MFABOSTON LIFE screen mix 3, 2022f
LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography, MFABoston.
Also listed as: LIFE Magazine - Reflections on Photojournalism -
So it’s complicated. Starting in 1936 there's the LIFE exhibit, which goes behind the scenes to reveal how the magazine commissioned photo essays, then how those images were captured, edited, art directed and how that process could be used to inform and/or manipulate the public. We see the mark-ups and the strikethroughs.
Suddenly, smack-dab in the middle of absorbing all that, we are hit with “The Silence of Nduwayezu!” An exhibit that uses one image, reproduced thousands of times, to stand as a memorial to trauma and the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Basically: “1 million slides, light table, magnifiers, and illuminated wall text.”
(At that point I was like… “wait are we still in the LIFE magazine thing…?”)
Only to turn another corner to see large reproductions of newsprint. These are annotated versions of the New York Times. At first, I thought we were looking at rough drafts, when in fact it was the “Counternarrative” work of Alexandra Bell. I had to take a few steps back when confronted with her murals. She straddles journalism, editorial and art by marking up original prints. Then Bell re-imagines articles, including the front-page spread, to point out racial bias in day to day reporting. The pieces are large-scale and static, but the editorial intervention is profound.
Coming from an editorial point view, that alone was worth the price of admission. But take another turn and it’s back to April 1963 and LIFE’s approach to covering Birmingham Alabama. The bombings, the fire hoses, the children.
If you can fit it in this weekend, it’s well worth the reflection.
MFABoston! Ends 01/16.