A new exhibition at the Dina Mitrani Gallery called Anonymous: The Fractured Histories of Found Photographs opens on Thursday, June 11th. The exhibit is curated by adjunct faculty member Peggy Levison Nolan and features FIU students, faculty, and alumni.
In Anonymous: The Fractured Histories of Found Photographs, the collection of found pictures is both curious and recognizable. Film-based photos arrive with much surprise and disappointment as they are made through a developing process and never indicated on the back of the camera. The collaboration between the photographer and subject is less sure and more hopeful. The results, many unfocused and filled with formally unnecessary elements, are collected and appreciated, spared the harsh critique of the art world. The fortuitous accidents created by camera “mistakes” give many of these images a heightened sense of artifice and nostalgia. The photographs assume the role of abstracted symbols of life lived and enjoyed, and imply innocence of the future. And now they have found their way into an art gallery, taking on the added weight of irony and conjecture. Their original makers have been forgotten, authorship assumed by the images’ collectors. How are we – with smart phones comfortably available on our persons – to understand the smile of a proper gentleman posed before a photographer hidden behind a black cloth? How do we see a couple dressed in the laughable outfits of the 1970’s smiling on a cruise ship deck? Perhaps we do so with relief, the pressure of creative ownership lifted, the experience of looking filled with mistaken omnipotence. (Source: Dina Mitrani Gallery)
The collections of the following individuals are included in the exhibition.
Peggy Levison Nolan (MFA ’01)
Gloria O’Connell (MFA ’02)
Ivan Santiago (Master of Fine Arts candidate)
Augusto Mendoza (BFA ’12)
Francie Bishop Good
George Valcarce
Pip Brant (Associate Professor)
Duane Brant
Abner Nolan (BFA ’95)
Kevin Arrow
Anonymous: The Fractured Histories of Found Photographs runs from June 11th to August 29th, 2015 at the Dina Mitrani Gallery: 2620 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL 33127.
The image in this article belongs to the Dina Mitrani Gallery.
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