PHOTO 2024
1 – 24.3.2024

Not Standing Still: New Approaches in Documentary Photography

17 February 2021 - 16 May 2021

Image: Alec Soth, Adelyn, Ash Wednesday, New Orleans, Louisiana (detail), from the series Sleeping by the Mississippi, 2000. Courtesy the artist.

When

17 February 2021 - 16 May 2021

Region

East

Venue

Monash Gallery of Art [i]
860 Ferntree Gully Rd, Wheelers Hill
Tue – Fri, 10am – 5pm
Sat – Sun, 10am – 4pm
Venue Website ↗undefined

Accessibility

Wheelchair access, Accessible Toilets, Accessible Parking

This headline exhibition for PHOTO 2021 features photographers from around the world who are challenging documentary photography’s relationship with truth.

Not standing still celebrates divergent and conceptual photographic processes that discuss current issues of environment, politics, warfare, judicial inequality, racism, history, and revolution.

Over the past 15 years, documentary photography has been approached differently, and as a result, new ways of ‘telling’ have emerged. What was once the territory of the traditional photojournalist is now shared with photographers who see themselves as artists and collaborators, more interested in raising questions than in telling complete, digestible stories.

The image-makers in this exhibition use contemporary modes of photographic storytelling. They promote personal connection and long-term interaction with a subject. They seek respectful representation of marginal voices, and they co-opt narrative structures, and even fictions. All this asks for a deep and meaningful engagement by the viewer to unpack the truths of each subject.

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Curators

  • Daniel Boetker-Smith (AU)

    Daniel Boetker-Smith is an educator, writer, curator, publisher, and photographer based in Melbourne. Daniel has been the Higher Education Course Director at Photography Studies College (Melbourne) since 2013. Daniel is a regular contributor to the GUP Magazine, The British Journal of Photography, Voices of Photography, Vault, Photoeye, Paper Journal, Heavy, Source, and other Australian and international publications. Daniel is also the Director of the Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive, a not-for-profit library of self-published and independent photobooks. Daniel regularly speaks at festivals and symposia internationally on the subject of photobooks, photographic publishing and self-publishing in the Asia-Pacific area. He has been a judge at numerous international and national photographic competitions. He is also a nominator for the Prix Pictet Prize, World Press Photo, Fuse Book Award and other international competitions. He has curated a number of large international photobook events for the major institutions in Australia and internationally.

  • Pippa Milne (NZ)

    Pippa Milne is a writer and curator based in Melbourne. She is the Senior Curator at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne and has been working with photography since 2011. She was previously Curator at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne and Associate Curator of International Art at Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. Recent exhibitions Pippa has curated include Bill Henson: The light fades but the gods remain (2019), Architecture Makes Us: Cinematic Visions of Sonia Leber and David Chesworth (2018) (co-curated with Naomi Cass and Made Spencer Castle) and An unorthodox flow of images (co-curated with Naomi Cass) (2017). Pippa is a regular contributor to publications and institutions in Australia and New Zealand and has been a nominator for various prizes including ICP Infinity Award and Prix Pictet.

Artists

Related program

PHOTO Channel