The 1970s brought about a period of intensive experimentation in the medium of photography. A young generation of practitioners turned from traditional forms, like landscape and street photography, toward a more critical and reflexive view of the materials they used and the images they created. For some, the photograph was treated as an object, not just a picture, leading to manipulations that interrupted the picture plane and disturbed the photo’s capacity for illusionistic rendering. Others adopted the documentary function of photography to complicate presumptions about how photographs depict the world, create meaning, and endow significance. Though they differed in approaches and outcomes, these photographers shared an exploratory attitude, examining the roles photographs play in art and popular culture. 

Drawing from the Monsen Collection, this exhibition features the work of Thomas Barrow, Daryl Curran, Jan Groover, Robert Heinecken, Ed Ruscha, and others.