Found, Shared: The Magazine Photowork

Thu 19 Apr 2007 - Sat 16 Jun 2007

This event is part of our Past Programme

This exhibition features the work of three photo magazines that use found and discarded photographs and ephemera as their starting point. Drawing from the archives of Found Magazine (USA), Useful Photography (Netherlands) and Ohio (Germany), the installation includes highly-personal Polaroids, fading studio portraits, blurry snaps, internet images, amateur collages, homemade greetings cards and pages torn from other magazines.

The search for material took each magazine's editors to unusual places that ranged from eccentric personal collections to sidewalk junk stalls. This quest reflects a growing fascination, on the part of both artists and the general public, with what could be termed other people's photos.

Visitors are invited to read, handle and enjoy original material from Found Magazine's archive, and immerse themselves in Ohio's collection of photographs and video clips from some of Germany's voluntary organisations. And within Useful Photography's display of large-scale prints there will be an opportunity to reassess the value of a variety of images from catalogues, the Internet and other sources.

Installation Image - Found, Shared: The Magazine Photowork

Fax your images.

People have been making and distributing their own cheap magazines for many years. Members of the public are, in the spirit of low-budget publishing, invited to fax the gallery machine and contribute to magazines containing images that are found, received and printed out through old-fashioned technology. They will then be displayed for the duration of the exhibition.

On 17 June, faxed contributions were taken down and edited to make a special issue of Emblem magazine (published by Manchester Metropolitan University). Visitors can also contribute to forthcoming issues of either Fash n Riot and Implicasphere magazine.

This exhibition underlines The Photographers' Gallery's commitment to, and involvement with, photography on the printed page in the age of the digital image.

Found, Shared: The Magazine Photowork is curated by David Brittain, Research Associate, MIRIAD at Manchester Metropolitan University, supported by MIRIAD and the AHRC and Visual Studies Workshop (USA). There was a catalogue Found, Shared: The Magazine Photowork.

For further information on this and past exhibitions, visit our Archive and Study Room.