The Walther Collection

OBJECT:PHOTO shifts the dialogue about modernist photography from an emphasis on the subject and the image to the actual photographic object, created by a certain artist at a particular time and present today in its unique physicality. This shift is especially significant for a study of the period during which photography developed a distinctive formal language. A growing awareness of the rarity of images made between the two world wars has altered historians' considerations, encouraging new approaches privileging the originality of each work and the density of references each contains. This richly illustrated publication culminates a four-year collaborative research endeavor between The Museum of Modern Art's Departments of Photography and Conservation, and nearly 30 visiting scholars, on the material and aesthetic evolution of avant-garde photography in the early twentieth century. The 341 modernist photographs known as The Thomas Walther Collection, a major museum acquisition made in 2001, is presented in its entirety, establishing a new standard of depth for the medium. Essays by curators, researchers, and conservators consider the history of collecting from this era to the present and how deepening knowledge has shifted the perspective on the medium; the material facts of the Walther pictures as a baseline for understanding the development of photographic materials in this era; and how the intellectual formation of the writers of critical photographic publications of the era and the societal and cultural pressures of that historical moment inflected the photography's sense of its own history. Together with thematic, object-based case studies of groups of pictures that demonstrate new approaches in specific, divergent examples, these contributions reanimate the dialogue on this formative era in photography.

Throughout the modern era, photography has been enlisted not only to document but also to classify the world and its people. Its status bolstered by a popular belief in the scientific objectivity of photographic evidence, photography has been used, from the earliest days of the medium, to produce and organize knowledge about the external world. Published to accompany the exhibition The Order of Things: Photography from The Walther Collection, this catalogue investigates the production and uses of serial portraiture, vernacular imagery, architectural surveys and time-based performance in photography from the 1880s to the present, bringing together works by artists from Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. Setting early modernist photographers Karl Blossfeldt and August Sander in dialogue with contemporary artists such as Ai Weiwei, Nobuyoshi Araki, Richard Avedon, Zanele Muholi, Stephen Shore and Zhuang Huan, The Order of Things illustrates how typological methods in photography have developed around the globe. Edited by Brian Wallis, The Order of Things includes texts by Geoffrey Batchen, Tina Campt, Christopher Phillips, George Baker, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Michael Jennings, Ulrike Schneider, Allan Sekula and Joel Smith.

As a crucial extension of its ongoing investigation of vernacular photography, the Walther Collection has collaborated with key scholars and critical thinkers in the history of photography, women's studies, queer theory, Africana studies, and curatorial practice to interrogate vernacular's theoretical limits, as well as to conduct case studies of a striking array of objects and images, many from the collection's holdings.

Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art from The Walther Collection unites the perspectives of 14 contemporary artists of African descent, who investigate social identity, questions of belonging, and an array of sociopolitical concerns--including migration, lineage, the legacies of colonialism and Calvinism, and local custom--as well as personal experiences in Africa and the African diaspora. By highlighting specific creative approaches and studying the sites and collective platforms that enable these practices, this book examines the critical mass that has gathered across generations of African image-makers and lens-based artists. In accentuating different perspectives within this generation and considering the infrastructures that often link them, Recent Histories provides a point of entry to engage critically with current practices, and opens up considerations about how to conceptualize the frameworks of contemporary African photography and video art. The Walther Collection is pleased to present Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art, its fourth exhibition and publication dedicated to African photography and video art. This project is the culmination of sustained research, also facilitated by virtual and digital frameworks; a three-part exhibition series at The Walther Collection Project Space in New York; and the international symposium Beyond the Frame: Contemporary Photography from Africa and the Diaspora, co-organized by The Walther Collection and Columbia University. Artur Walther

The Walther Collection' is one of the most prominent international collections of African photography. This three-volume work represents the culmination of the collection's multi-year exhibition and publishing program, investigating African photography and video through the themes of portraiture, landscape, and the historic archive. 3 Vols. in slipcase: Vol. I: Events of the self : portraiture and social identity. Vol. II: Appropriated landscapes. Vol. III: Distance and desire : encounters with the African archive.

RongRong's Diary: Beijing East Village presents a selection of images and diary entries made by Chinese photographer RongRong (born 1968) between 1993 and 1998, within the artistic community known as Beijing East Village--now poignantly described as "a meteor in the history of contemporary Chinese art." RongRong's acutely composed, richly expressive images captured scenes of daily life among fellow young, aspiring artists, and created definitive documents of iconic performance works by Zhang Huan and Ma Liuming, among others. Often highly challenging works, their performances and photographs would send an instant shockwave throughout the Chinese avant-garde, and later the global art scene. Revisiting these texts and images anew for this publication, RongRong has composed a personal narrative of an artist coming into his own. Beijing East Village also serves as an invaluable firsthand record of a burgeoning artistic community, its precarious political context and the real lives behind a pivotal moment in Chinese contemporary art.

The extraordinary fecundity of the photographic medium between the first and second world wars can be persuasively attributed to the dynamic circulation of people, of ideas, of images, and of objects that was a hallmark of that era in Europe and the United States. Voluntary and involuntary migration, a profusion of publications distributed and read on both sides of the Atlantic, and landmark exhibitions that brought artistic achievements into dialogue with one another all contributed to a period of innovation that was a creative peak both in the history of photography and in the field of arts and letters. Few, if any, collections of photography capture the imaginative spirit of this moment as convincingly as the Thomas Walther Collection at The Museum of Modern Art.0This volume represents an important chapter in the rich and complex lives of these works, providing ample evidence of the brilliance of the photographers practicing on both sides of the Atlantic in the interwar period.00Exhibition: Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland (25.04-01.08.2021) / Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (14.09.2021-30.01.2022) / CAMERA, Turin, Italy (03-06.2022).

This book shows a series of portraits found in the trash bin of the "Gulu Real Art Studio," the oldest photographic studio in Gulu, Northern Uganda. The studio only has a machine that makes four ID images at a time, a number that most clients cannot afford, so the photographer takes single analog pictures, punches out the head with a special device, and discards the rest. In these faceless prints, one's focus shifts to the subject's individual posture and clothing, forming a typological portrayal of a community. Martina Bacigalupo also interviewed clients of Gulu, and their stories, many deeply moving, describe the political, economic, and social conditions common to contemporary East Africa.

"A major collector of photography finds himself compelled to look past another vintage print by Walker Evans or Edward Weston. He discovers magically composed snapshots of a couple, a family, street scenes or a naked woman. He finds these prints in a family album, a shoe box, or at a flea market. They are photography's $5 miracles." "With dedication and intensity, Thomas Walther has been sorting through the seemingly superfluous vernacular photographs of this century. He has chosen over 150 unique images from his "other" collection, his collection of found images. They are perfectly presented here. Other Pictures provides the opportunity to appreciate and muse over these singular amateur masterpieces, images as indelible as any created by the most democratic of tools-the camera."--BOOK JACKET.

Distance and Desire offers new perspectives on the African archive, reimagining its diverse histories and changing meanings. Presenting an extraordinary range of portraits, cartes de visite, postcards and album pages from Southern and Eastern Africa, as well as recent photography and video art.