la forza delle immagini

La forza delle immagini

The MAST Collection: an iconic selection of industrial and labour photography

curated by Urs Stahel

Fondazione MAST presents a new exhibition based on its industrial photography collection. Sixty authors from the twenties to present day show with over one hundred works – some consisting of dozens of shots – the disruptive expressive power of photographic language, with its multiple meanings.

The exhibition La Forza delle Immagini brings together a wide selection of shots coming from the production world, a plethora of impressions, a flow of heavy and mechanics industry visions, of the digital revolution, of a disposable society.

The gaze of over sixty photographers leads us through the realm of production and consumption, helping us to develop new viewing modes. The exhibition focuses on the environments that characterize the industrial and technological system, touching upon key social, political and collective issues. Going beyond pure and simple facts, these pictures tend to capture articulated, deep connections and references, presenting to the viewer complex realities, filled with emotional and sensory involvement. This exhibition brings to life an iconographic universe of industry and labor, of factory and society that is permeated by a moltitude of dimentions: many different layers and timelines run in parallel or cross over each other.

The exhibition includes the works of photographers and artists such as Berenice Abbott, Richard Avedon, Margaret Bourke-White, Thomas Demand, Simone Demandt, Jim Goldberg, Hiroko Komatsu, Germaine Krull, Catherine Leutenegger, Edgar Martins, Rémy Markowitsch, Richards Misrach, Jules Spinatsch, Edward Steichen, Thomas Struth, Shomei Tomatsu, Marion Post Wolcott and many others.