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Tropes Gone Wild

A Crack in the Sunset: Tropes Gone Wild.

An exhibition about photographic clichés might seem out of place in our current moment.
In the midst of a pandemic, was our decision to curate an exhibition that "pokes fun" (hold on, it doesn't) at visual universality tone deaf?

Maybe, instead, it's about what brings us together, not poking fun.
Maybe, as Penelope Umbrico so eloquently does, it's about showing the similarities of seeing.

Before COVID-19 plagued our every move, listing photographic cliches was such a hot button for many photographers that the practice itself became a bit trope-y. The idea that, by listing what's wrong or overdone in photography today, one could avoid making an image that had been made before. Or, use it as a map for limiting what they create.

Making lemonade (oh hai, linguistic clichés) from these lemons, we asked photographers "show us your tropes." We went in blindly, unsure what we wanted, unsure what we'd get.

Would artists make pointed, ironic images of sunsets and business handshakes? Maybe.
How many rainbows or American flags could we expect to see? (At least one.)
Would they be on-the-nose, or self-consciously riffing?
How many artists would laughingly photograph tourists photographing the leaning tower of Pisa as if they were holding it in their palms? (At least one.)
At what point does that commentary become a trope?

And would there be room for cats?

The final image selection plays on all of the above, and it's not immune to visual mockery. More importantly, there's an earnest attempt, as we asked in our call, to find ways of making images that you might expect to see as a cliché (re: American flags) into something new and unexpected.

Despite what could seem like a pessimistic view that "everything has been done before," these images break cynicism by presenting common, over photographed material with optimistic eyes.

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay inside, have fun and stay hopeful.

-Roula Seikaly and Jon Feinstein