Today, my solitude took me to SF MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), where they were hosting an interesting photography exhibit called "Exposed". It encased some pretty powerful things, asking the question "What do e have the right to watch/view?" Interesting thought...
How the exhibit was set up was interesting. It bean with a few different screens of video shots playing continuously. My first thought was "How boring. Who would want to stare at a running film of the same thing for an hour?". But then I realized that I only had that perception because I have a certain view of what "film" is supposed to mean. A running frame is the same thing as a picture, essentially. Both had a very "Big Brother" feel from George Orwell's 1984. The next room contained some pretty typical photos, nothing special. The next one was more interesting with it's content and displayed images that weren't necessarily artistically composed, but hard to look at. Many were of people being tortured, lynched, killed or dead. It was very emotionally moving and did it's job of conveying a statement and challenging the boundaries of art. This was posted on the wall in that room and provides some very interesting points to think about...
Witnessing Violence
A fascination with images of suffering is integral to photography and it's history, as the moral ambiguity that adheres to such pictures. The invasive, almost aggressive looking at violent subsects that photography permits raises numerous questions. Who should look at these pictures? Can we justify intruding upon another's death? Does photography allow us to responsibly bear witness or a victims suffering or does it anesthetize us to it's horror?
The next room contained some even more radical photos that began integrating violence and abuse with sexuality. Also some very difficult images to look at. The final room to the exhibit was a theater that had a slide show running of different images that had been taken of people just hanging out to some very explicit and intimate scenes between men and women, men and men, and women and women. The objective of the exhibit was to really make a statement about voyeurism. An interesting thought on these last photos was the principle of do the boundaries of voyeurism apply when the subjects obviously know they are being photographed? In a sense, no, but as a viewer, even with that knowledge, I felt as if I was intruding upon something that is private and intimate. The camera is a battle of good and evil. We are able to document any visible scene truthfully and publish those images for the world to view. We are able to give the truth in so many colors and pigments. But, can those things also be what scares us about photography? There is no altering, no holding back on what is given to the masses-everything is bold and exposed.
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