On behalf of the International Center of Photography, we invite you to join us on January 22, 2025 at 7:00 PM EST to celebrate the opening of our three winter exhibitions Weegee: Society of the Spectacle, To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography, and American Job: 1940–2011.
January 22, 7–9 PM
International Center of Photography
84 Ludlow Street
New York, NY 10002
Kindly RSVP by January 17
ABOUT THE EXHIBITIONS
Weegee: Society of the Spectacle
The career of photographer Weegee (born Arthur Fellig, 1899-1968) is often divided into two distinct phases, one gritty, the other glamorous. Celebrated for his sensationalist images of harrowing events across New York City in the 1930s and ‘40s and the onlookers who witnessed them, Weegee also spent time documenting the joyful crowds, premieres, and celebrities of Hollywood. Weegee: Society of the Spectacle aims to reconcile these two sides of Weegee through an investigation of his focus, throughout his career, on a critique of 20th century popular culture and its insatiable appetite for spectacle. Curated by Clément Chéroux, Director of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson (FHCB), Paris, in collaboration with the Weegee Archive at the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York.
To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography
Curated by Sara Ickow, Associate Director of Exhibitions, Keisha Scarville, Guest Curator, and Elisabeth Sherman, Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections at ICP, To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography brings together the work of seven artists primarily working in photography—Widline Cadet, Koyoltzintli, Tarrah Krajnak, Shala Miller, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Keisha Scarville, and Sasha Wortzel. The exhibition reimagines what an archive can be or might look like—more than just a means of recuperating the past, these artists utilize the archive as a form for imagining new futures. Moving away from the centrality of the institutional archive, the artists in To Conjure expand its parameters by engaging with materials—clothing, instruments, the landscape and more—beyond photographs and documents alone. By working with a myriad of contemporary materials, these artists create new histories and material sensibilities.
American Job: 1940-2011
Drawing from works by more than 40 photographers in the ICP collection, with the addition of exhibition prints from contemporary photographers, American Job: 1940-2011 highlights the collection’s breadth and contemporary relevance by surveying the photographic response to labor. Organized chronologically in five sections, the exhibition explores the transformation of work in America, and with it the rise of activism and new forms of solidarity in pursuit of humane working conditions and economic equity. This exhibition is guest curated by Makeda Best, photography historian and Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Oakland Museum of California.
Image: Weegee, Weegee, ca. 1958. International Center of Photography, Bequest of Wilma Wilcox, 1993 (22394.1993) © International Center of Photography / Getty Images