Photography in the middle

This exhibition project focuses on the role of the photographic image as a device of special significance within artistic practices after 1950. Questions related to the body and identity, memory and history, the public and political sphere, the role of the media or the phenomenon of mass consumption have permeated artistic proposals, which have incorporated photography as an expressive language, code or document in a process of hybridisation of the artistic media.

From 1950, the date taken as a starting point, the collection of the IVAM includes a number of key works and artists ranging from the New Documentalism of Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander to the Pop and Post-pop productions of Baldessari, Sherman and Prince, the various courses taken by conceptual art and action art with Matta-Clark, Fulton, Pane and Export, the theme of the archive with the Bechers, the visual potency of the German New Objectivity of Ruff and Höffer, the narrative strategies of Gordon or Wearing, and the archival work of Zaatari, among others.

In addition to this series of international figures, the show also presents work by essential Spanish artists like Fontcuberta, Soto and Valldosera. Such names are ample proof of the richness and diversity of the IVAM collections.