The Outsiders AGO Exhibition

Cookie- Nan Goldin

The AGO’s newest exhibition The Outsiders kicks off AGO’s year of photography and is a pre- Contact Festival treat.  Curated by Jim Shedden and Sophie Hackett, the American photography exhibition has more than 500 photographs by 10 different photographers such as Gordon Parks, Diane Arbus, and Robert Frank; the artist who inspired many of these photographers with his book The Americans, which depicted the current state of American life. The images correspond with the life which surrounded the art ists at the time of the 1950’s-1980s. These  periods of social and economic change is they wanted to document for their generation.

Centennial Ball Gary Winogrand

Curator Sophie Hackett expanded saying that current visuals of the American life did not reflect their world. There are stories told such as the struggle of black lives or the domestic violence and junkie culture portrayed by Goldin, but as Sophie explains, the photographer used various subjects to convey their message whether it was the actual subject, aesthetic or the photographer as the subject themselves.