Exhibition Review: The Subversive Power Of An Image Overload
Harry Callahan, Collages, ca. 1957. International Center of Photography, Gift of Louis F. Fox, 1980. © The Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace Gallery
By Megan May Walsh
Edited by Jana Massoud
In this incarnation, she appears as the epitome of beauty, red-painted lips, stylized hair, porcelain skin, small smile, and bright eyes. In another incarnation, we encounter her naked, vulnerable, splayed as the object of men’s desires. Variously depicted and even more variously named, she appears in an endless proliferation of images, mesmerizing and tortured as she writes the glamorous and tragic narrative that spins her oppression.
Justine Kurland, Eleanor, 2021. © Justine Kurland, Courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures Generation
A Trillion Sunsets: A Century of Image Overload, presented by the International Center of Photography and curated by David Company, casts a critical eye over society’s insatiable appetite for the endless proliferation of mass media from the 1920s to today. From collages to image appropriations pieced together from magazines, albums, and the depths of the archives, the artists showcased in this exhibition unearth forgotten stories, weave counter-narratives, and subvert normative standards of beauty and joy.
Nakeya Brown, Don't You Know Love When You See It, 2017. © Nakeya Brown, Courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures Generation
A comforting sensation emanates from Company’s curation as the subject once lost in the infinite sea of mass media excess is not only found in the collages but is truly seen. In other words, among the sameness and conformity of pop culture and society’s never-ending stream of images, vibrancy and diversity emerge between the seams of the collages for the women and men depicted. A liberation of sorts takes hold as the subject is cut from the pages of normativity and pasted onto a canvas where their untold history and desires can finally be spoken into the silence.
Robert Frank, Tattoo Parlor, 8th Avenue, New York City, 1958. International Center of Photography, Gift of Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz in honor of Philip S. Block, 2007. © Andrea Frank Foundation
At a moment where the tension between immanence and transcendence is all consuming, a radical revelation of the pressure to conform alongside the immense desire to freely express can offer an inkling of solace. Nakeya Brown’s If Nostalgia Were Colored Brown is a series of photographs depicting the album covers of Black women artists amongst hair products—a critical commentary on the Eurocentric standards of beauty and the pressures it places on Black women to conform. A Trillion Sunsets’ opening art collection, Hannah Höch’s Album is a subversive scrapbook of images and text from magazines, newspapers, and fashion photography where she criticizes the constructions of gender, popular culture and fascism.
Hannah Höch, Album (Scrapbook), 1933. Collage, Courtesy Berlinische Galerie, purchased with funds from Stiftung DKLB, Berlin 1979 © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
A Trillion Sunsets is an exhibition that refuses to shy away from society’s most pressing questions, asking a trillion of its own. Although it may ask more questions than it answers, A Trillion Sunsets births into existence a wondrous alternative to popular narratives, normative beauty standards, and oppressive norms—a subversive masterpiece that tells its own story.
Hank Willis Thomas, But she has other important uses as well, 1944/2015, 2015. © Hank Willis Thomas. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
The International Center of Photography is the world’s leading institution dedicated to photography and visual culture. Located at 79 Essex Street, New York, NY, The International Center of Photography currently has two exhibitions on display until May 2 – Actual Size! Photography at Life Scale and A Trillion Sunsets. For more information on exhibitions and events, please visit ICP’s website: www.icp.org
Photo Editor: Miller Lyle
