In the last two decades, a growing number of artists have raised the physical profile of photography by exploring new formats. David Hilliard, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Sarah Hobbs create large-scale color prints that rival paintings in size and presence. David Hilliard and Joel Whitaker also explore the expressive possibilities of multi-panel formats.

Photography has often been referred to as ‘painting with light.’ Artists such as David Allee and Tim Davis explore this notion in highly individual ways using traditional equipment (i.e. film, negatives, tripods, darkroom prints). Allee’s long-exposure photographs reveal on the effects of artificial light used to illuminate stadiums, malls and other urban environments. Davis, on the other hand, uses only existing light in museum galleries and examines the manner in which it obscures or alters the identity of works of art on display. Christine Patterson prefers non-digital effects such as infra-red film and hand-tinting to give her poetic images a painterly, time-worn appearance. Mark Abrahamson and Chris Verene produce color photographs in a documentary manner—they record the world around them as it appears. While Abrahamson’s emotionally-detached imagery spans the globe, Verene focuses on intimate glimpses of daily life in a single small town.

With access to affordable digital technology, many artists choose to manipulate and enhance their imagery to create new artistic statements. Loretta Lux, for example, uses digital techniques to raise questions about what in contemporary visual culture is ‘real’ and what is staged or invented, and to comment on the fact that viewers today are increasingly exposed to ‘virtual’ views of the world.

Other artists use traditional photographic equipment without digital effects, but stage or construct their imagery rather than discovering it naturally. Sarah Hobbs’ large color prints depict environments she created in her studio. She designed each to resemble an ordinary household space reflecting the mental state or personality of its unseen occupant. Jeffrey V. Martin prefers black and white imagery, but instead focuses on symbolic arrangements of everyday objects. Sally Mann photographs her own children outside her Virginia home, but adjusts their poses and gestures in provocative ways that hint at the approach of adulthood and the inevitable loss of innocence.

Click here for a checklist of photography in this exhibition.