One Hour Photo Opens Tonight!
Saturday, 8 May 2010
This should be a fantastic show with a conceptually compelling curatorial focus, if you are in the DC area I suggest you pop in from time to time to check it out.
May 8 – June 6, 2010 American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center Washington, DC
Opening Viewing: Saturday, May 8, 6 – 9pm featuring work by: Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, Megan Cump, and Tim Davis
Closing Viewing: Saturday, June 6, 11am – 4pm featuring work by: Penelope Umbrico, Clayton Cotterell, Matthew Gamber, Ann Woo, and Ruben Natal-San Miguel
One Hour Photo distills the photograph to the ultimate limited edition: 60 minutes. Photographic works by 128 artists will be projected for one hour each, after which they will never be seen again, by anyone, in any form. Each work will exist only in the experience, then memory, of the observers. Participating artists—hailing from 13 countries, ranging from amateur to emerging to established—sign release forms pledging never to reproduce, display, or sell the work they’ve contributed to the exhibition.
The photographs themselves, through a wide variety of styles and subjects, embody the show’s concept: familiar landmarks and cities dissolve into light, former bastions of capitalism fade slowly into obscurity, figures vanish, confessions and farewells are made, strangers are observed, haunting objects float in urban landscapes, even a vilified ex-Vice President makes a fleeting appearance as an amiable jokester at a black-tie event.
Just as powerful as the images is the participation of the audience. In One Hour Photo, photography’s power to capture a moment, to freeze and frame it, is returned to the experience of viewing itself. The observer becomes the camera, recording the moment on the unreliable format of memory. The project ultimately aims to complicate the myth of photography as preservation, manifest the tension between the permanence of the medium and the impermanence of time, and subvert the profit model of the edition and the print.
For the viewing schedule, please visit www.onehourphotoproject.com/schedule.php.