TRACK-22
pl. Szczepański 3a Krakow
Tue.-Sun. 11.00–19.00
From the book The Legitimacy of Landscape by Yaakov Israel
The PhotoBookMuseum and Krakow Photomonth present:
TRACK-22
Photobooks on Conflicts
curated by Markus Schaden/The PhotoBookMuseum
The exhibition project TRACK-22 focuses on conflict as an omnipresent and permanent feature of our age. In the same way that specific hot spots become rooted in a collective consciousness, the visual coverage of conflicts creates an inexhaustible bank of pictorial memory; but one that is, in many cases, skewed towards the spectacular, which is of transitory relevance. In contrast, this exhibition is designed to be a lasting, processual approach to conflict as an ongoing and shifting phenomenon. The abundance of single images that attempt to illustrate complex events is here challenged by the multilayered visual narratives of nine photobooks. Nowadays, photobooks counter anonymous and delocalized media coverage. They have a distinct authorship, and are capable of tracking a conflict from a genuine point of view. What’s more, books are not an anachronistic medium. If anything, they provide democratic and eclectic possibilities for examining and presenting issues through visual dramaturgy and materiality.
TRACK-22 is a case study illustrating the paradoxical situation of both the photographer covering a conflict and the viewer looking at it. Can pictures accurately track geopolitical strife? Does the photobook — as an autonomous contemporary art form and the central form of expression within photography — do justice to the turbulence of a whole zone that is severely out of joint?
Follow TRACK-22.
Catch-22 // logic dilemma; a difficult situation for which there is no easy or possible solution;
// a satirical novel by the American author Joseph Heller, published in 1961
Eva Leitolf Rostock Ritz, Emeric Lhuisset Maydan - Hundred Portraits, Julia Polunina-But Barricade, Vladislav Krasnoshek & Sergiy Lebedynskyy Euromaidan, Frederic Lezmi Taksim Calling, Luis Weinstein Esto ha sido, Yaakov Israel The Legitimacy of Landscape, Arwed Messmer Reenactment MfS, Larry Towell The World From My Front Porch
Markus Schaden, founder of the publishing house and book shop specialized on PhotoBooks - Schaden.com. As the former vice president of the German Society of Photography (DGPh) and as a member of the editorial board “Foam Magazine”, he has served on the juries of photography festivals in Arles, Paris, Krakow, Amsterdam, Kassel, Los Angeles and others. He curated PhotoBookStudies on The La Brea Matrix, a multi-faceted PhotoBook research project in 2008. Schaden taught PhotoBook Masterclasses in Amsterdam, Jakarta, Arles and Cologne in cooperation with Lichtblick School Cologne and the Goethe Institut. Frequently, he lectures at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) in Cologne and the University for Applied Arts and Sciences in Dortmund. In 2014, Schaden founded The PhotoBookMuseum, the first museum focused on the curatorial display of PhotoBooks worldwide.
Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art
pl. Szczepański 3a
Opening: 16.05.2015, 4 p.m.
Exhibition open: 17.05–14.06.2015
Tue–Sun 11 a.m.–7 p.m.
04.06 closed
tickets: – 6 PLN / 12 PLN,