GPS technologies have seriously shifted our experience of place to something passively attuned to a computerized voice, allowing us to avoid the discoveries that come with getting productively lost. Sohei Nishino’s sprawling, labor-intensive photographic works are a powerfully subjective counterpoint to this condition. He explores cities as a flanneur with a camera, shooting with actual film no less. He spends months photographing on the ground, or from elevated perspectives, to amass thousands of images that he pieces together by hand, also over the course of months, and then re-photographs, to create an impressionistic map of each place. On view through February 26, the SFMOMA show, his first solo show in the U.S., includes seven works that he calls Diorama Maps, of cities including London, Rio, Havana, and Jerusalem. The large-scale prints are in silvery black and whites that, from a distance, seem to depict cloudy swarms of insects. They reveal themselves, and grow more complex, when seen up close, where the elements of architecture, pedestrians, and topography are fractured into tiny pieces of a complex social fabric. The works are absorbing, but also overwhelming: they have no central focus but rather spread out, as cities do. We scan for landmarks that get lost in the monochromatic sprawl.
Nishino’s large compositions bring to mind the flattened perspectives of medieval paintings crossed with David Hockney photo collages, with a bit of the dazzle of Daniel Gordon’s colorful, internet-sourced still lifes. But Nishino’s project seems both sobering and loopy in its inefficiency. The work hearkens back to the verité black and white of street photography, and while that tradition is rooted in decisive moments, Nishino’s practice, which involves thousands of quick shots, is impressive for its painstakingly slowness and connection to craft. The exhibition also includes a new series of 20 inkjet prints that trace the data from Nishino’s GPS mapped routes through the city by poking pinholes into pieces of paper placed over his computer screen. Titled Day Drawings (San Francisco), these come across as glowing abstractions or seismic fissures. They trace a direct path through the landscape, and like the Diorama Maps, emphatically reveal how deceptive a photographic depiction of a site can be.
Image and Object: Erin Shirreff, Sara VanDerBeek, and Catherine Wagner
Three notable shows in Northern California this summer provide examples of how sculpture, and the idea of sculpture, are explored in photo-based work: Erin Shirreff, Sara VanDerBeek, and Catherine Wagner each make photo-based art and objects that are deeply informed by sculptural concerns.
The Shifting Borders of Photojournalism and Fine Art Photography
Disturbed by the lack of a visual record of Americ...
Louise Lawler: Playing with Pictures
In 2002, the Museum of Modern Art closed its doors...
Roxana Marcoci
MoMA's senior photography curator talks about her cross-disciplinary approach to curatorial work, Wolfgang Tillmans, An-My Lê, and more.
Best of 2016
Formed in 1963 by 11 photographers who recognized the necessity of “a forum to address the underrepresentation of African Americans in their field,” the Kamoinge Workshop gave its members a sense of solidarity and support in a period when black Americans were the frequent subject of mainstream media coverage but rarely its author.
Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: Multimedia Mythmaker
At the Brooklyn Museum, the inquisitive Cuban-born artist presents work in photography, assemblage, performance, and painting.
Vasantha Yogananthan: Coming of Age in New Orleans
Friendship, love, and sadness percolate through these photographs of children at play.
Rosamond Purcell’s Cabinet of Curiosities
On the occasion of her first retrospective at the Addison Gallery, the photographer speaks to Lyle Rexer about photographing natural-history specimens in the “kingdom of the dead.”
Deana Lawson's Intimate Fictions
In Deana Lawson’s 2017 photograph Nikki’s Kitchen, a woman kneels on an old wooden chair, hand under chin, staring at the camera with some defiance.
Victor Burgin Revisits Photopath
The influential artist and writer reinstalls a landmark work for a new generation of viewers.
Din Q. Le: Confronting Collective Memory
In his multidisciplinary practice, Vietnamese-American artist Dinh Q. Lê addresses memory, displacement, and trauma – but also offers glimpses of hope – in works that frame individual and collective experiences of what the Vietnamese call “the American War.”
Yancey Richardson
Three months before Chelsea dealer Yancey Richards...