Waves of images.

About SEND ME AN IMAGE: From Post­cards to Social Media. An exhi­bi­tion at C / O Berlin, from May 29^th to Sep­tem­ber 2^nd, 2021.

Three gigan­tic yel­low rub­ber ducks in front of the C/O Berlin gallery in the Berlin-Char­lot­ten­burg­er Hard­en­bergstrasse serve sev­er­al pur­pos­es at the same time: On the one hand, they are an eye-catch­er that should lure the audi­ence into the pho­tog­ra­phy muse­um, which has reopened a few weeks ago, espe­cial­ly since this time the gallery does not show the work of com­mon, well-known pho­tog­ra­phers, but an exhi­bi­tion with the some­what bulky, ini­tial­ly inac­ces­si­ble title “Send me an Image: From Post­cards to Social Media” (along­side the two as well high­ly rec­om­mend­able exhi­bi­tions “Nadine Ijew­ere: Beau­ti­ful Dis­rup­tion” and “Anna Ehren­stein: Tools for Con­vivi­al­i­ty”). And on the oth­er hand … But more on that lat­er.

“Send me an image” begins in the foy­er. 350,000 pho­to prints are lying around there. Piled up, glued on, accu­mu­lat­ed in moun­tains. One would like to rum­mage around in it and dis­cov­er some­thing excit­ing, but the exhi­bi­tion orga­niz­ers prob­a­bly don’t want that. Per­haps Erik Kessels would like the vis­i­tors to rum­mage around in his instal­la­tion 24HRS, but if every­one secret­ly pock­et their memen­to, there would soon be noth­ing left of the instal­la­tion. The moun­tains of pho­tos rep­re­sent the num­ber of images that were uploaded dai­ly to “Flickr” 15 years ago, a ridicu­lous­ly small num­ber today com­pared to what is now per­ma­nent­ly uploaded to Insta­gram, Face­book or any­where else.

How­ev­er, “Send me an image” as well exam­ines the social com­mu­ni­ca­tion in pho­tog­ra­phy at a time when social net­works were still unthink­able utopias. The exhi­bi­tion inves­ti­gates how and why pho­tog­ra­phy was used to com­mu­ni­cate back then, it stud­ies the influ­ence of pho­tog­ra­phy as a medi­um of com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the per­cep­tion of our world. And it also exam­ines how the per­cep­tion of the world has changed through pho­tog­ra­phy over the past 150 years, since pho­tog­ra­phy has devel­oped from a pure imag­ing medi­um to one of the most impor­tant com­mu­ni­ca­tion media of our time, pos­si­bly even replac­ing lan­guage in its mean­ing for com­mu­ni­ca­tion . “Send me an image” also explores phe­nom­e­na accom­pa­ny­ing this devel­op­ment, name­ly cen­sor­ship, sur­veil­lance and visu­al algo­rithms.

The Lon­don author Orit Gat writes in her essay “Post­cards from the past, or how past and present meet on twit­ter”, which was pub­lished for this exhi­bi­tion: “This idea that there is some­thing that could be res­cued from the past, reclaimed in the present, and that it could tell us some­thing about our lives now: our lives, this con­fus­ing, all-too-new thing, full of plat­forms with very lit­tle his­to­ry, and a visu­al lan­guage that repur­pos­es the past as a way of quick­ly indoc­tri­nat­ing us into the present.”

„Pho­tog­ra­phy is truth and lies. A veil and a rev­e­la­tion. Spe­cif­ic and arbi­trary. Con­tem­pla­tive and rev­o­lu­tion­ary. Pho­tog­ra­phy is society’s mir­ror – and its play­ground”, rec­og­nizes the new “Mis­sion State­ment” of C/O Berlin. „Send me an image” is the most con­sis­tent, most con­vinc­ing and most pro­to­typ­i­cal imple­men­ta­tion of this state­ment. And the way in which this exhi­bi­tion is pre­sent­ed is fresh, provoca­tive and muse­um-like in the best sense of the word, in that it not only sees us as recip­i­ents, but also sees us as pro­tag­o­nists of muse­um pre­sen­ta­tions.

Pho­tog­ra­phy as one of the younger art forms (which, inci­den­tal­ly, was only half rec­og­nized as an art form after the lat­er invent­ed film) is threat­ened – sim­i­lar to the­ater or the visu­al arts – by the loss of con­nec­tion with today’s real­i­ty of life. Just as there are exam­ples of artists and drama­tists of the 19^th cen­tu­ry who belong to a canon of clas­sics that no longer find any con­nec­tion points in the world of the cur­rent 21^st cen­tu­ry, there will be more and more pho­tog­ra­phers in the „canon of pho­tog­ra­phy” – so I proph­esy – who lose their con­nec­tion to our present. Per­haps there will soon be an audi­ence that groans in annoy­ance when the next Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son exhi­bi­tion is announced, or famous gal­leries around the world who always adver­tise the same, names, that promise suc­cess and sales. There will be pho­tog­ra­phers whose work “ages bad­ly”. „Send me an image” avoids these dan­gers and takes an uncom­fort­able but worth­while route.

But to come back to the rub­ber ducks in front of the C/O: They refer to the Tian’anmen mas­sacre in Bei­jing in June 1989, and that famous pho­to (and video) when a sin­gle man stopped four tanks by oppos­ing them. This pho­to was sub­ject to cen­sor­ship in Chi­na, but in 2013 strangers suc­ceed­ed in cir­cum­vent­ing the cen­sor­ship algo­rithms by replac­ing the tanks in the pic­ture with yel­low rub­ber ducks. The images pen­e­trat­ed the algo­rithm – and were under­stood. The seem­ing­ly harm­less ducks became a sym­bol of protest.

„We teach our audi­ence to see” explains the C/O man­i­festo – „then make them ques­tion every­thing they’ve learned.” This applies to “Send me an image” like a fist on the eye.

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The artists tak­ing part in the exhi­bi­tion include the ABC Artists’ Books Coöper­a­tive, Adam Broomberg & Oliv­er Cha­narin with Der Greif, David Cam­pa­ny & Anas­ta­sia Samoylo­va, Fre­di Cas­co, Moyra Dav­ey, Themis­tok­les von Eck­en­brech­er, Mar­tin Fen­gel & Jörg Koop­mann, Stu­art Franklin, Gilbert & George, Dieter Hack­er, Tomas van Houtryve, Philippe Kahn, On Kawara, Erik Kessels, Marc Lee, Lynn Her­sh­man Lee­son, Mike Man­del, There­sa Mar­ti­nat, Eva & Fran­co Mattes, Jonas Mey­er & Christin Müller, Peter Miller, Romain Roucoules, Thomas Ruff, Taryn Simon & Aaron Swartz, Andreas Slomin­s­ki, Clare Strand and Corinne Vion­net.

The exhi­bi­tion was orga­nized and designed by Felix Hoff­mann and Dr. Kathrin Schönegg. The exhi­bi­tion can be seen until Sep­tem­ber 2, 2021. It is accom­pa­nied by a pub­li­ca­tion pub­lished by Stei­dl Ver­lag.

SEND ME AN IMAGE
Ed .: C/O Berlin, Stei­dl 2021
ISBN 978−3−95829−962−7
328 pages, 17 x 27 cm, 282 illus­tra­tions, hard­cov­er
Ger­man, Eng­lish
€ 28.00 INCL. VAT

C/O Berlin
Hard­en­bergstrasse 22–24
10623 Berlin
Dai­ly from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Time slot tick­ets and fur­ther infor­ma­tion at co-berlin.org