Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media
Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media" is a starkly timely group exhibition that examines how artists look to the news media for inspiration and create works that comment on the human condition from the 1960s onward. Martha Rosler, Alfredo Jaar, Catherine Opie, South African artist Adam Broomberg and others take images from all points of the 20th-century experience — ranging from news headlines to bourgeois living to in-depth visual studies of people who report the news — and transform them into something greater and more insightful than they ever were expected to be originally.
'Over the past 50 years, artists have increasingly turned to newspapers, magazines, and televised news programs as rich sources of inspiration. This exhibition explores how artists have looked at and commented on news images, from the Vietnam War in the 1960s to the so-called “War on Terror” in the 2000s. Much of the work is political; all of it is personal. Through photographs and videos, these artists have juxtaposed, mimicked, and appropriated media elements to transform ephemeral news into lasting works of art'.
The aboce image by Martha Rosler shows first lady Pat Nixon stood in front of a framed image of a dead vietnamese woman. This image was made in protest of the way such strong images are shunned by the mass media over other 'celebrity' based images.
'An anti-war protester at the time, Martha Rosler grew frustrated with the way such images were diminished when juxtaposed with trivial advertisements and inconsequential news items.'
I wanted to take this idea of subtlety in image to my own practice, and want to look at how the media can use image to manipulate.
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