artists on photography

A New Project Led by the Photography Collection

Artists on Photography is a new initiative by the Photography Collection which seeks to enhance its historical holdings by introducing current perspectives from artists and academics in the fields of gender theory and postcolonialism. This fellowship will be awarded annually over a period of five years commencing in 2025 to one artist and one academic, judged by an expert jury. There is no age limit.

Each year, one artist from anywhere in the world with an existing archival practice drawing on found footage and collections will receive a grant to carry out a commission. In tandem, a researcher will be invited to consider the same topic from an academic standpoint. Both will complete a research stay in Munich. The outcome will be a new work of art, a publication sharing the work created by the artist and the researcher, and an exhibition once the museum has reopened.

The cleft between the photographic objects which dominated the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and computer-generated images which have become prominent over the past three decades has been widening in a new era defined by artificial intelligence. Yet again, photography finds itself confronted with a fresh challenge. How did earlier generations view photography? How has our understanding of the medium changed with the shift from analogue to digital photography, and now with the advent of computer-generated images? Which social practices have been introduced in an era of smartphone photography, virtual reality, and AI? Which photographic objects have drifted out of focus, disappearing into depositories? What light can those objects shed on the present day and how might we rediscover them?