#theundocument

Starting in 2012 and occurring every other year since, the FotoFocus Biennial is a month long celebration of photography. With over 60 venues, mostly local but some sprinkled from Covington to Columbus, FotoFocus presents photography exhibits tailored to the biennial’s theme, “Photography: The Undocument,” with eight major exhibits curated for the theme by Kevin Moore, FotoFocus artistic director.

According to the FotoFocus team, the term undocument, “seeks to break apart assumptions about photography’s documentary character by emphasizing the medium’s natural tendency to distort and reshape the visible world.” What does that mean to you? I explored the FotoFocus curated shows and here’s why you should join in on the visual exploration too:

The ability to freeze a moment in time with the snap of a camera has always intrigued me and I was excited to see how each of the eight major exhibits did so in relation to the undocument. On the same night three of the exhibits opened, Shifting Coordinates at the 21c Musuem Hotel and After Industry and Marlo Pascual: Three Works at the Weston Art Gallery. Shifting Coordinates presents work that blurs boundaries, Michael Smith caught my eye. You find that the image (pictured above) is capturing an inmate, but details like this are only revealed in the description. In his true skin and stripped of prison garb, the subject asks you to recognize his humanity, regardless of all else. Smith removes him from the context of prison and therefore preconceived biases. This was something I picked up in many of the photographs and within the curation at 21c Museum Hotel, finding new ways to explore and evoke discourse on current topics in the public sphere.

Marlo Pascual: Three Works at the Weston Art Gallery combined photography and actual objects, making it one of the few exhibits to incorporate sculptural elements. When viewing these works it made me realize that even the documentation aspect of photography can be manipulated after the shot has been taken. I delved even deeper into After Industry, an exhibit described as blurring the lines of nature and industry. A set of prints in the exhibit taken by Lynne Cohen show six indoor spaces once inhabited and bustling with human activity, which have now been abandoned and overgrown (pictured above) – skating rinks, waiting rooms, anything that we thought we once needed, used the resources, and then left to crumble – subtle but brutal in their commentary.

Roe Ethridge comes from a commercial background but harnesses his talent with the ability to transcend into the fine arts realm. Ethridge came to the Contemporary Arts Center with his collaborators to elaborate on this notion and his exhibition Nearest Neighbor. Take for example, Thanksgiving dinner (pictured above). To the everyday viewer, it is what it is, a holiday feast. But when asked during his panel for the his source of inspiration we learn that it was modeled off of Ethridge’s own Thanksgiving in 1984 where he developed a crush on his older cousin, as he put it “very incestual thoughts,” and far from innocence.  Though many of his photos had an original commercial purpose, the underlying themes of adolescence, sexuality and fantasy add a dimension that is unexpected and almost force the viewer to take a third or even fourth glance to make sure you didn't miss anything.

The last three exhibits are at the Freedom Center; the mastermind behind one of them, Zanele Muholi, hosted a performance and talk surrounding her exhibit, Personae. The exhibit included two bodies of work, Faces and Phases and Somnyama Ngonyama. The former presents photographs of trans men, trans women, and lesbians from South Africa, Muholi’s native country (pictured above) while the latter contained self-portraits with underlying meanings. With over 300+ photographs taken, Muholi still knows each individual, each location, and each year the photographs were taken in “Faces and Phases” and makes a concerted effort to follow up with many. The purpose of the work is to bring awareness and action to crimes against LGBTQI people in South Africa, many victims being people Muholi knows.  She also works with a large team so that if she were to die tomorrow, someone would still be here to continue what she calls her “visual activism.”

Click here to find out how and where you can go to see lens-based art surrounding the theme, “Photography: The Undocument” and to save some mula on your Passport visit enjoythearts.org.

Author, photographer: Maddie Huggins