The International Center of Photography today announced the presentation of The Future Perfect, a new exhibition featuring work from five of the most recent graduating classes at the International Center of Photography School. Featuring 128 works from 26 artists, this exhibition explores the role of photography and imaging technology in marking time, expressing authority and reach, and addressing human, social, and personal concerns. The alumni artists and photographers in this show—all former participants in the General Studies, Documentary Practice & Visual Journalism, and the ICP-Bard MFA programs—tackle the technical, aesthetic, and ethical questions surrounding photography in novel and compelling ways.
Photographs are written in the future perfect tense: this will have been. As relic and document, our photographic images may become meaningful artifacts, instruments of storytelling and memory, a form of poetry and literature wrought from history and cultural discourse. This ability gives photography, in its broadest sense, its importance amidst abounding media contexts. Even as a flawed record-keeper, digital, translated, appropriated, redacted, retouched, and collaged, it speaks the language of change. Its imperfection and provisional, happenstance plurality, its cut frame and layered production, its multiple light sources—scanner, sun, enlarger, light table, screen, exhibition lighting—charge it with a spirit of participation and accountability. Its parcels of time still pool from the flood of life.
Yola Monakhov Stockton, lead curator, notes: “Like writing, photography is a tool adaptable to literary and prosaic ends, suited to eulogize, lambaste, control, scandalize, foster intimacy, or remind us of our shared ethical core.”
The exhibition will be on view at the ICP School’s Rita K. Hillman Education Gallery (1114 Avenue of the Americas) from September 6–November 20, 2016. The opening reception will be held on Friday, September 16 from 6–8 PM. For more information, go to www.thefutureperfect.net. A related exhibition will also be on view at Photoville from September 21–25. Photoville is located in the Brooklyn Bridge Plaza, on the corners of Water Street and Dock Street. For more information, go to www.photoville.com/the-future-perfect/.
Featured Artists
643 Collective, Katherine Akey, Karen Arango, Ana Baumann, Alejandra Ugarte Bedwell, Esther Boesche, Joana P. Cardozo, Stephanie Colgan, Joseph Desler Costa, Tara Cronin, Tom Curcuruto, Kristen Dorata, Elena Hermosa, Sara Hylton, Marily Konstantinopoulou, Alexandre Morvan, Loubna Mrie & Miguel Winograd, Júlia Pontés, Fabiana Sala, Liz Sales, Rick Schatzberg, Giovana Schluter, Daniel Temkin, Daniel Tepper & Vittoria Mentasti, Jessica Thalmann, and Jiaxi Yang.
Curators
Yola Monakhov Stockton, Lead Curator. Joana P. Cardozo, Elena Hermosa, and Rick Schatzberg, Co-Curators.