Another Girl Another Planet

Group exhibition Organized by Gregory Crewdson and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn Julie Becker Gabriel Brandt Sarah Dobai Jenny Gage Katy Grannan Jitka Hanzlová Dana Hoey Justine Kurland Sarah Jones Malerie Marder Liza May Post Dayanita Singh Vibeke Tandberg

The conflicting approach to the question of truth and objectivity in photography sets documentary photography apart from contemporary photography. Where the underlying ambition behind classical documentary photography has been to find and record universal truth in photographic form, contemporary photography has been preoccupied with showing the very notion of “photographic truth” to be an impossible fiction.

Another Girl Another Planet features the photographs of twelve artists from around the world, all of whom employ a narrative documentary style, utilizing/playing the conventions of reportage, narrative documentary, story-telling, portraiture, forensic and snap-shot photography. Collapsing the distinction between the factual and fictive, these artists have projected their own histories through the lens and onto their subjects. Accordingly, much of this work has been sighted, staged and choreographed. Here the complex relationship between the camera and sexuality is explored, inextricably linking the photographic act with voyeurism and sexual desire. Familiar scenes are elevated into compact dramatic vignettes.

The artists have been chosen because of the highly exacting nature of their technique. This stylization takes several forms from the mannered crafting of Sarah Dobai, Sarah Jones, Liza May Post, Dayanita Singh, and Malerie Marder to the heightened realism of Julie Becker, Katy Grannan, Dana Hoey, and Vibeke Tandberg to the pastoral romanticism of Gabriel Brant, Jenny Gage, Jitka Hanzlova, and Justine Kurland. Using fictive strategies and a documentary style, these artists have produced a pictorial effect that hovers between photographic realism and unreality. Although on the surface this collision of styles and intentions appear contradictory, it in fact works to produce a photographic language that is both oddly familiar and strangely beautiful.