Photography Reinvented: The Collection of Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker

Description

Photography Reinvented brings together thirty-five works by eighteen critically acclaimed artists who, through innovative experimentation and visionary conceptual scope, have changed the course of contemporary photography. From the seemingly objective, straightforward style and large-scale, vibrantly colored prints of famed Dusseldorf School photographers Andreas Gursky, Candida Hofer, Thomas Struth, and Thomas Ruff to works by groundbreaking contemporary artists, including Thomas Demand, Vik Muniz, Cindy Sherman, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Catherine Opie, Photography Reinvented traces the aesthetic, technical, and philosophical shifts of the art form during a period of substantial change. Some of the artists, such as Sherman and Demand as well as Muniz and John Baldessari, explore the nature of photography as a medium that appropriates imagery from mass culture and other sources. Others, such as Hofer and Struth, have reassessed iconic works of art and architecture, revealing the relevance of the past in our present lives. And all of these artists have made large-scale prints that create new and strangely destabilizing experiences of space for their viewers. In an age when photography can no longer claim documentary veracity as its raison d'etre, Photography Reinvented examines the medium's redefinition, repurposing, and reimagining. Exhibition schedule: National Gallery of Art, Washington September 30, 2016-January 29, 2017

Sarah Greenough is senior curator and head of the department of photographs, Philip Brookman is consulting curator, and Andrea Nelson and Diane Waggoner are associate curators of photographs, all at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Leslie Urena is assistant curator of photographs, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

"Photography Reinvented assembles exemplary pictures by artists who defined the rise of monumental color photography in art museums and the art market alike, and in so doing redefined the role of photography in contemporary art."-Mitra Abbaspour, coeditor of Object:Photo: Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection, 1909-1949