Photographies of Conflict
- Aaron Levy
- School of Arts & Sciences
- Provosts Interdisciplinary Grant
In winter 2019, Slought exhibited "Photography in Crisis: Depression Era, 2011-2019," a retrospective of the Depression Era project, a collective lens-based arts project based in Athens, Greece whose work engages the so-called "Greek crisis" and its aftermath. "Photography in Crisis" was one in a series of exhibitions, collectively titled "Photographies of Conflict," in which Slought presented artists and collectives using photography to contest dominant visual narratives of conflicts. Photo: Pavlos Fysakis
Aaron Levy, Executive Director and Chief Curator at Slought, developed a year-long series of exhibitions and programming around the theme of Photographies of Conflict, and featuring a series of photography exhibitions at Slought, including Susan Meiselas; Afrapix (South Africa); Activestills (Israel/Palestine); Depression Era (Greece), Allan Sekula, and Fazal Sheikh.
Though most of these exhibitions have a clear geographic focus, Photographies of Conflict positions them in a way that views “struggle” as less tied to a specific site or issue, and more responsive to contemporary discourses on art, resistance and memorialization. With these different iterations, Aaron Levy and Slought’s goal was to posit photography and photojournalism as a means of engaging, recording, and perhaps helping us imagine how we might overcome conflict, or at least understand it better.