A group show conceived as a mixtape of songs gifted to a lover, Love Songs features photographic projects about love and intimacy from 16 contemporary photographers, including Nobuyoshi Araki, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Motoyuki Daifu, Fouad Elkoury, Aikaterini Gegisian, Nan Goldin, René Groebli, Hervé Guibert, Sheree Hovsepian, Clifford Prince King, Leigh Ledare, Lin Zhipeng (No. 223), Sally Mann, RongRong&inri, Collier Schorr, and Karla Hiraldo Voleau. 

Through the myriad lens of intimate relationships, Love Songs brings together series dating from 1952 to 2022 by some of the leading photographers of our time that explore love, desire and intimacy in all their most complex and contradictory ways. The exhibition is the U.S. museum debut for work by Aikaterini Gegisian and Lin Zhipeng (aka no. 223), the first New York City museum presentation of the work of Sheree Hovsepian and Motoyuki Daifu, and the U.S. debut of the work of Karla Hiraldo Voleau.

Listen to ICP's Love Songs playlist, featuring love songs compiled by artists with work on view in the show, here.

The New York presentation of Love Songs is organized by curator and writer Sara Raza, formerly of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Tate Modern, London. This spring 2023 exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), Paris, based upon an original idea by Simon Baker, and was curated at MEP by Frédérique Dolivet and Pascal Hoël. The English-language catalogue for the exhibition is published by ICP and DAP and available in ICP's shop.

Sara Raza is an award-winning curator and writer specializing in global art and visual cultures from a post-colonial, post-Soviet perspective. She is the author of Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion (Black Dog Press, London 2022). Raza has curated for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Mathaf: Modern Arab Art Museum (Doha, Qatar), and the 55th Venice Biennale, among others. Formerly, she was the Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator for the Middle East and North Africa at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Curator of Public Programs at Tate Modern, London. Sara holds a BA and an MA, both from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and pursued studies towards her PhD at the Royal College of Art, London. She lives and works in New York City, where she teaches at the School of Visual Arts and New York University. 

This exhibition contains sensitive and explicit content that may not be appropriate for all audiences.
 
Clifford Prince King, Conditions, 2018. © Clifford Prince King, Courtesy STARS Gallery, Los Angeles
Two images spliced together with a yellow background, a man raising his hand up, which appears to turn into a cactus in the other image.
A shirtless man with a flower and a knife in his hand.
A woman sleeping in a boat.
A polaroid of a blurry individual in motion kissing a woman who is still with her eyes closed.
A naked woman crouched and huddled behind a dining table leg.
A naked arm pressed up against a glass wall.

Special Thanks

Exhibitions support has been generously provided by the ICP Exhibitions Committee, Gagosian, Bonhams, and Etant donnés Contemporary Art, a program of Villa Albertine. Exhibitions at ICP are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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