Influential to artists of all kinds, Josephson has spent his career carefully examining the building blocks of photography. His methods are the result of his years at the Institute of Design, where he studied under photography pioneers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Examining Josephson's production from 1960-80, Picture Fiction presents his four main ongoing series: Images within Images, Marks and Evidence, History of Photography Series, and Archaeological Series. Largely drawn from the MCA's collection, the exhibition reveals concerns shared by Josephson and conceptual artists emerging in the 1960s, and draws parallels between his practice and those of other contemporary artists, including Roe Ethridge, Jessica Labatte, Marlo Pascual, Jimmy Robert, and Xaviera Simmons, whose work is included in the exhibition.
ABOUT KENNETH JOSEPHSON
Kenneth Josephson, born in Detroit in 1932, was a graduate among the first generation of photography candidates from the Illinois Institute of Design. A student of such masters as Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, and Minor White, Josephson went on to teach for 35 years at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he routinely taught the "Introduction to Photography" course as it inspired him to continue experimentation. In his best known image New York State (1970), Josephson pictured his own outstretched arm holding a photograph of a ship superimposed over an ocean horizon. À la René Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe (The Treachery of Images, 1928-29), the image is a reminder that regardless of how real a two-dimensional image may appear, it is still merely an illusion.
