An exhibit of photos from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Spain ruminates on the evolving nature of photography
By Susan Van Dongen
BY definition, “itinerant” means “roving from place to place, wandering, and peripatetic.” These are all words that might describe the nature of photography as an evolving entity or craft, depending on the photographer and observer’s point of view. In addition, from its beginnings, photography has been about the incessant circulation and exchange of images, which constantly change the meaning and cultural relevance of a photographic image.
”Itinerant” is therefore very appropriate, as used in the title of a new exhibit at the Princeton University Art Museum. The Itinerant Languages of Photography, on view through Jan. 19, 2014, includes images never before exhibited in the United States, from archives in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Spain.
With some 85 photographs from public and private collections, The Itinerant Languages of Photography explores the movement of photographs across time and place. The exhibit offers an international history of photography that draws attention to the work of well-known masters as well as emerging talents.
Viewers will experience photography from its origins in the 19th century to its various permutations in the present day. Co-curated by Princeton University professors Eduardo Cadava (Department of English, Program in Media and Modernity, Program in Latin American Studies) and Gabriela Nouzeilles (Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures, Program in Latin American Studies), The Itinerant Language of Photography is the culmination of a three-year interdisciplinary project sponsored by the Princeton Council for International Teaching and Research.
”We absolutely wanted to think about the way in which photography, as a medium, has changed and evolved, even from its earliest beginnings,” Mr. Cadava says. “But we also wanted to relate the itinerancy of the medium itself to the various ways in which photographs not only ‘speak’ but also move across historical periods, national borders, and different mediums. If the history of photography has been defined by numerous, competing instances of technological innovation and obsolescence, it is because, from its beginning, the photographic image has been destined to take on other forms, and to move insistently into new contexts.”
”This is perhaps more evident today than ever before given all the new technologies that help us take photographs, and all the forms of social media that enable us to circulate them,” he continues. “I would say that the line between photographers and observers is increasingly dissolving, since increasingly we are all taking pictures.”
The word “itinerant” also relates to the variety of experiences, backgrounds, tastes and nationalities of the photographers in the exhibit.
”With different aesthetic and political agendas, (traveling photographers) helped define the visual iconography of whole regions, societies, cultures, and even continents and (their) pictures continue to intervene in international debates on development, human rights, and ecology,” Mr. Cadava says. “At the same time, we also wanted to think about the ways in which this itinerancy begins to complicate how we think about the origins of a photographer’s point of view. What happens, for example, when the Argentine photographer Marcelo Brodsky goes to Spain in the early ‘80s to study photography with the Catalan photographer Manel Esclusa? In what way does their respective photographic practice change because of this encounter?
American and European photography has somewhat dominated the history of photography, and the co-curators feel it is especially important to begin to display a more complex, transnational history of the medium “… one in which Spanish and Latin American photographers are of course influenced by the master (European and American) photographers, but in which these masters also are transformed by their travels to other countries,” Mr. Cadava says. “We also wanted to suggest that the history of photography should expand to take into consideration photographic traditions from these other countries, all of which have their own master photographers.”
Ms. Nouzeilles adds that Latin America has been at the forefront of the development of new aesthetic models in modern and contemporary photography. “The region possesses some of the world’s most outstanding photographic archives and these different sites have helped us call attention to significant but often neglected histories of photography and, in particular, to the transnational dimension of image production at a time when photography is at the heart of debates over global contemporary art and culture.”
”What we would like viewers to understand is that the history of photography is a much broader, more transnational and complex history than we generally have been led to believe,” she says. “We also would like them to have a better sense of the unpredictable and creative ways in which photographic images can speak to one another across time and space. As viewers move from one room to another, we hope that they can register and help articulate the visual threads that tie different photographic traditions in Spain, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico together, and also distinguish them.”
The first section, “Itinerant Photographs,” offers a glimpse into the global history of early photography by examining the circulation of images in Brazil in the late 19th century.
The works in this section are drawn from two important Brazilian collections: the Thereza Christina Maria Collection at the National Library of Brazil, which consists of more than 21,000 images assembled by the Brazilian emperor Pedro II (1825-1891), an early photography aficionado, who supported more than two dozen photographers, enthusiastically collecting on his trips abroad.
The other prominent collection in this section is from the Instituto Moreira Salles in Rio de Janeiro, and includes Marc Ferrez’s photographs of the development of Rio, as well as images of the Brazilian landscape.
The section “Itinerant Revolutions” presents images of the Mexican Revolution, (1910-1920), popular works that circulated through the press or as postcards. Works by masters of street photography such as Joan Colom and Nacho Lopez are on view in the section “Itinerant Subjects,” which features images of pedestrians, streetwalkers, guerilla fighters, and even shadows. In this section we see the development of photography as a political instrument, as well as the movement, energy and modernization of cities.
Finally, the section “Itinerant Archives,” concentrates on photography’s translation into other media in the present, and examines the relationship between historical and contemporary photographic technologies.
When asked, Mr. Cadava has difficulty singling out a favorite photographer and work of art, but says he particularly likes the images by 19th-century Brazilian photographer Ferrez, the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, the Catalan photographer Colom, the American photographer Susan Meiselas, and the Argentine photographers Florencia Blanco and Brodsky.
Especially meaningful, Mr. Cadava says, is the image that closes the exhibition, a work from Rosangela Renno’s “The Last Photo” series (2006).
”Renno gave a different mechanical camera to 42 Rio de Janeiro photographers and told them they could photograph anything they wished as long as their photograph included the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer of Corcovado,” Mr. Cadava says. “After the photograph was taken, each camera was sealed, framed inside a box with the last photograph it took, and arranged as a diptych. The diptych that closes the exhibition shows a hand moving into the frame from the right edge of the image and holding a digital camera taking a picture of the Christ statue.”
”While the series suggests the obsolescence of analog photography,” he continues, “… this image reverses the narrative by having an analog camera take an image of a digital camera, as if what the digital has introduced into the history of photography is already comprehended by earlier practices of photography.”
The Itinerant Languages of Photography, at the Princeton University Art Museum, on the campus of Princeton University, runs through Jan. 19, 2014. Museum hours: Tues.- Wed., Fri.- Sat., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thur., 10 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun., 1-5 p.m. artmuseum.princeton.edu609-258-3788.