Bill Armstrong's work is currently on view at Photo Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Blur. A photographic history traces the history of blur in photography, from the invention of the process to the present. With comparisons to painting and cinema, it tells the story – via key works – of the evolution of this form, as well as of the values associated with it, according to the different periods and photographic practices.
The exhibition opens with paintings from the 17th century – a period in which "softness" constitutes a very specific pictorial category –, and will then move on to the present where blur has become an t element of the photographic aesthetic. Blur oscillates between the primary technical error it involves and the artistic ambitions it promises.
The exhibition allows us to grasp the challenges posed by blur in different photographic practices, whether it be photography for artistic purposes, that produced by amateurs and scientists, or photojournalism. We will be able to discover the richness of blur, which often evokes an element and its opposite, whether it be in its relationship to reality and mimesis, in its bourgeois and revolutionary affinities, in its relationship to amateurism and expertise, or in the technical virtuosity it evokes or, on the contrary, the primary defect it designates.
The exhibition is open until May 21. Read more here.
Blur. A photographic history traces the history of blur in photography, from the invention of the process to the present. With comparisons to painting and cinema, it tells the story – via key works – of the evolution of this form, as well as of the values associated with it, according to the different periods and photographic practices.
The exhibition opens with paintings from the 17th century – a period in which "softness" constitutes a very specific pictorial category –, and will then move on to the present where blur has become an t element of the photographic aesthetic. Blur oscillates between the primary technical error it involves and the artistic ambitions it promises.
The exhibition allows us to grasp the challenges posed by blur in different photographic practices, whether it be photography for artistic purposes, that produced by amateurs and scientists, or photojournalism. We will be able to discover the richness of blur, which often evokes an element and its opposite, whether it be in its relationship to reality and mimesis, in its bourgeois and revolutionary affinities, in its relationship to amateurism and expertise, or in the technical virtuosity it evokes or, on the contrary, the primary defect it designates.
The exhibition is open until May 21. Read more here.
April 14, 2023
