Ways of Unseeing in Photography

We are bombarded with visual information every day. Images entertain us, educate and inform us, preserve memories, serve as evidence, and connect us with each other. Despite all we know about how photography is manipulated, we still trust photographs to show us things as they are. But what do we do with images that confound us—images that actually make things harder to see? This selection of works from the Loeb’s permanent collection explores how photographs can obscure the world every bit as much as they can illuminate it. These photographs by artists including Eikoh Hosoe, André Kertész, Abelardo Morell, Billy Name, and Alisa Wells-Witteman interrupt and complicate ocular perception through technical and formal innovation. The works employ an array of techniques, such as reflected and refracted light, photomontage, cameraless photography (photograms), combination printing, and solarization, to evoke the alienation and disorientation of human experiences. Even while they obscure and distort their subjects, these photographs may offer deeper truths than “straight-forward” images in sharp focus. Sometimes pushing photography all the way to abstraction, they ask us to consider the false promise of images to represent subjects as complex as people or places. By engaging the experience of unseeing as subject matter, these works caution us to look more critically. They are reminders of photography’s blind spots. As we navigate the visual world, we are called to be mindful of the fissures between seeing and knowing, between images and realities.

This exhibition was generously supported by the Hoene Hoy Photography Fund.