[Fall 2022]

By Sylvain Campeau

International Center of Photography, New York
28.01.2022 — 2.05.2022

[Excerpt]

With its very title, A Trillion Sunsets: A Century of Image Overload announces its subject and its attitude. Looking at the publicity for the show, we would note that this is a theme very much of our times – maybe even a bit too much of our times: we might suspect that this collection of images will turn out to be an indulgent overstatement, as the current surfeit of pictures taken in the world is obvious. But in fact, that’s not what the exhibition is about at all! There’s nothing sycophantic or terribly tawdry about it. The fever pitch of pictures enabled by smart phones comes from a different source than we might think. It is the culmination of “commodified” images, which were included very early in a large- scale communications circuit – submitted to the constraints of magazines and to the unbridled spread of social uses of imagery. Artists understood this possible use quite quickly, and they either illustrate or resist it. It is to this variation of potential reactions that David Campany, the curator, attends…

[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS ]
[ Complete article and more images, in digital version, available here: A Trillion Sunsets. A Century of Image Overload — Sylvain Campeau ]