Sun 11/20-Sun 4/2/23
Generally when you think of photos in museums, you think of that unique, handmade print. But the Cleveland Museum of Art’s next photography show, called Photographs in Ink, looks at the role mass reproduction of photos played in the popularization of images and in how photographers approached how they shot.
“Since the invention of the medium, the majority of published photographs have been printed through photomechanical processes—images made in printer’s ink rather than produced in the darkroom or digitally,” the museum tells us. “Photographs in Ink explores how artists have responded to the abundance of published photographic images that have saturated our daily lives from the 1850s through the early 2000s. The exhibition presents two intertwined narratives: the use of these processes to widely disseminate images and the adoption of them as content and aesthetic choice by fine artists.”
The images in view were created by photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge and Alfred Stieglitz as well as contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Sigmar Polke, Carl Pope Jr. and Lorna Simpson who incorporated photographic images into their work, often along with other media. The exhibition explores how our perception of images can change based on how they’re used.
It will be on view through Sunday April 2, 2023.
clevelandart.org/exhibitions/photographs-ink