6th Triennial of Photography

19.06. UNTIL 13.09.2015

The Kunstverein in Hamburg raises 6 questions about the future of photography, which focus on the relevance of photography within contemporary visual discourses. To think about the now and future of photography is to grasp it as a subjunctive, in which different artistic practices within the exhibition and publication are discussed. The questions and concepts will be addressed to different generations of artists who deal with the photographic and its various manifestations. These processes of thinking about a future of photography by the photographic itself should be the starting point for „THE DAY WILL COME WHEN PHOTOGRAPHY REVISES“.

OBERHAFEN NIGHT OF PHOTOGRAPHY

On  Friday 19 June at 7 pm four exhibitions in Oberhafen will open and that's why the Oberhafenquartier will be the meeting point of the Triennial of Photography. The exhibitions #snapshot, OLYMPUS PHOTOGRAPHY PLAYGROUND, AREA: REVISTED and THE SMART VIEW - Reflections on Mobile Photography show a diverse range of the future of photography in esthetic and technical  aspects.

Foto: Catherine Balet, Strangers in the Light #1, 2009 © Catherine Balet

19.06. UNTIL 13.09.2015TRIENNIAL SHOW

Despite its claim to reality and authenticity, photography is also used to convey dreams, desires and fantasies. In contemporary art, above all, the photographic image on the one hand depicts social upheavals and global developments, while on the other it expresses hopes and utopian visions. Whether it takes the form of a collage, a staged scenario or a reconstruction, photography has become the most important medium in the search for identity and the attempt to satisfy desires, precisely because of its supposedly documentary nature. 

The exhibition addresses these ambivalent and often controversial aspects of the “principle of hope” in contemporary photography, with works on show by Yto Barrada, Nan Goldin, Annette Messager, Zwelethu Mthethwa and Adrian Paci, among others.

Foto: Adrian Paci, Centro di Permanenza temporanea, 2007, Sammlung Deutsche Bank © Courtesy the artist, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich, Kaufmann & repetto, Mailand

19.06. UNTIL 06.09.2015

“We step into the same river but not into the same, it is we and it is not we.” Starting from Heraclitus’ doctrine of the river, Plato developed the notion of “panta rhei” – Everything is in flux and nothing remains the same. In his carefully assembled series of images, New York photographer Phillip Toledano exposes himself to that process of incessant change: He tries by means of photography, a medium capable only of capturing a past moment, to isolate traces from the river of temporal change and to take a position on them.

Foto: Phillip Toledano, aus der Serie: Maybe, 2011-2015,© Phillip Toledano

19.06. UNTIL 20.09.2015

THE DAY WILL COME WHEN WE SHARE MORE THAN EVER

More pictures are being taken than ever before—innumerable snapshots pile up on hard disks and in clouds, are shared via the internet and commented on. But portals such as Facebook and Flickr as well as professional image databases are really just a new way to archive and share images with others, an impulse as old as photography itself. In this exhibition, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG) takes a closer look at these new ways of collecting and making use of photography. It combines historical works from the MKG’s collection with contemporary projects in which artists explore the Internet as a new kind of picture archive, offering collections of images from Google Earth, photos on eBay, and snapshots exchanged via mobile phone.

Foto: Penelope Umbrico, Signals Still, 2011 © Penelope Umbrico