"But these holdings also encompass German modernist photography by August Sander and Karl Blossfeldt; typologies by Bernd and Hilla Becher and works by their students at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf; post-Tiananmen Square Chinese conceptual and video art of the late 20th century; extended series by contemporary Japanese photographers Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, and Kohei Yoshiyuki; and examples of vernacular photography, including commercial, forensic, and ethnographic images, from the 1800s to the present."
"A guiding principle behind the collection is the evolution of the photographic medium, since its invention and around the globe, as an indicator of-and force for-social and political change in the modern era. It favors photographic series, with works ranging from motion studies by pioneering 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge to staged self-portraits by Cameroonian Nigerian artist Samuel Fosso, and from Richard Avedon's 1970s depictions of American politicians to a set of photographs of nameless inmates of a psychiatric hospital from 1920."
Artur Walther has promised a gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art of more than 6,500 photographic and time-based works, with a forty-piece preview exhibition displayed ahead of a larger 2028 show. The collection reflects thirty years of acquisition and emphasizes African photography, including post–WWII and apartheid-era studio portraits and contemporary practitioners. Holdings also include German modernist and typological photography, post-Tiananmen Chinese conceptual and video art, extended series by contemporary Japanese photographers, and vernacular images from the 19th century onward. The collection privileges photographic series and treats the medium’s global evolution as both an indicator and agent of social and political change.
Read at ARTnews.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]