SUEDE87

"plastic 70s toy"

Social Photography IX

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socialphotography.carriagetrade.org

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Gallery Exhibition:

August 5 - September 30, 2021

Opens: Thursday, August 5, 2021, 4-8pm

Now in its ninth year, Social Photography brings together cell phone pictures of participants from a wide range of disciplines, generations, and places. In the spirit of broad access to cell phone image making technology, the emphasis of the project leans toward sensibility and the anecdotal over skill and mastery of the medium of photography.

Taking advantage of technologies that allow for images to be sent from anywhere, which are then formatted, printed, and displayed in an in-person exhibition at carriage trade, the range of participants in Social Photography reflect both the gallery’s community in Lower Manhattan as well as those associated with it in other parts of the world. Linking the virtual with the physical through an online display that is then presented in print form, Social Photography IX might be seen as a counterpoint to the increased placelessness of remote exchanges normalized in the pandemic-era.

Spanning nearly a decade, the growing, informal archive of Social Photography cell phone pictures occasionally reflect significant local, national, and international events (Occupy Wall Street, George Floyd protests, U.S. presidential elections, pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong) existing side by side with the everyday, the personal, the urban, and the domestic.

With a limited curatorial directive, trends are inevitable (a slight increase in pet photos this year is most likely a result of more time spent indoors during the pandemic), while the elusive nature of where to “put” cell phone photography with respect to hierarchies of photographic image production (fine art photography, photojournalism, social media fodder) remains intact. What began in 2011 as an investigation of a novelty medium which simultaneously offered an alternative to the conventional non-profit benefit exhibition has become a kind of tradition, as it sustains and expands carriage trade’s community through its many participants, while helping support the gallery’s upcoming projects.