Divine Violence is the premiere of Holy Bible, the new work of Broomberg & Chanarin, a well acknowledged couple of artists and photographers. Their latest project (so far only an editorial one) is this exhibition within Fotografia Europea 2014.
The Holy Bible project began almost as an accident: while visiting the Bertolt Brecht archives in Berlin, Broomberg & Chanarin discovered a remarkable artefact: Brecht’s personal Bible. The object caught their attention because it had a photograph of a racing car stuck on the cover. They also discovered that Brecht used his Bible as a notebook, pasting images, underlining phrases and making notes in the columns. This inspired their own project of an illustrated Holy Bible.
For this project, the artists combined images from The Archive of Modern Conflicts – the largest archive in the world dedicated to images of war – underlining in red ink phrases in the text. The book also contains a short essay by Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir, who observes that God reveals himself in the Bible predominantly through acts of catastrophe.As they already did with War Primer, Broomberg & Chanarin use the Brechtian method of putting together images and words as a questioning caption, with a strong social commitment. The authors aim is to highlight that captions are essential while reading images, and to stress how captions can act on the actual content of the image.
They use themes close to Ghirri’s , although in a different way: indeed Broomberg & Chanarin impose a reflection on the status of images and the reasons for their creation and interpretation. Furthermore, they are authors and curators at the same time,because their work is not about taking pictures,but abour researching in the Archive of Modern Conflict, and creating a sharp and effective page layout with them.
The exhibition, curated by Walter Guadagnini, is produced in collaboration with Artes Mundi and MOSTYN.
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin live and work in London. They have had numerous international exhibitions including, for example, The Museum of Modern Art, the Stedelijk Museum, the International Center of Photography. They are Visiting Fellows at the University of the Arts London and their work is represented in major public and private collections. In 2013 they were awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for War Primer 2, and ICP Infinity Award 2014 for their Holy Bible.
EXHIBITION
Divine Violence
Until June 15th, 2014
Chiostri di San Domenico
Via Dante Alighieri 11
42121 Reggio Emilia
Italy
