Photography’s Expanded Field
May 26 - August 14, 2005
“What is a Photomuseum?” seminar
May 26, 2005
with:
William Ewing
Maria Gourieva
Peter Larsen
Jan Erik Lundström
Liz Wells
Preus Museum
New website: www.preusmuseum.no
Photography’s Expanded Field
10 years Preus Museum
The exhibtion Photography’s Expanded Field 10 years Preus Museum takes a double situation as its starting point: Firstly, photography is no longer isolated within a separate institution fighting for the acceptance of photography as a medium of fine art. On the contrary, photography and contemporary art has become integrated to such an extent that the limits of a photographic practice has been widely expanded. Secondly we see an emerging field of photographic theory and research interweaving humanistic disciplines such as the history of art, media science and theory of literature with social sciences such as sociology, anthropology and criminology. This creates a new history of photography which sees both art and vernacular photography in an interdisciplinary perspective.
Based on this situation, the exhibition emphasizes connections between the history of photography, contemporary art and visual culture. Photographic postmodernism of the 1970s and 1980s (Victor Burgin, Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, Barbara Kruger) represents the central part of the exhibtion, which has an historical scope from the invention of photography (Henry Fox Talbot, Hans Thøger Winther) to current photographic messages relayed over the mobile net (Eivind Lentz).
The exhibtion is divided into five partially overlapping themes: Histories of photography, Real copies, Time and aesthetics, New realism and Visual culture. In the presentation of the works this opens for speculative historical and thematic constellations: Giorgio Sommers photographs of the ruins of Pompeii from 1863 is presented in relation to Thomas Struths image of the classical displays of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin from 2001; Jan Ungs editorial photography from the book Made in Norway from 1990 is presented next to a selection of Indian film culture from the shop Bollywood.no; Eadweard Muybridges animal locomotion from 1887 is a historical reference point for Unn Fahlströms deconstructed cinematography and Edward Ruschas anti-aesthetic photographs of Los Angeles parking lots from 1967 leads up to Wolfgang Staehles real-time photography depicting the TV-tower in Berlin.
Artists/projects: Bollywood.no, Victor Burgin, Unn Fahlstrøm, Rainer Ganahl, Barbara Kruger, Eivind Lentz, Sherrie Levine, Eadweard Muybridge, Richard Prince, Edward Ruscha, Tom Sandberg, Narve Skarpmoen & Marie Gleditsch, Mija Renström, Ringl Pit, Wolfgang Staehle, Giorgio Sommer, Thomas Struth, William Henry Fox Talbot, Hans Thøger Winther, Anders Tomren, Jan Ung, Christopher Williams, Ole John Aandal. Curator: Jonas Ekeberg.
Lenders to the exhibition: The Astrup Fearnley Collection, Galerie Durand-Dessert, Peder Andreas Lund, Frank Mosvold, The National Library of Norway, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Nordea Norway Art Collection, The Norwegian Museum of Justice, Oslo City Museum, Snare/Christiansen, Sprüth
