On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith

September 9, 2022–January 15, 2023

Curated by Kevin Moore, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator, and Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums

The works in this exhibition address a range of topics, spanning performance and the body, climate change, power, colonialism and identity, heritage, and territory. Collectively, they portray complex and contested relationships humans have with notions of environment, wilderness, nature, and place. The “line” metaphor is an organizing principle as well as reference to the precarity of this moment: at serious risk; caught, captured; following the path of a line. The exhibition emphasizes photography, in all its forms, as delivering a special charge to document while also grappling with historical expectations, enlarged geographies, and contemporary urgencies. The photographic documentation of various artistic interventions featured in On the Line—the stills, the videos of these ephemeral acts—suggest an expanded conception of photographic time and the document. These works are positioned as proposals for a new form of social documentary, or “concerned” photography, extending the historical narrative of photography beyond familiar documentary methods, modalities, and the attendant assumptions of objectivity toward a more honest, embodied, vulnerable, and up-to-date form of consciousness-raising expression.

Artists: Allora and Calzadilla, Francis Alÿs, Mohamed Bourouissa, Abraham Cruzvillegas and Bárbara Foulkes, Mitch Epstein, Patricia Esquivias, Dara Friedman, Jim Goldberg, David Hammons and Dawoud Bey, Rashid Johnson, An-My Lê, Mary Mattingly, Paulo Nazareth, Wendy Red Star, Mauro Restiffe, Lordy Rodriguez, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Kevin Schmidt, Xaviera Simmons, Tania Willard

Download the On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith Gallery Guide as a PDF.

Group Show Documentary Contemporary Photography Mixed Media Family Friendly Film/Video

Related Events

October 1, 2022
9:00am – 4:30pm

The 2022 Biennial Symposium starts Friday, September 30, with a Film Screening and Conversation featuring Dara Freidman’s Dancer, and continues through Sunday, October 2, with talks, discussions, and keynote addresses at Memorial Hall and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

9am	Breakfast
9:45am	Opening Remarks by Mary Ellen Goeke, FotoFocus Executive Director
10am	Introduction by Kevin Moore: Photographs are the Monuments of Our Online Visual Culture Kevin Moore, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator
10:30am	Discussion of Images on which to build, 1970s–1990s Moderated by: Ariel Goldberg, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Independent Writer and Curator, New York, NY, with panelists: JEB (Joan E. Biren), Photographer, Filmmaker, and Activist, Washington, D.C.; Lola Flash, Photographer, New York, NY; Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, Co-coordinator, Lesbian Herstory Archives and Associate Dean, NYU Libraries, New York, NY; and Diana Solís, Photographer and Educator, Chicago, IL
11:30am	Artist Talk by Ian Strange Ian Strange, Transdisciplinary Artist, Perth, Australia
Noon	Lunch Break
1pm	Artist Talk by Jason Allen-Paisant Jason Allen-Paisant, Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
1:30pm	Discussion of On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith Co-moderated by Makeda Best, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, and Kevin Moore, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator, with artists: Mitch Epstein, Photographer, Holyoke, MA, and Xaviera Simmons, Artist, New York, NY
2:30pm	Conversation with Baseera Khan and Amara Antilla Amara Antilla, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Senior Curator at Large at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; with Baseera Khan, Artist, New York, NY. Previously scheduled with Ylinka Barotto, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Independent Curator, Houston, TX
3:30pm	Keynote Lecture by Makeda Best: Devour the Land Makeda Best, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA

Access to the entire FotoFocus Biennial Program Week is a benefit of being a 2022 FotoFocus Biennial Passport holder. GET THE PASSPORT for free entry and exclusive events!

Dara Friedman, Government Cut Freestyle, 1998. 16mm silent film loop, transferred to DVD, 9 min 20 sec. © Dara Friedman. Courtesy of the artist
Mary Mattingly, Pull, 2013. C-print, 40 x 40 inches. © Mary Mattingly. Courtesy of Robert Mann Gallery
Mohamed Bourouissa, Untitled, 2013. Lambda print, 63 x 44 inches, edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs. © ADAGP Mohamed Bourouissa. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo (MBO 46.AP1)