World Documents

World Documents brings together the work and ideas of important, thoughtful, and eloquent contemporary photographers. Presenting their work as competing approaches to the practice of documentary photography, it places their projects in a global setting and meditates on the possibilities and limitations facing the socially concerned photographer today. The exhibition represents different generations concerned with different parts of the world; the photographers who comprise the exhibition understand the role of the camera and photographic technology in strikingly varied ways. Confronted by social and cultural changes wrought by immigration and migration, post-colonialism, ethnic nationalisms, and global conflict, and also aware of the social and activist legacy of documentary photography, they each propose new purposes and distinct styles for the photographic document. As a group they redefine the role documentary photography can serve today.