Critical Mass Top 50 – Santa Fe, Italy and Argentina!

Photolucida has been busy this week preparing to launch the Critical Mass 2017 Top 50 show out into the world! We have been editing a projection version of A Contemporary Reference of the Human Condition – a ten-minute piece (an English version, and Italian version, and a Spanish version) set to music –  highlighting the work selected from the Critical Mass Top 50 by Alexa Becker, Acquisitions Editor at Kehrer Verlag. We are so pleased to collaborate with our partners below to bring the work of the Top 50 artists to national and international audiences!

 

Santa Fe, New Mexico

 

 

A Contemporary Reference of the Human Condition will be on exhibit (July 20-August 19) at Edition ONE Gallery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe as part of New Mexico’s PhotoSummer. Santa Fe is considered the third largest art market in the US, after New York and Los Angeles and is home to many photo-centric galleries and organizations. PhotoSummer is a collaborative initiative that features public programs focusing on photography that encompasses regional, national and international artists, curators and scholars. Opening reception is Friday, July 20th, 5-8pm.

Cortona, Italy

The exhibition will also be shown as an evening projection on Saturday, July 14th, during the opening weekend of Cortona on the Move (July 12 – September 30). Cortona is a hilltop town in the Tuscan region of Italy, where festival exhibitions are integrated into the ancient abandoned buildings that wind throughout the town. Cortona on the Move has quickly become a reference point for an international audience that is attentive to contemporary cultural trends – with stellar programming including workshops, lectures, public projections and portfolio reviews.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

The Encuentros Abiertos-Festival de la Luz (August 8 – September 28) is the biggest event of its kind in Latin America – this year titled To Life – and carries out the mandate of promoting photography artistically, culturally, and socially on an international level with exhibitions in museums, cultural centers, and art spaces across Argentina; through lectures, workshops, and discussions on photographic art; through street art, projections, film screenings, and portfolio reviews. The Critical Mass exhibition projection will be shown in a multitude of locations during the festival at different times.

Critical Mass TOP 50: A Contemporary Reference of the Human Condition


The Critical Mass TOP 50 selection is an impressive array of photography. This is true due to the diversity in subject, but also by the variety of artistic approaches in which the medium is used, expanded and explored. Bodies of work in this selection employ documentary, street, and conceptual photography. And, some images stretch photography’s limits with the use of multimedia processes. Even with all of these different genres, subject matters and creative processes, one theme weaves its thread throughout – our very existence in this ever-changing and challenging world.


How do we as an international society deal with persecution, poverty, diverging religious beliefs, sexuality, psychological transformation and the increasing threat to the ecological system that sustains us?


While some of the images in A Contemporary Reference of the Human Condition do not speak directly to current world issues, they stem from fundamental emotions like love, fear, or the feeling of separation. As far apart as these photographs may seem at first glance, seen together they engage us as an inspiring reference document of the human condition in the 21st century.

      
                                                                                                                      – Alexa Becker, Curator