True Pictures? Contemporary Photography from Canada and the USA

“Gegen den Bilderstrom” (against the flood of images), that was the headline DER SPIEGEL gave its announcement of TRUE PICTURES? on 6 November 2021. At the beginning of the twentieth century, North American photography was regarded as trailblazing in the development of the medium’s artistic visual language. In the 1980s, however, this pioneering role was called into question again by developments in Europe; young artists no longer granted North American photography any exemplary status, and so it subsequently slipped more and more out of the focus of interest. TRUE PICTURES? now remedies this and presents 30 US-American and Canadian photographers from three generations who – at times shaped by the advent of digital photography – saw and see themselves challenged above all by political and social upheavals. The list of subjects is truly not a short one: the consequences of the Vietnam War, the Aids crisis, racism, feminism, questions of gender and sexuality, identity politics, and so on. The urgency of these problems provokes the artists into adopting positions that are strongly charged both narratively and politically. In following subjective as well as transmedial approaches and pushing the technical possibilities of the medium to their limits, they almost inevitably touch on subjects such as the frequently cited “flood of images” – a phenomenon to which they respond with pointed criticism of the excesses of the “digital age.”

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 Ruby Frazier, Martine Gutierrez, Ayana V. Jackson, Owen Kydd, Elad Lassry, Deana Lawson, Meryl McMaster, Trevor Paglen, Xaviera Simmons, Taryn Simon

Exhibitions:
Sprengel Museum Hannover, 6/11/2021 – 13/2/2022
Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, 12/3 – 20/6/2022