It isn’t everyday that you walk into a photography museum to see images taken with an iPhone hanging on the walls. In fact, iPhones are what take images we see on the walls of museums, not the other way around. However, this new exhibition in New York flips the script on our smartphones. The group exhibition “Inward: Reflections on Interiority” on view at the ICP / International Center of Photography features newly commissioned work by five emerging artists: Djeneba Aduayom, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Quil Lemons, Brad Ogbonna, and Isaac Westin New York City. The photos range from selfies to family portraits and shots of domestic spaces, exploring aspects of their interior lives.
Their work moves beyond the endless scope of the constructed selfie and documentation of events in the public realm to examine the intimate interactions and thoughts that make up their daily experiences as artists and people in a time of unprecedented change.
The idea came about during the lockdown of the pandemic. “Over the past year and a half, I was really struck with the fact we were all sequestered, we were all immersed through images, via social media,” said the exhibition’s curator, Isolde Brielmaier. “Those are images taken by everybody.”
“People use it to document themselves and the world around them,” she explains. “But even though we had this public image making tool, what would it mean when you flip the script and turn it on yourself?”
