GRACE OF INTENTION: PHOTOGRAPHY, ARCHITECTURE AND THE MONUMENT

Grace of Intention: Photography, Architecture and the Monument Oct 15 — Dec 23, 2015

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY, 600 S MICHIGAN AVE, CHICAGO, IL 60605

Image credit: Jan Kempenaers, Spomenik #3 (Kosmaj), 2006

Monuments are deliberate gestures – objects or structures created to commemorate an event, person or era. Their meaning is usually imposed, and they often serve as vehicles for the communication of civic qualities like valor and duty, or to underscore a foundational political narrative. But their meaning can transform, changing over time as the relevance of their symbolism ebbs and flows due to social and political shifts. Like monuments, architecture and photography are also inflected with a grace of intention, and both have the ability to commemorate or represent a nation, event, time or place. Like monuments, their meaning often shifts due to time and context. Furthermore, the act of photographing monuments and buildings transforms them, sometimes revealing some of their original qualities and more closely evoking the responses that they were originally intended to have.

Grace of Intention: Photography, Architecture and the Monument examines the work of eight international artists, some of whose work addresses actual monuments, some whom look at architecture and its relationship to memory and how its importance and symbolism can shift over time, and others approach the idea of the future monument. 

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