The 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg
Bucerius Kunst Forum
Herbert List, Geist des Lykkabettos, Athen 1937, Münchner Stadtmuseum, Sammlung Fotografie, Archiv List © Herbert List Estate / Magnum Photos / Agentur Focus.
By Megan May Walsh
The 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg opens with 12 exhibitions, each exploring the theme of Currency in its own multilayered complexities. In an age where photographs are mass-produced, circulated, and interpreted, ultimately shaping the way we perceive the world around us, the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg creates a dialogue to artistically reflect on the power photography holds as a value of exchange under globalized capitalism. Artistic director Koyo Kouoh remarks on this phenomenon, stating, "After more than a century of living with photography, we have learned to perceive the world 'photographically,' with many of us seeing the world in image formats shaped by the media platforms that host these images. While these images themselves are unstable forms, the mental repository we build through this prosthetic mode fundamentally shapes how we engage with the world around us. The present day is therefore a 'retinal era'; one that requires a different grammar for looking, reading, and responding to images beyond this saturated condition."
MARKK – Museum am Rothenbaum. Kulturen und Künste der Welt
Album mit Studioportraits, Stadtansichten und Landschaftsaufnahmen aus Singapur; 1868; MARKK Fotografische Sammlung. Inv. Nr. 84.P.1:1 © MARKK, Foto: Paul Schimweg.
Understanding photography as an instrument of power—awarding it the credit it deserves as a prompt for intersectional dialogue and a common thread subtly weaving the contemporary narrative—artists and viewers alike can begin to build a liberatory logic for consuming and responding to society's image overload. Photography can harness a subversive power to encapsulate the necessary “different grammar for looking, reading, and responding to images" needed to stimulate a world-building engagement with the status quo of the world around us. Carsten Brosda, Hamburg's Senator for Culture and Media, poses the critical question, "What value, what power, and what significance can photographs have in our societies?" The exhibitions of the 8th Triennial of Photography offer their own creative and imaginative perspectives on this question, each highlighting the overall theme of currency.
In its most general definition, currency is a term for a system of monetary units. When applied to discourses of visual culture, it becomes associated with the term "cultural capital." Fascinated by this phenomenon, the curators behind this year's Triennial of Photography turn to American writer, philosopher, and political activist Susan Sontag, who poignantly remarked that a "capitalist society requires a culture based on images." To spin the wheel of consumerism, mass consumption is required. Images hold the capacity to spur such consumption with the camera defining a reality that is both "a spectacle (for masses)" and "an object of surveillance (for rulers).” The camera holds the duality of power to entice viewers to desire 'things' while simultaneously watching the movements and behaviors of the masses. Exploring this power, and more importantly, realizing this power, can allow the wielders of cameras, photographers, to cast their own counterspell against the appropriation of art by capitalism and instead generate and support resistance.
While an image overload can act to weave oppressive narratives into existence or indulge the unsustainability of capitalism's consumer culture, images that propose alternative narratives or make the unsustainability of capitalism visible can radically and wildly inspire change. That is the power of photography that the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg aims to reveal in its own diverse interpretations of what such alternative moldings of the world can be inspired and actualized.
Hamburger Kunsthalle
Sara Cwynar, Glass Life (Film-Still), 2021, 6-Kanal- Video (2k) mit Ton, 19:02 min. / Maße variabel © Sara Cwynar, Courtesy die Künstlerin, The Approach, London, und Foxy Production, New York.
8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg presents twelve exhibitions with over 70 artists until September 18, 2022. The exhibitions are accompanied by artist talks, performances, tours, panel discussions, and film screenings during Triennial Expanded and the festival, The Register, and the Recital on June 2–6, 2022.
For more information on the exhibitions, please visit www.phototriennale.de/#exhibitions.
