Guest curated by Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas, and Laura Wexler, along with Kristin Taylor, MoCP Curator of Academic Programs and Collections

This exhibition will feature works in the MoCP permanent collection that are included in the recent and groundbreaking publication titled  Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography.  The book   was created by a group of artists, art historians, activists, and scholars—Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas, Leigh Raiford, and Laura Wexler—and published by Thames and Hudson in 2024. It is an extension of a project that these five authors have collaborated on for over ten years, in which they reassess a range of photographs and projects that portray stories of humanity and social movements to decenter the photographer as the only author of the image, and to emphasize the act of photographing as an inherently collaborative process in which many parties are involved. By sharing both artists’ statements and excerpts from interviews with people depicted in photographs, they question whether memories align: Did both sides remember the moment in the same way? How did the photographed feel about the photograph’s life after it circulated through art markets, print media, and online? And what role might the photograph have played in perpetuating harmful or liberatory narratives about specific histories, places, or individuals?

The works—both historical and contemporary—are presented in clusters focused on topics,  to highlight and propose questions about photographed moments of coercion, friendship, exploitation, community, and violence. The exhibition will also feature a reflection space for the audience engagement, as part of the project’s ongoing effort to consider the history of photography as a living and evolving entity that is unfixed and expanding as we learn more about the people, communities, and histories that images depict.

MoCP is supported by Columbia College Chicago, MoCP Advisory Board, Museum Council, individuals, private and corporate foundations, and government grants.

The 2024–2025 exhibition season is sponsored in part by the Efroymson Family Fund, Henry Nias Foundation, The Rowan Foundation, Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, Pritzker Traubert Foundation, Comer Family Foundation, and Venable Foundation. This exhibition is partially supported by a CityArts grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and 21c Museum Hotel, Chicago. MoCP acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council.

This project is generously supported through the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Impact Fund for Photography and the Westridge Foundation.