Street View

MICHAEL WOLF’S NIGHT #20, 2007, DIGITAL C-PRINT, 48 x 60″. PHOTO:COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND BRUCE SILVERSTEIN GALLERY, NEW YORK. 

Cameras have long had a special status among the arts for their capacity to bear witness: Consider Jacob Riis among the tenements or cellphone videos in Ferguson, Missouri. This has been complicated of late by the abuses of internet trolls and the modern surveillance state, but Eyes on the Street, an exhibition that opened earlier this month at the Cincinnati Art Museum, returns street photography to a symbiotic relationship with the city and its inhabitants. Among the 10 artists exhibited are Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Barbara Probst, and Jennifer West. The show, according to curator Brian Sholis, emphasizes “the role that cameras’ technical abilities play” in creating works that express a more humane way of seeing and document the city’s inner life. 

EYES ON THE STREET IS ON VIEW AT THE CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM THROUGH JANUARY 4, 2015.