Source: Diechtor Hallen Internationale Kunst und Fotografie Hamburg

Currency: Photography Beyond Capture explores artistic engagements with photography in the “retinal age,” where images not only act as records and imprints but fundamentally shape acts of seeing and being seen. The exhibition approaches photographs as contextual frames for narrative invention rather than as documents of binding truth or essence. Currency considers how knowledge is sought and reimagined through conceptual approaches to the photographic medium.

The exhibition weaves modes of experimental capture, appearance, multisensory evocation, archival and documentative practice. Staging works by visual artists and photographers, several motifs will structure Currency: the deconstruction and juxtaposition of visual canons; portrayals of community and social relations from within; countermapping in the Anthropocene across landscapes of extractive capitalism and military occupation; tenderness and the currency of intimacy beyond the conventions of portraiture; and poetic explorations into the alchemical processes of photography.

Artists include Akinbode Akinbiyi, Ziad Antar, Edson Chagas, Rana El Nemr, Oroma Elewa, Anne-Marie Filaire, Lyle Ashton Harris, Leslie Hewitt, Alfredo Jaar, Clifford Prince King, Osamu James Nakagawa, Marilyn Nance, Mame-Diarra Niang, Otobong Nkanga, Jo Ractliffe, Ashfika Rahman, Cecilia Reynoso, RaMell Ross, Fazal Sheikh, Carrie Yamaoka and Raed Yassin.