The Blogazine

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Florencia Serrot / Skye Parrott: Visual Diaries / Girls

I want to be uncontrolled and controlled at the same time. The diary is my form of control over my life. It allows me to obsessively record every detail. It enables me to remember. – Nan Goldin

We’re strong believers in the power of collaboration – and we’re thrilled about the opening this evening of Visual Diaries / Girls at Stephanie Bender in Munich. The show grapples with how the camera, so often sandwiched between the photographer and his or her life, becomes a conduit to reality. Photos, then, when taken as a body of work make up rich, multilayer visual diaries – collective bodies of impression that become the visual narrative of a life. Curated by Argentinian photographer Florencia Serrot, this exhibition brings together eleven female photographers, each quite distinctive in style, but united by their complete involvement in their own work – thereby making their work’s comparison to a diary even stronger. Many not only shoot, they develop, curate independent magazines and actively participate in their work’s exhibition.

In addition to themes of the camera and photograph’s larger role (oh, Sontag!), the curator takes a critical look at changes in the medium itself during this generation of technological, geographical and economic upheaval. Its approach likens this moment in photographic history to that of the “watershed” times of the 1970s, in which Egglestone and others “pioneered a revolutionary representation of everyday reality.” New media, wildly divergent photographic processes, and instant gratification has, indeed, changed our landscape of imagery. And all of this is, of course, set in the context of world in which photographers now have unrestricted spaces online in which to display their work.

2DM’s Skye Parrott, who was the protegée of the extraordinarily influential photographer Nan Goldin in her formative years, is one of the featured photographers. In addition, the curator herself is showing, as well as Sophie van der Perre, Helen Korpak, Manuela de Laborde, and six others. Interestingly, no two in the group are from the same country, which should make the discourse all the richer.

Vernissage is tonight, with exhibition running until the 4th of June at Stephanie Bender, Schleißhiemerstrasse 9 in Munich. It will subsequently show at Temporary Storage Gallery in New York, as well as other galleries to be subsequently announced.