Recently, in the Youai Art Museum located on the shore of Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou, the "100 Years of Solitude, ·" exhibition of unique photographic works of Western photography masters opened here. It is reported that this exhibition is curated by Dr. Sara · Knell, a famous curator in United States, bringing together 100 unique photographic works by 39 Western photography masters, presenting a photography exhibition with an international vision and innovative perspective for domestic audiences, and the exhibition time will be until March 30, 2025.
Since its inception in 1839, photography as a medium has influenced and shaped every aspect of modern life, including how to learn, remember, and communicate. Ms. Zhu, the relevant person in charge of Youai Art Museum, introduced that the reason why this exhibition selects 100 single-edition photographic works and calls them "one-of-a-kind prints" is that some of them are the only known works that are processed from negatives, some are unique due to the production process, and some are irreproducible images that can be repeated through the artist's inspiration.
In the exhibition, you can see the artists responding to the innate reproducibility of photography. They reveal the unique creativity of the art of photography, which is able to preserve the invisible things of everyday life as we know them, such as the passage of time, the trajectory of movement, the traces of light, and even the imprints of gods. "In this exhibition, the unique works created by the most important photographers of the last century point to the opposition between photography and its own reproduction, and also allow us to look back on the process of photographic changes, and get a glimpse of the photographer's solo exploration of the art of photography - the path ·of 'a hundred years of solitude', and reflect on the meaning of 'independence'."
The exhibition is divided into four parts: "Unique Self", "Same and Different", "Inspired Hands" and "Scenery from Nature". The first part, "The Unique Self," explores the concept of individuality in portrait photography. The second part, "Similarity and Difference," reveals how photography is used to challenge unique or immutable identities. The third section, "Inspired Hands", shows that the photographer can obtain a unique photographic work through artistic intervention or hands-on transformation and precise control of the photographic process. In the fourth part, "Scenery from Nature", the concept of photography as a revelatory medium in collaboration with nature continues to influence contemporary photographic practice. In these fascinating, breathtaking works, photography becomes a revelatory medium that connects us to life, history, fantasy and even the gods.