Anders Petersen
Ramona, 1968-1970
© Anders Petersen
Reality Revisited
Photography from the Moderna Museet Collection
9.5 2009 – 20.9 2009
Stockholm
Curator: Anna Tellgren
Assistant Curator: Jo Widoff
Photography Conservator: Håkan Petersson
Exhibition Architect: Torsten Livion
Postwar street photography and subjective, personal photography were seminal to the generation of photographers whose careers began in the 1960s and peaked in the 1970s. The title, Reality Revisited, refers to the way these photographers frequently used, or returned to, their own reality as a starting point. Many of them sought new ways of documenting real life – others looked for possibilities to create photographs that went beyond the everyday. A development can be seen during this period, where the 1960s and early 1970s produced distinctly documentary projects, while the late 1970s and early 1980s are dominated by more subjective, surrealistically inspired or body-oriented subjects.
Many of the issues in 1970s photography are still being explored today, especially those relating to form and content, subjectivity and objectivity, art and politics. However, the methods used in the 1970s differ radically from the digitally processed, often staged, large-format colour photography favoured by some photographic artists today. This exhibition provides an opportunity to rediscover traditional analogue photography, the prevailing technique up until the breakthrough of the digital camera.
