New Perspectives

on documentary practices

As guest curator I was invited to compile a group exhibition for the Lumix Festival. Due to Covid-19 the festival is cancelled but happily the team decided to move the events program to an online environment. I sincerely hope that the group exhibition will be presented in the future.

The exhibition New Perspectives on Documentary Practices reflects on the changing role of journalistic photography in today’s world and, in particular, examine current tendencies in visual storytelling and new perspectives on the documentary. Special attention will be paid to the arising tension between art, journalism and documentary.

With this new exhibition format, the Lumix Festival likes to promote discussion concerning the future of visual narrative in journalism, guided by the following questions: What potential is inherent to innovative visual journalism in the current media landscape, which is undergoing such dramatic transformation? How do photographers deal will the abundance of images available in a digital society? What are the expectations and conditions that professional photographers active in the area of journalism believe they now face? Furthermore, how can visual storytellers create their own platforms for showing their work? What role does investigative research play, and how is it reflected in the projects presented here?

In this exhibition I like to propose different strategies for engagement within a contemporary documentary practice via the work of twelve selected photographers/visual artists. Their strategies hopefully demonstrate the power of the documentary and lead to a wider discussion.

Selection of artists and their projects:

Lisa Barnard - The Canary and the Hammer

Laura Ben Hayoun - A la moindre étincelle, c'était l'explosion

Felipe Romero Bertrán - Reducción

Alexandra Baumgartner - How like a leaf I am

Marina Caneva - Are they rocks or clouds?

Robert Knoth & Antoinette de Jong - Poppy: Trails of Afghan Heroin 

Christian van der Kooy - Anastassia. She folds her memories like a parachute 

Emeric Lhuisset - Bulutlar

Michal Luczak – Extraction

Amak Mahmoodian -  Zanjir

Rohit Saha - 1528

Coralie Vogelaar - Recognized / Not Recognized, Looking for the popular news image algorithm

Exhibition text

Read here my curatorial statement and view the selection of these 12 projects. Each photographers uses a particular approache towards his topic and subject and creates a distinctive visual language. Therefore I could differentiate the projects into four strategies: the investigative strategy, the activist strategy, the participatory strategy, and the digital strategy. The outcome of their working methods lead to presentation formats and platforms that are less common for traditional photojournalistic work and are more akin to the field of contemporary art.