Telling Tales: Contemporary Narrative Photography

Telling Tales presents a survey of work by artists who record stories through pictures, whether real or imagined. Sixteen groundbreaking photographers are featured, including such greats as Gregory Crewdson, Nan Goldin, Jessica Todd Harper, Erwin Olaf and others, with photographs spanning the early 1970s to the present.

While some contemporary artists explore photographic imagery as it is mediated by technology, these artists exploit photography’s ability to present a momentary, frozen narrative. Images are staged for the camera or highly manipulated through digital processes, yet they often resemble a casual snapshot or movie still. Primarily in color and often large-scale, the photographs reference everything from classical painting and avant-garde cinema to science fiction illustration and Alfred Hitchcock.