Photomonth Festival 2014
The twelfth edition of Photomonth in Krakow promises geniune treats for both viewers and amateur as well as professional snappers. Whether you're looking for gritty realism, trailblazing experiments, romance, amusement or simply a good old fashioned classic photograph, it's going to be there. As always, the festival will be held in a variety of locations, both outdoors and indoors, which complement the pictures on display. A newly established Photo Fringe Festival will broaden the spectrum of related photo events.
Krakow Photomonth 2014’s Main Programme probes the important and close relationship between photography and knowledge. It analyses various ways in which photography is entangled in the service of knowledge (or lack of it), and the process of searching for facts and meanings through photography. The 12th edition is also an attempt to uncover the roles played by photography as well as a celebration of its various values as a high-potential independent form of research, investigation or criticism. Nine exhibitions make up the festival’s Main Programme, including the Experimental Section in Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, which aims to explore the potential of photography as a medium that goes beyond the sense of sight, and:
– Trevor Paglen’s project The Last Pictures (Starmach Gallery), created and developed in collaboration with NASA. Together with invited experts, the artist selected 100 photographs, putting together an often humorous set originally intended to describe the world in photographs.
– Taryn Simon’s The Picture Collection (MOCAK), which uses the complex cataloguing system of the New York Public Library collection to explore the apparently neutral topic of ordering knowledge about the world.
– David Campany’s visual essay Walker Evans. The Magazine Work (also at MOCAK), compiled from carefully selected works of one of the 20th century’s most important photographers, Walker Evans.
– Poland’s first presentation of the works of Clare Strand (Further Reading, Szołayski House, Branch of the National Museum in Krakow), which analyses the need for pictures referring to scientific convention to be acknowledged as real.
– the exhibition The Forensic Aesthetics (Pauza Gallery), presenting the research of Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman, members of the Forensic Architecture research group, which takes as its starting point the belief that photography leads to the truth.
– the exhibition Radiation, focusing on Polish artists and curated by Wojciech Nowicki, which presents the mutual influences of photographs taken for scientific and research reasons and artistic photography (Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology).
– Aaron Schuman’s story about following the trail of his own memories, archive photographs and objects from the collection of Krakow’s Ethnographic Museum (FOLK. A Personal Ethnography, Ethnographic Museum);
– Jason Fulford’s Hotel Oracle. To date, Fulford has displayed his work in hotels and buses. The part of the project to be presented in Krakow is a puzzle for the festival audience and an invitation to search for hidden meaning.
The events accompanying the exhibitions at Photomonth 2014, meetings, workshops and discussions are an integral part of the festival’s Main Programme, including the Masters Series meetings begun in 2013 – an excellent opportunity to get to know the work of interesting artists, take part in discussions, exchange experiences, and perhaps even learn the secrets of the best sessions. Traditionally – for the ninth time this year – the Portfolio Review will be part of the Accompanying Events programme. This unique opportunity to meet and get valuable tips from experts often produces spectacular results, including decisions to work together in exhibitions and publications – it’s well worth it!