, the medium itself is a democratic invention. Since the beginning before the camera even became a household gadget, everyone can have themself documented in the medium by small amount of money as these small cards. On the wall, hung a manipulated photograph of a man with his head in his hands, cautioning how real photographs seem, it is always a tool of manipulation and doctored. On the other wall is Sojourner Truth’s carte de visit when she sold them gaining money for the women’s rights movements, written in the foot of the photograph ‘I sell the shadow to support the substance.’ Show us how photographs, yet can be very personal, can also be very public and change the way we navigate society. These 3 theme ideas; the photographers we missed out on from the history, the degree of realness of the medium, and the variety of ways we document people and society, are repeated and unfolded throughout the exhibition.
I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance, Sojourner Truth (1864), Unidentified Photographer. Exhibited at the International Center of Photography.
The exhibition never lets you drop your brain. Whenever we start to feel comfortable, there will be a photograph that furthers the meaning and boundaries of photography. Like how dark photo with multiple abstract lines is a photograph of horror bombing night taken with night camera by the British military, the delicate tiny white flowers in one of the first color photograph in the world from Kodak film developer and photographer herself, Jeanette Klute, or Shimpei Takeda’s Fukushima’s radioactive soil that glowing from light-sensitive property in the contamination. Whenever we start to feel diving into the realness of photographs, they will remind us by sneaking us into the process of making. With Ilse Bing’s self-portrait pressing a shutter from the shutter release cable, Jürgen Schadeberg’s Drum Magazine office photograph that sneak us behind the scene of culture manufacture of the time, or Frances McLaughlin-Gill’s lighting test for her iconic photo for Glamour magazine.
While the show urges us to closely examine, it is also full of tenderness in that slices capturing of lives in this struggling yet vital world. Man Ray, William Wegman’s great dane big boy, that we usually see staged and directed now sleeping in the pile of pink fluffy fabric, Nina Leen’s proud black Baseball star with his family on their Brooklyn home’s stoop (sarcastic pairing with Phillipe Halsman’s photo of Duke and Duchess of Windsor), Tina Modotti’s tiny print of cow in a sunset field, or Lee Sievan’s expression crowds at San Gennaro Festival.
Crowds watching San Gennaro Festival (1946), Lee Sievan. Exhibited at the International Center of Photography.
Drum Magazine Office (1954), Jürgen Schadeberg
The diversity accuracy in the exhibition is amazingly impressive. Thinking about that, how we remember just a few white men’s names as ‘important’ ‘famous’ photographers never sit right when these past 100 years we come to a point in history that the medium is affordable and accessible to everyone, photography was a part of Harlem Renaissance as well, and even it was career path for Victorian women’s financially independent. The exhibition recalculates this decision that what subject considered matters, which photographer considered changed the industry, and that’s expanding the horizon.
I was working as a photography magazine editor and photo educator in Thailand before I moved here. It was a very male-dominated industry and I want to vomit just thinking about what I endured in those years. The thing is, I became a(n) editor and educator because I don’t want any kids to be like young me. Who was confused as to why there are only a couple of women photographers in history and all of them are white. Who had to relearn that the photography history is, in fact, a gender wrestling ring and, somehow, (broken-)democracy invention? It fills me with joy thinking about how this exhibition changed the trajectory of the way we look back to history. It clears up that confusion and step by step kids don’t have to be confused like me anymore. The exhibition will be a reference point that when kids who visit it grow up, they’ll fight everyone who says photography history is too woke because you know what, the ICP, a leading photography institution, shows them that the horizon of photography is expanding and who care only about the boy’s club.
While the distinctive exhibitions on women or BIPOC photographers are important, it is a much bigger project to woven that diversity accuracy into mainstream understanding of photography history. In the most subtle and egoless way, that is the highbrow this exhibition had achieved.
Violet (1950s), Jeannette Klute. Exhibited at the International Center of Photography.
For me, another thing this exhibition reminds me of is why I love photography so much. It reminded me that I went through a hard time and never left this industry because I see beauty in photographs as a household-to-professional medium that we as human beings take photographs because we are alive. Because we want to remember this particular moment because we see it and don’t want to let go. Because we want to create and take pride in it. And maybe things are cruel or horror or sad or violent a lot of times, but all the tenderness and beauty and love and ambition we can see through this same medium are also true, and that’s how photography is fascinating, isn’t it?
Night Kitchen (Countertop, can-opener, and blender with blue sky, moon and stars) (1979), Joanne Leonard. Exhibited at the International Center of Photography.
