Conceptual and performance photography from the 1970s
James Collins, “Watching shame (diptych),” photograph, 1976. Collins’s photographs, taken from films he made of himself staring at women, were widely exhibited in the mid-’70s.
In the 1970s, conceptual art and performance art both relied on photography as a means to express or document the ideas and events that constituted the works’ content. In most cases, the photographs were largely an afterthought, a means to an end. Generally small and done in black & white, these were the first photographs to be exhibited in galleries as fine art. Today, photography is ubiquitous, but galleries prefer large attractive color images, and the conceptual and performance photography from the 1970s is often ignored.
Congratulations to the Mitchell Algus Gallery at 132 Delancey Street for revisiting this forgotten era with the current exhibition Concept, Performance, Documentation, Language. Over one hundred works, by 40 artists, provide a much needed overview for this overlooked genre. The photographs can be alternately transgressive, funny, and intellectual. For more information about this era, the website 98 Bowery provides a first-hand account, reproducing in full Jeffrey Deitch’s 1975 exhibition catalogue Lives.
Neke Carson, “Retrospective (Sonnabend Gallery, Vito Acconci’s Seedbed),” 1972. While Vito Acconci was underneath a platform performing his notorious masturbation piece, Carson seized the venue for his own guerrilla dancing performance.
Martha Wilson, “Posturing: Male Impersonator (Butch),” 1973. Many 1970s performances and conceptual art projects focused on sexual politics. Wilson’s performance consisted of (thwarted) attempts to enter men’s bathrooms in Halifax.