Evidence Revisited

For "Evidence", their 1977 exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the young photographers Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel selected several dozen anonymous photographs from the files of government archives, research laboratories, corporate offices, and law enforcement agencies, and presented them in a whole new light. Divorcing the functional images from all explanatory context and exhibiting them in no obvious sequence, the curators created what they called "a poetic exploration upon the restructuring of imagery." In an international tour that included the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, "Evidence" went on to inspire both admiration and controversy.

This exhibition, a touring exhibit that brought new perspectives to Sultan and Mandel's experiment, was presented at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center and accompanied by a new edition of the 1977 "Evidence" book. "Evidence Revisited" comprised the original exhibition prints as well as various items related to the history and fortunes of the original groundbreaking project. There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.