The Camera Never Lies: Challenging images through The Incite Project

18 May-20 Oct 2024

Overview

Joining the Sainsbury Centre’s six-month long investigation into What is Truth? will be an exhibition re-evaluating the most iconic images of the past 100 years. The Camera Never Lies: Challenging images through The Incite Project will explore the impact and influence photography has had on shaping – and in some cases distorting the narrative of major global events.

Featuring more than 100 works by legendary photographers including Don McCullin (b.1935), Stuart Franklin (b.1956), Robert Capa (1913-1954) and Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), as well as modern practitioners, this extensive exhibition will chart a global century of iconic documentation and manipulation.

Sometimes seen as superior to text, photographs are now a mainstay of how the media and the public consume events such as war, famine, and celebrity. But is what people see a true reflection of the reality?

The exhibition will first look at how single photographs came to represent and define events through their repeated use in print journalism, and how narratives are shaped by them during and long after the events have occurred. The second part of the show will look at how modern practitioners of photography are using research to inform their imagery, and how they work with much more agency than in the previous century, as now the person behind the lens has more control than the picture editors at newspapers.

Curated by Harriet Logan and Tristan Lund, the works in this exhibition are drawn from The Incite Project, a private collection of photojournalism, documentary photography and photographic art with a remit to support contemporary practitioners.