"Photoshopping" And More: MOLAA Collects Photo-Based Art
The Lexus Gallery. November 9, 2008 - January 31, 2009
Since its inception in 1996, the MOLAA Permanent Collection has focused on collecting traditional works of art created in the media of painting, sculpture, drawing and prints. In 2006, the museum began to include photography in the collection due to an art donation from the Puerto Rican artist Carlos Betancourt. Subsequently, the collection has grown quickly and now includes more than 20 photo-based media works due to additional donations from artists and collectors.
In the last twenty years, the photographic medium has become recognized as a fine art media due to the advances in technology. In 1990, Logitech came out with the world's first completely digital consumer camera known as the Dycam Model 1 Black-and-White Digicam. Also released in 1990 was the computer software program Photoshop, a digital based technology. The new camera and software program allowed artists a broader range of experimentation in the new media arts of image manipulation.
As artists experimented with the digital technology, the limits between conventional photography and other media became blurred; it is not uncommon to find works of art that combine painting, drawing, sculpture, etc., with forms of photography, subsequently introducing a new era of photo-based art.
Latin American artists have incorporated many forms of digital technology in their artistic practice. Due to this new media, as well as other factors, Latin American photography exploded on to the international art scene in the 1990s. With this exhibition, MOLAA presents a selection of traditional photography, digital-manipulated photographic images, videos and photo-installations now represented in the MOLAA Permanent Collection and Holdings.
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