Curated by Julia Draganovic & Manon Slome

Artsits Included: Dimitrios Antonitsis, Jeremy Blake, Marco Breuer, Willa Davis, Bjorn Melhus, David Samuel Stern, Wolfgang Tillmans and James Welling.

It’s not a photo is an exhibition of abstract photography and electronic media. If this sounds like a contradiction, the confusion is intentional. Photography has long since passed its status as a document of “truth” – that old chestnut of popular wisdom, “the camera does not lie” just seems quaint and even a bit naïve today. In the 21st Century photography “lies” most of the time; given the ubiquity of Photo Shop and other such programs. Even the most amateur photographer is capable of undermining and confusing the established conventions of artistic creativity. What is “real” or, the “real” snapshot itself, can be made to look as if it were “fake,” and what is “fake” can be made to appear “real.” Artifice and manipulation reign.

The group of artists selected for It’s not a photo have abandoned representation to focus on the media itself. Like abstract painting, photography has become increasingly self- referential, using the freedom of its apparent lack of subject to investigate the tools of its own making – light, paper, chemicals, digital process, j-pegs and the like.

The resulting work is often mysterious, evocative and replete with a sense of haunting beauty.