Social Photography X

Carriage Trade

New York | USA

08 Dec, 2022 - 12 Feb, 2023

Presented against the backdrop of the twin meltdowns of a social media platform and a cryptocurrency, this 10th anniversary show of Social Photography comes at a time when the progressive reputation enjoyed by the tech industry might warrant some skepticism. While a neo-robber baron browbeats his newly acquired workforce into submission or exile, ostensibly for the good of a 鈥渄igital town square鈥�, in the same week a financial guru, after evaporating billions in investor funds almost overnight, shrugs off the staggering losses with a sheepish, "I鈥檓 sorry".

Propped up by fawning news stories that celebrate novelty and personality over reason or logic, the insidious effect of the world wrought by the anointed power brokers of tech dictates as much of our behavior as we鈥檒l allow. Embracing consumer friendly devices that subject us to behavioral experiments and perpetual tracking, our 鈥渄igital exhaust鈥�, largely invisible to us, is magically turned to gold by legions of tech workers guided by the speculative bets of tech entrepreneurs.

Begun before most cell phones in use were considered 鈥渟mart鈥�, the first Social Photography show took place more or less at the inception of visual information as fodder for the experience economy. In late 2010, with cell phone pictures little more than a novelty stored within the limited technological capacity of flip phones, the gargantuan image mill of Instagram had yet to kick into full gear. Searching for an alternative to the benefit raffle exhibition which asks time and materials in the form of donated artworks from artists while offering little in the way of a collective aesthetic, Carriage Trade solicited a couple of hundred cell phone pictures from its community of artists, writers, curators, students, and neighbors, formatting and printing them and presenting the whole in a grid, with proceeds from sales going to support the gallery鈥檚 non-commercial mission.