second nature: abstract photography then and now
Abstract photography continues to be a catchall genre for the blending of media and disciplines, and a fertile arena in which artists can test photography itself. It challenges the popular view of photography as an objective record of reality and calls attention to the constructed nature of the photographic image. Today, anyone who has a cell phone can take and send digital images instantaneously. In response to this ‘snapshot’ culture, many artists are taking up photography’s underlying properties to consciously construct an image of reality. Second nature looks at this embrace of the highly fabricated image as a return to an earlier time in photography’s history—and will pair the scientific and expressionistic experimentation of photography in the first half of the 20th century with current explorations of the medium. This exhibition highlights deCordova’s photography collection, presenting work by some of the field’s most prolific pioneers and innovators: György Kepes, Harold Edgerton, and Aaron Siskind. IMAGE: Daniel Phillips, Ice Cave, 2012, video projection onto ice. Courtesy of the artist and Dodge Gallery, New York, NY
