Fotograf Gallery

Philip Gaißer, Michael Höpfner, Helmut & Johanna Kandl, Stephanie Kiwitt, Markus Krottendorfer, Tatiana Lecomte
— What Was Documentary Is Now Something Else


Opening: Thursday, October 1, at 6 pm
Curator: Reinhard Braun

The crisis of the documentary, expressed during an age in which more images are being produced and circulated than ever before, possibly relates to the equally enduring crisis of valid political, social and economic agreements. This in turn causes the agreements about various forms of knowledge production to automatically begin to falter. When the nurturing of a binding character in relation to present-day events seems difficult in the best-case scenario, then perhaps a kind of “archaeology” of the present is more strongly assigned meaning. Documentary photographic practices can then no longer be considered to be—more or less reflexive—representational practices. Other questions related to their changing conditions of appearance and their affiliations with history, knowledge, memory, identities, places, and violence are becoming evident. Conceivably, something in the images must then rise to the fore, something that cannot quite yet be named today, something else…

Reinhard Braun

The exhibition has three parts running simultaneously at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Prague, Fotograf Gallery, and Skolska 28 Gallery.

Exhibition is part of Fotograf Festival #5 – “Documentary Strategies”.

Support

Fotograf Gallery is supported by the Czech Ministry of Culture and during the year 2021 by a grant from the City of Prague amounting to 630 000 CZK.