Social Photography IX at Carriage Trade

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Now in its ninth year, Social Photography brings together cell phone pictures of participants from a wide range of disciplines, generations, and places. In the spirit of broad access to cell phone image making technology, the emphasis of the project leans toward sensibility and the anecdotal over skill and mastery of the medium of photography.

Taking advantage of technologies that allow for images to be sent from anywhere, which are then formatted, printed, and displayed in an in-person exhibition at carriage trade, the range of participants in Social Photography reflect both the gallery’s community in Lower Manhattan as well those associated with it in other parts of the world. Linking the virtual with the physical through an online display that is then presented in print form, Social Photography IX might be seen as a counterpoint to the increased placelessness of remote exchanges normalized in the pandemic-era.

Spanning nearly a decade, the growing, informal archive of Social Photography cell phone pictures occasionally reflect significant local, national, and international events (Occupy Wall Street, George Floyd protests, U.S. presidential elections, pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong) existing side by side with the everyday, the personal, the urban, and the domestic.

With a limited curatorial directive, trends are inevitable (a slight increase in pet photos this year is most likely a result of increased time spent indoors during the pandemic), while the elusive nature of where to “put” cell phone photography with respect to hierarchies of photographic image production (fine art photography, photojournalism, social media fodder) remains intact. What began in 2011 as an investigation of a novelty medium which simultaneously offered an alternative to the conventional non-profit benefit exhibition has become a kind of tradition, as it sustains and expands carriage trade’s community through its many participants, while helping support the gallery’s upcoming projects.

Social Photography IX Contributors:

Dennis Adams / Peggy Ahwesh / Lucas Ajemian / Graham Anderson / Michele Araujo / Michael Ashkin / Hallie Ayres / Mengfan Bai / Agnes Barley / James Barondess / Madeline Bach / David Baskin / William Beaudoin / Lisa Beck / Philip Bednarski / Peter Bellamy / Catherine Belloy / Amy Ben-Ezra / Theodora Ben-Ezra / Liz Berg / Julien Bismuth / Joi Bittle / Lisa Blas / Ann Bobco Richard Bosman / F.P. Boué / Norman Brosterman / Robert Brush / Christine Burgin / Bibs Carlsen Antoine Catala / Alejandro Cesarco / Danny Chau / Myrel Chernick / Stella Cilman / Mary Clarke / Matt Connors / Eli Coplan / Jeri Coppola / Fred Cray / Jody Culkin / Reilly Davidson / Mira Dayal / David Deutsch / Georgie Devereux / Daniella Dooling / Saskia Draxler / Paul Druecke / Anne-Claire Duprat / Peter Fend / Bernadette Fiscina / Elias Fokine / Andrea Frank / Susan Gamble & Michael Wenyon / Rainer Ganahl / Marc Ganzglass / Victor Esther Garcia / Hunter Gause / Jeff Gibson / Liam Gillick / Andrew Ginzel / Robert Goldman / Jasmine Golestaneh / Kathy Goncharov / Michelle Grabner / Ethan Greenbaum / Barbara Gundlach / Clair Gunther / Cynthia Hawkins-Owen Anthony Hawley / Lorna Hayden / Duy Hoàng / James Hoff / Laura Hunt / Scott Indrisek / E. J. / Bryn Jayes / Neil Jenney / Lulu Jiang / Danielle Johnson / Werner Kaligofsky / Craig Kalpakjian / Simone Kearney / Douglas S. Kehl / Kara Kendall / Mathias Kessler / Anjali Khosla / Anna Kleberg Tham / Essye Klempner / Hilary Kliros / Nicholas Knight / Udomsak Krisanamis / Nina Kuo / Stephen Lack / Justen Ladda / Marc Lafia / Eugenia Lai / Erik LaPrade / Louise Lawler / Elizabeth LeCompte / Mika Lee / Maggie Lee / Simon Leung / Max Levin / Matthew Li / Laura Li / Wenxiao Li / Nora Ligorano / Lysjs Lim Ming Lin / Jeanne Liotta / Hsiang Hsi Lu / Judith Luongo / Stephen Maine / Jiří Makovec / Sakura Maku / Adam Marnie / Vijay Masharani / Esperanza Mayobre / Tom McGlynn / Jessica Mensch / Emilie Meyer Molly Miller / Veronika Molnar / Sojung Moon / Andrew Moore / Lucy Mullican / Real Salvator Mundi / Muntadas / Christian Nagel / Diane Nerwen / Chee Wang Ng / Isabella Norris / Almost Not / John Oakes / Kristin Ordahl / Daylon Orr / Hannah Park Laura Parnes / Stephan Pascher / Gelah Penn / Andreas Petrossiants / Zoe Pettijohn Schade / Michael Poetschko / Jeff Preiss / R.H. Quaytman / Lee Ranaldo / Xander Rapparport / Marshall Reese Calvin Reid / Alejandro Ribadeneira / Walter Robinson / Daniel Roche / Aura Rosenberg / Lorin Roser Betty Roytburd / Ryan Rusiecki / Vicky Sambunaris / Valerie Saputra / Ken Saylor / John Schabel / Jeffrey Schiff / Heidi Schlatter / Diana Schmertz / Nadine Schmied / Kristina Schmidt / Gary Schneider Barry Schwabsky / Michael Scott / Felicity Scott / Anne Katrine Senstad / Jacques Servin / Elaine Sexton Trevor Shimizu / Zhi Shu / Amie Siegel / James Siena / Shelly Silver / Adam Simon / Jason Simon / Day Sinclair / Leah Singer / Janice Sloane / Inna Smolina / Molly Soda / Claudia Sohrens / Andy Steinitz / Gary Stephan / Steel Stillman / Charles Stobbs III / Carol Szymanski / Sikay Tang / Gwenn Thomas / Colin Thomson / Cassidy Toner / Momoyo Torimitsu / Dan Torop / Sophie Tottie / Kristal Uribe / Gail Vachon / Pegi Vail / Kate Valk / Ali Van / Lotte Van den Audenaeren / Liselot van der Heijden / Virginia Inés Vergara / Doris Vila / Julia Wachtel / Chloe Walecki / Max Warsh / William Wegman / Barbara Weissberger / James Welling / Elvia Wilk / Tonero Williams / Scott Williams / Nechama Winston David Winter / B. Wurtz / C. Spencer Yeh / Sun You / H Spencer Young / John Yu / Michael Zansky / Jiajia Zhang

*Preview begins Wednesday, July 21 at 2PM / Online sales begin Friday, July 23 at 2PM

https://socialphotography.carriagetrade.org

 

Social Photography VI

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Social Photography VI at Carriage Trade, New York, NY
Prints available online from June 28th at:
See details on purchasing below*
Online Sales Begin:
Today, 2 PM
 
Gallery Exhibition Opens:
Tuesday, July 10, 6-8 PM
277 Grand St, 2nd Fl.
New York, NY 10002
First presented in 2011, carriage trade’s Social Photography exhibitions have catalogued the rapid transformation of cell phone photography over the last several years. From a novelty medium existing between the voice and text functions of flip phones, to the smart phone as near physical appendage capable of recording and transmitting every waking moment, the cell phone camera now plays a pervasive role in many people’s lives.
While Instagram tends to emphasize the medium’s social utility, carriage trade’s Social Photography exhibitions have tracked an alternate course, inviting participants and viewers to encounter these images in a format free of peer-generated tallies, while offering the option of a sustained look afforded by a gallery setting. Social Photography contributors are not limited to visual artists, and include writers, curators, musicians, students, etc., reflecting the accessibly and ubiquity of cell phone camera use.
Some of this years’ participants are: Peggy Ahwesh, Dennis Adams, Diana Al-Hadid, Liz Deschenes,Tracy Emin, Barbara Ess, Hal Foster, Ceal Floyer, Dan Graham, Beatrice Gross, Emily Hunt, Sarah Meister, Thurston Moore, Neil Jenney, Louise Lawler, Lee Ranaldo, Asad Raza, Walter Robinson, John Schabel, Molly Soda, Barry Schwabsky, Carol Szymanski, among many others.
Functioning as a benefit exhibition to help support upcoming programming at carriage trade, there is no particular theme guiding Social Photography VI apart from how the cell phone camera is most often used. Participants email images from their phones to carriage trade, which are then formatted, printed on 7″ x 5″ paper, and sold online and in the gallery during the exhibition.
Less a sanctioning of an evolving medium than a hybrid of a traditional exhibition format and the wider net of social media, Social Photography also functions as a means to sustain and expand carriage trade’s community, which exists in the combined spheres of online experience and the irreplaceable physicality of the exhibition space itself.