September 18, 2004
Fall exhibitions at the ICP
In yesterday's New York Times, Michael Kimmelman reviews "Looking at Life," the exhibition that anchors the International Center of Photography's fall season. I attended the media preview on Wednesday morning, and mostly agree with Kimmelman's assessment. Let me jumble up two quotes from the review to give you an idea of my quick take on the show: "The big idea behind the exhibition is how Life and, by implication, all forms of popular journalism package news, but in the end the photographs, looked at one by one, speak for themselves," which appears near the end, should be followed by "Some of what's in the show is great but some isn't. It's just visual information, banal photography — truth be told, like much of what was in Life," which appears near the middle. What Kimmelman neglects to mention is how the weaknesses of "Looking at Life" are ballasted by its companion shows: It is presented alongside Cornell Capa's photographs of JFK, Ant Farm's Media Burn and The Eternal Frame, and "Inconvenient Evidence," which is comprised of sixteen digital prints of the amateur photos taken at Abu Ghraib. The four provide a much better picture of how "all forms of popular journalism package news" than any one would by itself.
Bear this in mind if Kimmelman's review doesn't make an ICP visit sound enticing. The presentation of the two Ant Farm videos—Media Burn is more well known, but The Eternal Frame, on first glance, is the more rewarding work—brings a small slice of the traveling survey which is now on view at the ICA Philadelphia to New York, a stroke of luck for those unable to travel to see it. (The survey was reviewed in the April 2004 Artforum, and both videos are mentioned.) I'm curious to hear opinions on the museum presentation of the Abu Ghraib photos. ICP curator Brian Wallis noted that the sixteen on view were culled from a collection of forty or fifty pulled from press contacts, government sources, and web searches.