David Hartt in MoMa's 'Ocean of Images' Exhibit of New Photography

 

Associate Professor of Fine Arts David Hartt is represented in Ocean of Images, the current installment of New Photography, MoMA’s longstanding exhibition series of recent work in photography. Health Care Overflow at The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Midland, Michigan, is drawn from Belvedere, a suite of formally austere photographs taken at the Center, originator of the Overton window, a policy framing device used to adjust public opinion on a particular subject by positing radical viewpoints and thereby shifting the frame of reference closer to an intended outcome. Hartt is one of 19 artists and artist collectives from 14 countries featured.

Probing the effects of an image-based post-Internet reality, Ocean of Images examines various ways of experiencing the world: through images that are born digitally, made with scanners or lenses in the studio or the real world, presented as still or moving pictures, distributed as zines, morphed into three-dimensional objects, or remixed online. The exhibition’s title refers to the Internet as a vortex of images, a site of piracy, and a system of networks. Ocean of Images presents bodies of work that critically redefine photography as a field of experimentation and intellectual inquiry, where digital and analog, virtual and real dimensions cross over. These artists explore contemporary photo-based culture, specifically focusing on connectivity, the circulation of images, information networks, and communication models.