Gerry Johansson is set to participate in „Les Rencontres de la Photographie,“ Arles, France, as part of the group exhibition „When Images Learn to Speak.“ The exhibition features almost 100 documentary photographers from the Astrid Ullens de Schooten Whettnall’s collection.

“The numbers leave no doubt: around 5,500 photographs by some 100 photographers, collected over the past 30 years. Clearly, the A Foundation — Astrid Ullens de Schooten Whettnall’s Collection — has not been looking for showpieces, choosing rather to focus on ways of seeing, ways of thinking and stances towards the world that they embody. Collecting is seen, in fact, as a means to cultural mediation, promoting photography and with it our ability to see and to understand the world. So composed, the foundation’s collection also testifies to another important truth: while it recognises that a single photograph can be beautiful, even great, it also knows that it says surprisingly little about the world. Only through a precise, structured, conceptual approach can photographs serve to create a visual language that can be read, understood and used to communicate by all. The foundation’s collection thus introduces us to a generation of conceptual documentary photographers whose structural approach offers us important insights into the world, nature and society, and into the lives of individual human beings and other living creatures.”

Exhibition period: 1 July – 29 September 2024

La Mécanique Générale – LUMA Arles
Parc des Ateliers,
35 avenue Victor Hugo
13200 Arles