Resonances. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

New American Documentalists (1960 and 1979): In 1967 John Szarkowski–one of the key actors in the institutionalization of the photographic medium during his tenure as conservator at MoMA in New York—organized the exhibition entitled New Documents. The photographers whose works were exhibited at the show—Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus—left the romanticism of the prior generation behind which was characterized by artists producing their images at the service of a social cause in an effort to capture what was wrong in the world while approaching documentalism in a different way. The goal was no longer that of reforming life but instead getting to know it, whether objectively or subjectively. This exhibition also includes works by Emmet Gowin, Helen Lewitt, and Robert Adams which—along with those by the aforementioned authors—“resonate” with pieces by other artists who are involved in contemporary practices such as Paolo Cirio, Juana Gost, Kurt Caviezel, Jon Rafman, Joachim Schmid and Miguel Ángel Tornero.

From Analog to Digital: Post-photography or e-photography encompasses all the recent phenomena of cybernetic reproduction and analog image mass media. This type of photography can be tampered with, contaminated, modified, and faked from phones, tablets, and computers. Any user equipped with one of these devices has access to said transformations. The monument or city being visited is no longer important. What matters instead is the selfie each individual takes when visiting them. This way of using the medium has not only transformed photography itself, but has also changed how we perceive and experience the world.

Post-photography: Post-photography frequently carries an anti-aesthetic claim and uses the medium as a mere producer of social articulation. The shift from analog to digital and the rise of social networks have allowed viewers to observe wars, fires, and natural disasters live through Twitter or Instagram. One can contemplate any number of atrocities taking place in real time on the internet from their couch at home with very little effort. This has its advantages, but also many inconveniences: over-information, anesthesia, the aesthetization of horror, and may generate something Claude Lazmann refused to do while filming Shoah (1985); the production of souvenirs of war for consumers of conflict. Today photography is a double-edged sword that is frequently used for a purpose that is at odds with what it was initially intended to do: capture truth and memory. Post-photography has not eliminated photography; instead it has broadened its range of action, relegating whatever it is used to substitute. 

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