A New Display

Visual Storytelling at a Crossroads

For Krakow Photomonth 2016 I was asked to curate the exhibition A New Display: Visual Storytelling at a Crossroads. The exhibition was on show from 15th of May until 12th of June 2016.

Exhibition text

Within today’s shifting media landscape, documentary photographers are challenged more than ever to rethink the strategies they use to reach and entice their audience. Is there a future for the in-depth visual story and the long-form documentary project? In the last decade, a range of technological innovations has potentially opened up the practice of documentary photography.

The exhibition A New Display: Visual Storytelling at a Crossroads taps into these developments by showcasing six projects from photographers who leave the beaten path. In their need to tell and design visual stories they have employed narrative constructions and editing techniques more akin to filmmaking, gaming, or literature than to photography as we once knew it. These photographers, who often act solo, have therefore also collaborated with graphic designers, film editors, sound designers, journalists, and interactive developers.

A New Display highlights visual stories on, among others, the global heroin trade, the photo album of a high-ranked SS officer, the lockdown of a neighborhood, and a radio soap in Rwanda. With the help of contemporary storytelling techniques, the authors share their personal beliefs and convictions about social and political topics that matter to us all. In doing so, they show the power of the photographic documentary tradition in an era where single images and photographs are ubiquitous but often lacking in context.

A New Display was curated by Iris Sikking for Kraków Photomonth 2016. The exhibition was supported by the Mondriaan Fund.

Selected artists: Robert Knoth & Antoinette de Jong, Mike Mandel and Chantal Zakari, Anoek Steketee and Eefje Blankevoort, Annette Behrens, Dirk-Jan Visser, Jan Rothuizen & Martijn van Tol and Thomas Kuijpers.