I wanted to write a short note on having had the wonderful opportunity to listen to curator Jorge Ribalta chat to our class about his recent exhibition "Not Yet" on display now at the Reina Sofia in Madrid. It is the kind of exhibition that requires multiple viewings and ideally with some space in between in order to digest the tightly packed and rich material included in the show. To say that the amount of research that Jorge put into making this exhibition is impressive would be an understatement; the archival material was so interesting and so well selected. The rooms in the exhibition were grouped by country, displaying documentary photography and archival journals and newspapers on specific moments of crises in the 1970s relating to that country's political instabilities. In addition, I very much enjoyed the lecture by Steve Edwards on Modernity and Documentary and on an effort to loosen the dichotomy of these terms that is so often applied to them.
The exhibition gave me a lot to think about with regard to research and curation. But also, I came to really feel that documentary photography and film is where I would like to continue to focus my art historical practice. I hope to be able to adopt a more historical approach rather than focusing primarily on theory. I also realized the importance of archival photographs in the press and greater media in an attempt to produce a thorough analysis of visual culture of a moment in history. It feels like an exciting time to learn all of these things.
Here is a picture I took during Steve Edwards's talk. His Powerpoint slide quotes two important texts by Martha Rosler and Allan Sekula.
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