Take Two: Contemporary Photographs

Jimmy Coble

11/4/2015

Philadelphia Art Museum Reflections

Take Two: Contemporary Photographs (read "Multitude...." entry first)

This second exhibit was much less engaging. Many of these photographs were of inanimate objects as opposed to real people. It was also a collection of works by different artists. Many of these works were in color. There were a number of interesting pieces that stood out as individuals. I thought the picture of the person inside the photocopier and the picture of their face was something that drew me in but it was quite absurd. Another that I thought was really inventive was the black and white picture of a face that had been painted over. This was a process that I thought worked, and something that I want to try in the darkroom at some point.

Though there were cool pieces, I felt as if the exhibit made little sense as a collection. Many of the pieces seemed like pictures of life, but not of interesting parts of life like the other show.

I also thought that the use of color took away from some of these pieces. It looked like the artists artificially made these pieces brighter in the development phase and gave them a fake looking quality. Also, several of these pieces were quite old and not contemporary.