True Pictures? Contemporary Photography from Canada and the USA

"Against the stream of images"

This was the title of DER SPIEGEL's announcement of TRUE PICTURES? on 6 November 2021. At the beginning of the 20th century, North American photography was considered groundbreaking in the development of the medium's artistic visual language. However, this pioneering role was called into question again in the 1980s by developments in Europe, young artists no longer recognised North American photography as a role model, and so it increasingly fell out of the focus of interest. TRUE PICTURES? now remedies this and presents 30 US and Canadian photographers from three generations who - sometimes characterised by the advent of digital photography - saw and see themselves as being challenged in particular by the political and social upheavals. The list of topics is certainly not short: the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the AIDS crisis, racism, feminism, gender and sexuality issues, identity politics, and so on. The urgency of these problems provokes the artists to take up highly charged narrative and political positions. By following subjective and transmedia approaches and utilising the technical possibilities of the medium, they almost inevitably touch on topics such as the often-cited "flood of images" - a phenomenon to which they respond with targeted criticism of the excesses of the "digital age".

Artists and artists:
First generation: Nan Goldin, Rodney Graham, Anthony Hernandez, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Allan Sekula, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Carrie Mae Weems, James Welling
Second generation: Vikky Alexander, Roy Arden, Gregory Crewdson, Liz Deschenes, Stan Douglas, Zoe Leonard, Ken Lum, Collier Schorr, Lorna Simpson, Stephen Waddell, Christopher Williams
Third generation: Walead Beshty, Anne Collier, LaToya Ruben Frazier, Martine Gutierrez, Ayana V. Jackson, Owen Kydd, Elad Lassry, Deana Lawson, Meryl McMaster, Trevor Paglen, Xaviera Simmons, Taryn Simon

Exhibitions:
Sprengel Museum Hanover, 6/11/2021 - 13/2/2022
Museum of Modern Art, Salzburg, 12/3 - 20/6/2022