Shoot!
05 Feb - 01 May 2011
SHOOT!
Existential Photography
5 February to 1 May 2011
"Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder—a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time." Susan Sontag
Load, aim, pull the trigger, fire, reload—if you hit the bull’s-eye, you commit photographic suicide, or visual hari-kari. This a curious fairground attraction, the "shooting gallery," emerged in the years after World War I. The playful challenge involved making the disturbing gesture of taking aim at yourself in order to win a photographic trophy. What a peculiar fascination: making a target of one’s own ego, or—for the price of a picture—succumbing to the temptation of staging a duel with yourself as the opponent.
The idea of having a self-portrait with a gun in hand seduced innumerable artists and intellectuals, all tasted the rapture of photographic self-destruction. The current exhibition illuminates this nearly forgotten photographic genre and traces the motif of the viewer as target in contemporary artworks.
Take aim! In the center of the exhibition there is a reconstruction of a real shooting gallery. Here, the visitor can experience the unique pleasure of shooting one’s own portrait.
The exhibition is a co-production of the Museum for Photography in Braunschweig and Les Rencontres d’Arles.
Existential Photography
5 February to 1 May 2011
"Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder—a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time." Susan Sontag
Load, aim, pull the trigger, fire, reload—if you hit the bull’s-eye, you commit photographic suicide, or visual hari-kari. This a curious fairground attraction, the "shooting gallery," emerged in the years after World War I. The playful challenge involved making the disturbing gesture of taking aim at yourself in order to win a photographic trophy. What a peculiar fascination: making a target of one’s own ego, or—for the price of a picture—succumbing to the temptation of staging a duel with yourself as the opponent.
The idea of having a self-portrait with a gun in hand seduced innumerable artists and intellectuals, all tasted the rapture of photographic self-destruction. The current exhibition illuminates this nearly forgotten photographic genre and traces the motif of the viewer as target in contemporary artworks.
Take aim! In the center of the exhibition there is a reconstruction of a real shooting gallery. Here, the visitor can experience the unique pleasure of shooting one’s own portrait.
The exhibition is a co-production of the Museum for Photography in Braunschweig and Les Rencontres d’Arles.