The Art of the Archive. Kunsthaus Zürich shows photographs from the Los Angeles Police Department . A world premiere.
Le 2011-10-05 18:22:57

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From 15 July until 18 September 2005 the Kunsthaus Zürich will present the first museum show worldwide of photographs from the archives of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Entitled ‘The Art of the Archive', this show will consist of around 100 photographs from the 1920s to the 1950s, selected by Curator Tobia Bezzola from an archive of over a million shots. FROM EVIDENCE TO WORK OF ART Ever since the 19th century, photography has been an important tool in the hands of prosecution services the world over. Police archives contain a huge wealth of photographic images. These are used not only for the purposes of identification and proof, but also for surveillance, prosecution, public appeals and training. Like all photographs, their significance may shift with the passage of time; viewed in different circumstances they acquire new meaning. But why should it be that the archives of the LAPD should include such a particularly high number of photographs that are open to such change – from documentation to composition, from evidence to work of art? One of the reasons is that these shots show one of the most thoroughly mediated cities in the world, a place that can by now really only be seen through the filter of countless mythologisations. And in a city as aware of pictures and imagery as Los Angeles, the photographers working for the Police Department had a more heightened awareness of their own professional and aesthetic standards than their counterparts elsewhere. The mixture of fiction and reality so typical of Los Angeles also had a part to play in that the Police were certainly influenced in their self-presentation by the image of their city created by the film and television industry. THE CONCEPT OF THE EXHIBITION This exhibition focuses not so much on the historic, documentary aspect of this archive than on the outstanding quality of some of the images it contains. Amongst the exhibits are dozens of mysterious ‘stills' from ‘films noirs' that were never made. Much of the social documentation on show in Zurich can hold its own with the work of the greatest 20th-century documentary photographers in the USA – from Walker Evans to Garry Winogrand. There are also parallels with the morbid imagery that was so prevalent in the photographic works of the Surrealists (Brassaï, Boiffard, Bellmer). Not least they alsotest out – avant la lettre and with very different intentions – a conceptual approach to photography that has been highly influential in art photography since the 1960s (Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari). This exhibition in the Kunsthaus Zürich – with its accompanying publication (111 pages, CHF 29.-) – powerfully argues the case for extending the pantheon of American photography to include the as yet largely unresearched names of Hoewner, Driver and Munns. The European public is invited to attend this in-depth presentation of evidence. Additional information is available on the exhibition website at www.kunsthaus.ch. In collaboration with Fototeka, Los Angeles, the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Police Department Credit lines and captions: Crime scene: Bridge over LA river, 1955, City of Los Angeles Police Department, c 2005 City of Los Angeles Crime scene: Bullet holes in car window, 1942, City of Los Angeles Police Department, c 2005 City of Los Angeles

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