Photography is one of those essential parts of how society works today that’s so ubiquitous that we don’t think about it as much as we should. But the craft itself is amazing: being able to take a snapshot of something in our world and preserve it in a piece of paper or in digital storage? A marvel of the modern world.
For this year-end list, BluPrint discusses some of the photography-centric exhibits we covered this year; in these instances, the camera is not just a tool for documentation, but also a tool for exploring light, shapes, and colors. Beyond photographing the excitement and mundanity of life, what else can the camera capture? What artistry lies unexplored in this ubiquitous medium that surrounds us?
How do we document the world around us? Can documentation be, in itself, an art form for the masses? With Capture and Release in Space Encounters Gallery, photographs of everyday items like vegetables and busy markets, and natural phenomena become rhapsodies that tell stories of entire cultures within a single frame.
A collection of seven photographers, including Ulap Chua, Ed Simon, and Curtis Richard, the exhibition presents elevated beauty that is both tethered to and defiant of the realities of our world. Johann Guasch’s colorful renditions of caves and rock formations look like something out of science fiction, while Cru Camara’s photographs feel like they would not be out of place in the opening credits of The X-Files.
“Capture and Release invites viewers into a spectrum of human experiences-introspections on solitude, transitions, and the spaces in between. Across its diverse voices, the exhibition explores what it means to hold on to a moment and then let it evolve into meaning,” the exhibit’s write-up said.
Read more: ‘Capture and Release’ Bears Witness to the World’s Evolution
One of the most compelling exhibitions of any art medium in recent memory, photographer MM Yu deconstructs the fractured landscape of our time, how we reconstruct our own perspectives through the images we see, and what that means for a society that’s abandoned privacy in favor of constant surveillance.
Its collages of pictures around the Philippines, the way it critiques social media practices and the way we post about ourselves online, and even the satirical elements of how we tend to consume art rather than savoring or enjoying it; all of this adds up to a fascinating exhibition that peers into society’s voyeurism and the individual attitudes that fuel it.
Read more: MM Yu Ponders on Image Interpretation with ‘either/or’
Beauty is everywhere. The world is always a lot more interesting than the mundanity of everyday life suggests. Exhibitions like I/Land showcased just how interesting our surroundings can get, whether it’s the chaos of commuting or the drudgery of making a living.
FotomotoPH assembled over seventy-four photographers to document different places across the country. The end result was this cacophony of wildness and life, finding joy, color, and happiness within the diverse cultural traditions of the Philippines.
“[It] helps us highlight that photography is an actual discipline,” FotomotoPH Veejay Villafranca said. “Hindi siya how the majority knows of photography na, you know, you have a phone camera and then [just shoot]. There are different facets to it, but originally, it’s still an art form, it’s a discipline, it’s a method that people use and has been using for quite some time already.”
Read more: ‘I/Land’: FotomotoPH Captures the Diversity of the Country
“I wanted to do this kind of thing kasi I really wanted [to see how] photography, how [it] would fit in the fine art scene of the traditional mediums, like acrylic, oil, [and] watercolor. I wanted it to fit in such a way that I can create photographs out of paper, out of floral textures, and such,” Erwin Canlas said about his exhibition in RiseSpace Gallery.
I Think I Need New Glasses is certainly an interesting experiment that goes beyond the bounds of what art photography entails. These are still real objects, real things, being assembled in front of a camera to look great.
But the end product is something that looks abstract, something that rises beyond the medium’s ability to tell concrete realities to tell also of emotional truths, the feelings that lie within us which cannot really be uttered within our physical, three-dimensional realm. There is no treachery of imagery here: they represent the world as much as we want them to, in the end.
Read more: Erwin Canlas Expands Limits of Art Photography in New Exhibit
Close to a century after Magritte painted a pipe and declared it not a pipe, the world still is reckoning with what images mean, and how they affect society as a whole. Where photography goes from here, especially in art, is hard to say. But it certainly will go somewhere as we continue to explore images and battle against misinformation and fake images in our world.
Photos by Elle Yap and Ed Simon.
Related reading: The intricate, nuanced, and layered relationship between architecture and photography
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