Thomas Keenan

Diane Dufour

"Images of Conviction" shows, through 11 cases, how the photographic image is constructed to become evidence.From the scientific methods developed by Alphonse Bertillon, a criminologist who worked for the Préfecture de Police de Paris in the late 19th century, to the first aerial images of the front taken by the army during World War I, to the shots allowing the victims of Stalin's Great Purge to be identified--for over 150 years photography has served as proof, testifying to crime and thus seeming to deliver truths. In the 11 cases presented here, each one situated within its historical and political context, the question of the status of images is acutely posed. Whether it be the famous shots of the Shroud of Turin, the images of the Nuremberg trial, the skull of Josef Mengele or photos taken with cell phones recording the damage of drone strikes in Afghanistan and Israel, forensic images are now part of any police or political investigation.

The Construction of Visual Evidence

Images of Conviction

Matthew Witkovsky

The short-lived Japanese magazine Provoke is recognized as a major achievement in world photography of the postwar era, uniting the country's most contentious examples of protest photography, vanguard fine art, and critical theory of the late 1960s and early 70s in only three issues overall. Provoke is accordingly treated here as a model synthesis of the complexities and overlapping uses of photography in postwar Japan. The writing and images by Provoke's members - critic Koji Taki, poet Takahiko Okada, photographers Takuma Nakahira, Yutaka Takanashi, Daido Moriyama - were suffused with the tactics developed in some Japanese protest books which made use of innovative graphic design and provocatively "poor" materials. Recording live actions, photography in these years was also an expressive form suited to emphasize and critique the mythologies of modern life with a wide spectrum of performing artists such as Nobuyoshi Araki, Koji Enokura and Jiro Takamatsu. This catalogue accompanies the first exhibition ever to be held about the magazine and its creators and focuses on its historical context. It covers the preliminary period leading to its first and the aftermath following its last issue. Provoke takes shape as a strongly interpretative explanation of currents in Japanese art and society at a moment of historical collapse and renewal.

Photography in Japan 1960-1975

Provoke: Between Protest and Performance

In 2004, the Centro Cultural de Belem in Lisbon organized the exhibition Mirror, Mirror, which presented images of Portugal as seen by 13 Magnum photographers. The exhibition and this accompanying catalogue provide a look at Portugal from the 1950s to the present through the eyes of some of the world's foremost journalistic and artistic photographers. To give a broad vision of the country's development over the last 50 years, the exhibition features images from the Magnum archives alongside recently commissioned work by Josef Koudelka, Susan Meiselas, and Miguel Rio Branco. Besides those mentioned above, the catalogue has 100 color and tritone plates featuring images by the following photographers: Bruno Barbey, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Thomas Hoepker, Jean Gaumy, Bruce Gilden, Guy Le Querrec, Inge Morath, Martin Parr, Gilles Peress and Gueorgui Pinkhassov.

Diane Dufour

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