Lecture: How photography became art

Photography has never had an easy time in art. Since the late 19th century, its relationship with other visual practices has been a contest for status: who has more right to be called art. Then came war. First one, then another.

In the 1950s a new arena for contemporary art appeared in Kassel, Germany: documenta. It was here that photography took its place among the other arts, and for decades curators argued that it was not painting’s younger sister but an independent and influential medium.

Volodymyr Tarasov will explain how photography won its place in 20th-century art, why documenta was a turning point, and how those events still shape the way we understand photography.