California Photography: Remaking Make-Believe

This selection of recent photographic work by seven artists who live and work in California is a concise survey that reflects a philosophical reconsideration of traditional ideas about photography, especially the right of the medium to claim a special access to truth. In California Photography: Remaking Make-Believe the challenge to traditional forms of photography is seen in the work of John Baldessari, Robert Heinecken, Larry Sultan, John Divola, Jo Ann Callis, Nancy Barton, and Larry Johnson. The essay by Susan Kismaric, Curator in the Department of Photography of The Museum of Modern Art, examines the evolution of contemporary photography in California, revealing a set of factors and circumstances that has created a distinctly synthetic photographic style. The movement away from the restrictions of straight photography, the dearth of museum exhibitions and photographic magazine publishing, and the impact of the curriculum of art schools in the state during the 1960s and 1970s are understood as forces that influenced photography in California and the history of the medium.