Galerie Rouge, in Paris, invites you to the first solo exhibition in France devoted to the American photographer Kenneth Josephson (1932-). Acknowledged as one of the pioneers of conceptual photography, Kenneth Josephson’s work is both complex and playful around and about the photographic medium, without ever being off-putting or austere. Playing on the concepts of truths and illusions specific to the visual arts, he has never ceased to question the ways in which an image is constructed throughout his career, always with wit and humor. In his practice, he employs a range of techniques, from direct photography, multiple exposures and collages, to the use of trompe-l’oeil and the introduction of image into image.
The “Working the Photograph” exhibition features a selection of photographs from several ensembles or categories that run through his work: An Exploration of the Multiple Image; Images Within Images; History of Photography Series; Archeological Series, Marks and Evidences.
In Marks and Evidences, Josephson photographs traces, which he sees as visual evidence of an event or scene that has passed and disappeared. In Stockholm, 1968, Kenneth Josephson photographed a car whose shadow preserved the snow that had melted all around it. In History of Photography, Josephson finds scenes or objects that refer to the history of photography or to photographic forms and subjects. In Archeological series, Josephson introduces a stick or meter to give a sense of perspective and scale to a place, monument or object, giving it a form of importance and authenticity.
Although Kenneth Josephson explores new concepts, he never strays far from the order of representation, remaining as attached as ever to the classic photographic print, the technique of which he has mastered to perfection. This makes his questioning of the nature of the photographic medium all the more fascinating. Historian Carl Chiarenza describes Kenneth Josephson as “in essence an image-maker, a photographer of photographers”. He continues: “Josephson’s photographic series, from Marks and Evidence to History of Photography, encourage a self-referential approach to photography, in which the illusionist aspect of photography is transformed into a concrete reflection on the photographic object. The image no longer refers to reality, or to an illusion, but refers to itself, to the experience of taking and looking at images. The viewer of a Josephson image cannot be passive: he or she must observe, question, comment, enthuse and laugh at the image. Just as Siskind is often associated with painters rather than photographers, Josephson is identified today with conceptual artists rather than photographers. Yet they both refuse to withdraw from the world of representation.”
Further information on the Galerie Rouge website.
