If I Had a Hammer
Edited by Steven Evans, Max Fields and Amy Sadao.
Schilt Publishing
English
Featuring works by, Laura Aguilar, Mónica Alcázar-Duarte, Chow and Lin, Forensic Architecture, Elaine W. Ho, Ho Rui An, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, David Kelley, Yazan Khalili, Ryan Patrick Krueger, Dorothea Lange, Dionne Lee, Toyo Miyatake, Delilah Montoya, Reynier Leyva Novo, Lorraine O’Grady, Mike Osborne, Liz Rodda, Keisha Scarville, Ines Schaber, Fred Schmidt-Arenales, David Ramírez Cotón, Daniel Hernández-Salazar, Camilla Juárez,Jorge de León, Jonathan David Smyth and Bruce Yonemoto.
Contributions by, Steven Evans, Max Fields, Amy Sadao, Madi Murphy, Yazan Khalili, Ariel Goldberg, Hardeep Phull, Julie Ault, Nora N. Khan and Jeanne Vaccaro.
Hardcover
295 Pages
175 x 245mm
2022
ISBN 9789053309568
The FotoFest Biennial 2022 central exhibition, If I Had a Hammer, considers the ways artists utilise images to explore the formation of historical narratives, political ideology, and agency. The artists featured in If I Had a Hammer question the role of images in the construction, depiction, reception, and repression of global social movements and political ideologies, and represent a diverse range of image-makers, including photo-documentarians, activists, research-based artists and collectives, filmmakers, performance artists, and artists working in social practice.
(source: https://fotofest.org/fotofest-biennial-2022)
About the Exhibition
If I Had a Hammer explores both artistic and activist interventions into the structures of contemporary image-production, calling attention to how these structures both reflect and inform our perception of the world, historical narratives, and the agency to engage in collective cultural discourse. The exhibition proposes that the systems and structures that support ideological formation such as historical archives, digital media networks, sociopolitical organising campaigns, and infrastructural and territorial developments, are inextricably linked to the history and development of photography and image technology. Through disparate approaches, the artists in If I Had a Hammer offer strategies to resist and replace legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and systemic violence by exploiting the language and material of image-production and media circulation. In doing so, the artists show how images can be used to both support progressive movements as well as reinforce and bolster systemic inequities. The exhibition borrows its title from Pete Seegar and Lee Hays’s 1949 protest song of the same name, which was written as a response to growing ideological divides and violence against progressive artists and thinkers in the U.S. during the era of Red Scare McCarthyism. Throughout this period, artists, activists, authors, and musicians, including Seegar and Hays, were made to testify in broadcasted congressional hearings and defend their right to free speech and protest. This exhibition uses the historical context within which If I Had a Hammer was written as a starting point to explore how those who assert ideological supremacy often do so by employing the very tools used by the communities and individuals they hope to suppress. They use the tools of discursive circulation: broadcast media, text, song, art, and images. The scope of If I Had a Hammer is expansive, including international perspectives on ever-changing ideologies in relationship to the contemporary, global nature of media circulation and ideological development. At the heart of this interrogation is an examination of the methods artists employ to create archives that subvert the hegemonic anthropological and documentary gaze, play against traditional forms of photography, and imagine alternative political scenarios while resisting a singular, finished, final, or decisive image.
fotofest.org
(source: https://fotofest.org/fotofest-biennial-2022)
About the Festival
FotoFest is a Houston-based contemporary arts organisation co-founded by photojournalists Fredrick Baldwin and Wendy Watriss. FotoFest is dedicated to advancing photography and visual culture through the presentation of exhibitions, public programs, and publications. The examination of social, cultural, and political histories and contemporary life through the lens of photography and related media is central to FotoFest’s mission. In addition to the organisation’s year-round programming, FotoFest organises a city-wide biennial project in the form of large-scale central exhibitions, curated lectures, performances, a symposium, and film programs.
fotofest.org
(source: https://fotofest.org/)
About the Publisher
Schilt Publishing and Schilt Gallery are respectively a publishing house specialised in high quality photography books, and a commercial gallery representing a wide range of top class artists from all over the world.
schiltpublishing.com
(source: https://www.levievandermeer.nl/project/schilt-publishing/)
