In Pieces: Fragmentation and the Body
Saturday, July 5, 2025 - Sunday, September 28, 2025
“I want photographs to fall apart at the seams,” says artist Tommy Kha. What might it look like to create an image that appears to fall apart? Typically, the phrase “in pieces” refers to something or someone that has been destroyed, but fragments also imply the possibility of rebuilding. What do we make of images that do not cohere, but instead exist in pieces?
This selection of photographic works from the Loeb’s collection explores images of the body fragmented into pieces, whether through techniques of collage and photomontage, or with props and play. The simple techniques of tearing, cutting, pasting, and rearranging refer both to processes of physical transformation and to the ways that human experience and identity can be fractured, incomplete, and reconfigured.
The artists in this gallery present a range of approaches to fragmenting the body, with undertones ranging from humorous and fun to disruptive and violent. Artists Tommy Kha and Nari Ward use fragmentation to suggest that it is impossible to fully represent a person’s subjectivity and experiences of the world through a photograph. Georges Hugnet, Jess, Mike Mandel, and Larry Sultan all create surreal depictions of the body to underscore how mass-circulated images distort our ideas of beauty, human agency, and personhood. Justine Kurland and Luciana Pinchiero rearrange the pieces of found photographs to level feminist critiques of art and photography histories that have historically championed the male gaze. They suggest that objectification has done real damage to women’s bodies and lives. Vanessa Woods explores bodily transformation and physical entanglement encompassed by experiences of birth, parenthood, and childhood. Each artist uses fragments to push the photograph beyond the realm of pure representation and into that of speculation and imagination. They question the idea that people and their experiences can be represented, seen, or known in full. Instead, they propose that we are all pieced together, bit by bit.
This exhibition was organized by Jessica D. Brier, Curator of Photography and generously supported by the Hoene Hoy Photography Fund.
This selection of photographic works from the Loeb’s collection explores images of the body fragmented into pieces, whether through techniques of collage and photomontage, or with props and play. The simple techniques of tearing, cutting, pasting, and rearranging refer both to processes of physical transformation and to the ways that human experience and identity can be fractured, incomplete, and reconfigured.
The artists in this gallery present a range of approaches to fragmenting the body, with undertones ranging from humorous and fun to disruptive and violent. Artists Tommy Kha and Nari Ward use fragmentation to suggest that it is impossible to fully represent a person’s subjectivity and experiences of the world through a photograph. Georges Hugnet, Jess, Mike Mandel, and Larry Sultan all create surreal depictions of the body to underscore how mass-circulated images distort our ideas of beauty, human agency, and personhood. Justine Kurland and Luciana Pinchiero rearrange the pieces of found photographs to level feminist critiques of art and photography histories that have historically championed the male gaze. They suggest that objectification has done real damage to women’s bodies and lives. Vanessa Woods explores bodily transformation and physical entanglement encompassed by experiences of birth, parenthood, and childhood. Each artist uses fragments to push the photograph beyond the realm of pure representation and into that of speculation and imagination. They question the idea that people and their experiences can be represented, seen, or known in full. Instead, they propose that we are all pieced together, bit by bit.
This exhibition was organized by Jessica D. Brier, Curator of Photography and generously supported by the Hoene Hoy Photography Fund.
Venues
Hoene Hoy Photography Gallery