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Photographic Truth

Nancy Hall-Duncan
The Bruce Museum
Winter, 1988

The Death Mask detail from Messiah by (art)n was included in Photographic Truth at The Bruce Museum in Greenwich Connecticut, January 31-March 27, 1988, curated by Nancy Hall-Duncan. Special thanks to Richard Avedon, Robert Cumming, David Graham, Nic Nicosia, Paul McGuirk, John O'Reilly, Ellen Sandor, and Karen Smiley.

The new capacity of photography with computer technology raises difficult issues: the viewer is no longer dependent on his eyes to tell him the "truth" but must rely on who is telling him that the evidence seen in real, a situation with complex and frightening moral implications. An even more frightening possibility attends another recent development, which allows taking a still image of anything and creating a vidoetape in which the subject of the image can be made to perform any desired action realistically. One indication of where technical manipulation may lead in the future is the PHSCologram, a term derived from the beginning letters of photography, holography, sculpture and computer graphics. Produced by a team of artists collectively known as (art)n, the image at no time exists in "real" space, but is instead the photographic record or pure conceptual thought.

Nancy Hall-Duncan, Curator

The show included works by Ansel Adams, Eddie Adams, James Alinder, Richard Avedon, John Baldessari, Hippolyte Bayard, Francis Bedford, Erwin Blumenfeld, Bombing Squadron VB-109, Guy Bourdin, Gary Brotmeyer, Nancy Burson, John Coplans, Suzanne Camp Crosby, Donigan Cumming, Robert Cumming, Emile Danielson with Salvador Dali, Lou Brown DiGiulio, Dr. Harold Edgerton, Charles Eisenmann, Katherine Fishman, Frank N. Foster, Alexander Gardner, David Graham, Gray, Philippe Halsman with Salvador Dali, Dorothea Lange, Paul McGuirk, Ray Metzker, Edward H. Mitchell, Eadweard Muybridge, NASA, Nic Nicosia, Lorie Novak, John O'Reilly, Oxide Farm Aid, Nam June Paik, Burt Parry, Richard Prince, Joe Rosenthal, Richard H. Ross, Lucas Samaras, Cindy Sherman, Levi Sherman, Sandy Skoglund, Karen Smiley, Southworth & Hawes, Carelton Watkins, Shomei Tomatsu, Jane Tuckerman, Raoul Ubac, William Wegman, and Joel-Peter Witkin.