To be seen from February 22 – March 15, 2019
Location: HKU Oudenoord 700, Utrecht
Photography has evolved considerably since its invention, and education can, without any doubt, be seen as a significant element that has accompanied and shaped this evolution. The way in which photography students and thus emerging photographers are exploring the photography boundaries is a captivating subject, and has inspired the project Blurring the Lines to start three years ago in collaboration with Steve Bisson.
Blurring the Lines aims to select, exhibit and publish projects that are a representation of the rapidly changing field of photography. This 2018 edition of Blurring the Lines shows 22 projects coming from graduates connected to 17 art academies in 3 different continents of the world. The past three years, the selected images in the different editions of Blurring the Lines show us different expansions of modes of representation through photography. A change that refers to the digitization and the frontiers of post-production, the contamination between different visual languages, the relationship between the availability of technology and new forms of expression.
The explosion of the medium combined with an endemic proliferation of pervasive social media has encouraged us to reflect on the ethical consequences of the image-making process. The notion of storytelling itself has been redefined, placing the storyteller in a position in which a variety of tools allow the photographer to communicate the same message in different ways. Photography is a generous medium with resources that are not merely physical materials and processes; each process comes with beliefs, practices, and conventions that affect our understanding and ways of production. In Blurring the Lines, these talented participants remind us of the potential of the medium without forgetting that photography can separate what is pointless and irrelevant from what is pertinent and poignant.
This project is made possible by all the participating schools and graduates, Klaus Fruchtnis – Paris College of Art, Stefanie Grätz – HKU, curators Steve Bisson – Urbanautica Institute & Lisanne van Happen – FOTODOK, Fujifilm, and Faservice.
