About the Exhibition

Indecisive Moment was originally curated as part of the 2016 PASA, photography and science art, Festival in Suwon, South Korea. The exhibition was recreated at Purdue thanks to the College of Liberal Arts Enhancing Research in the Humanities & the Arts Grant.

Purdue's exhibition will be on display October 23 - December 9, 2017, in the Robert L. Ringel Gallery in Stewart Center.

Curator's Statement

Photography has always been experimental.
In the early days of photography, the experimentation of artists, chemists, and entrepreneurs resulted in over 100 different methods for developing a photographic image. Film photography eventually emerged as the leading process, dominating the medium for decades. As the film camera gained dominance, it also began to assume the identity of a neutral agent, an objective apparatus that simply captured the world before it, allowing the photographer to preserve and present evidence of a specific time and place. This assigned identity lead to preconceived notions about what a photograph is, what it should look like, and how it should be looked at. The exhibition Indecisive Moment challenges these assumptions by reconsidering photography as a medium of technology and experimentation.

Today, advances in technology have eased and simplified photographic processes from beginning to end and digital photography dominates the field. Artists are now able to merge analog and digital technologies. Through the manipulation of tools and materials, a synthesis of traditional and new forms is created. Indecisive Moment brings together artists who draw upon photography’s rich history within the context of ever-changing and advancing technologies to create new understandings of the camera and photograph. Featuring the work of artists Matt Lipps, Hannah Whitaker, Lorenzo Vitturi, Delaney Allen, Valerie Green, Jill Greenberg, Jessica Labatte, Jennifer Niederhauser-Schlup, Anastasia Samoylova, and Hyounsang Yoo, the exhibition reveals an embrace of experimentation in form and process. These artists manipulate the picture plane to challenge the viewing experience -- vantage points are destabilized, space is disoriented, and surfaces are reconfigured, blurring the line between what is actual and what is manufactured. When viewed collectively, we see that there is no singular true nature to the photograph, nor photographic process. The camera, the subject, and the photograph are all variable constructions; they are not only changeable, they are constantly changing in form and meaning. Highlighting the experimental nature of photography, Indecisive Moment presents an exploration of reality and materiality within a medium that is so often immaterial.

Liz Erlewine, interim director and head curator, Purdue University Galleries