Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Helsinki Photography Festival 2009



Aletheia – Positions in Contemporary Photographies (January 23 - March 22), presented at Meilahti Art Museum, revisits and reexamines fundamental questions regarding photographic practices and the photographic medium – including the very possibility of a medium – and their roles and impact within contemporary culture.

Many concerns regarding photography were put on hold as the shift from silver-halide processes to digital technologies took place, with the then wide-spread estimation that the rules of the game had changed dramatically and that photography would no longer be able to lay any special claims regarding its relationship to the realities it would depict and represent. Yet, acknowledging that the digital shift is final, conclusive and irreversible, it is surprisingly clear that the fundamentals of photography have not always been challenged in the ways imagined at the onslaught of the digital revolution. Photographic media continue to pursue or attempt mimetic persuasion and photography's descriptive or epistemological powers, even when aimed at the imaginary, remain decisive. Not to mention that we are still seduced, alarmed, enticed and moved by photographs. Furthermore, photographic practices insist in very particular yet changing concerns regarding the nature and representation of time, space and memory.

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