The digital age has brought dramatic changes to the medium of photography: in seconds images travel around the world, ensnaring us in the contradictory reality of a globalized world. Comparable to the 19th century, when in the course of industrialization cities expanded at an unprecedented rate and the genre of reportage emerged as a new form of narrative distributed by the mass media, an understanding must now be developed of what photographic practices are best suited to provide an image of the world we live in. Is photography still a vessel for our experiences? Or have pictures taken control over us?
Directed by Anne König and Jan Wenzel, editors of Spector Books, the seventh edition of the Festival for Photography f/stop presents artistic photography alongside media images, private snapshots alongside historical reportages. It connects the mobile phone pictures of a Syrian refugee family to the images of Gerda Taro and Robert Capa from the Spanish Civil War.
The images bear witness to the same things in completely different manners or present things that are quite different in a similar way. They portray and conceal, they complement and contradict each other, they work together or accuse one another of lies. They turn their backs on each other or form opposing antitheses. Yet they are equally capable of offering support and of cooperating – with us, too, the viewers.
In addition to the main exhibition, national and international guest curators will present their perspective on current forms of narrative photography: the theorist and film maker Ariella Azoulay for f/stop Solo, the American artist Monica Haller for f/stop Print and students of Anastasia Khoroshilova (Rodchenko Art School Moscow), Armin Linke & Michael Clegg (Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design) and Gilles Saussier (Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie Arles) for f/stop Plattform. An important part of this year’s festival is also the In Situ exhibition with reportages by Lee Miller, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa and Gerda Taro as well as works by Gilles Raynaldy and Andreas Langfeld in public areas of Leipzig. A comprehensive program of events with a symposium, artist talks and a film series in addition to exhibitions and events put on by f/stop Satellites and Accomplices will round out the festival offerings.
More information on
www.f-stop-leipzig.de
