The eleventh installment of “Social Photography” at Carriage Trade has been extended nearly an entire month, a lucky break for anyone who has not yet gotten the chance to visit the exhibition. The show is a collection of images sent via email by artists, friends, contributors, or associates of the gallery, hung in a grid along facing walls. The consistent formatting of the images, as well as their unpredictable content, is comparable to the visual abundance of social media, minus the big bad algorithm controlling your experience.
In this space we, the viewers, are given the opportunity to direct our experience with the photographs, letting our own desires dictate how much attention we give to each image. While someone interested in the hustle and bustle of city life might find themselves drawn to photographs shared by Amalia Ulman or Eli Coplan, reality tv watchers will likely have their interest piqued by the photograph of a “Selling Sunset” star sent in by Shelly Silver. I, myself, took a photo (an iPhone photo of an iPhone photo–it’s all very meta) of an image with someone watching a scene from the 2024 film “Challengers” on an airplane. Lucky for me, I get the power of deciding when and how I use that photo, if at all, without the looming presence of an algorithm pushing a predetermined agenda–how refreshing.
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| Bradley Kronz, 2024, inkjet print, 7" x 5" |
-Lily Duren, Current Season 472-02
I’m so glad someone posted about the Carriage Trade Social Photography installment which you summarized clearly and directly. You may want to add to the way they are displayed in the grid is like social media because when I think of social media I think of scrolling as opposed to the content being laid out in a grid. Another thing is I absolutely love that you mentioned how you took an iPhone photo of an iPhone photo which is hilarious but I would change it to phone since we don’t explicitly know the phone they used. Overall great post and great photo!
ReplyDeleteI somewhat agree with the previous comments point about scrolling on social media vs a grid of photos, I think if you draw parallels to the instagram explore page on pinterest where the images are all the same size on some sort of grid then this correlation to social media would be more clear. I feel the show gets at this overwhelming experience of in particular photo based social media apps - as opposed to video or text - and it is more about clarifying your language in describing that experience. I appreciated that you named multiple artists in the show and expanded on the content represented beyond just the photo you included.
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