WHEN I WAS OLDER
On View: July 28 - August 11, 2023
Location: Contact Photo (51 Porter Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237)
Opening: July 28, 6 pm - 9 pm
Contact Photo is pleased to present a summer group exhibition WHEN I WAS OLDER, showcasing 11 artists who have been working closely with The Film Lab at Contact Photo: Boris Apple, Iman Bordji, Ashley Curcuru, Niko Devera, Raphaël Gaultier, Sofia Kayumova, Kristina Kiseleva, Yaejin Lee, Irma Mauro, Sara Messinger, and Chris Perez.
Organized by Jorge Garcia and Bora Kim, this exhibition is the very first edition of Contact Photo’s Young Photo Series, an exhibition program that aims to highlight emerging photographers.
Originally a line from Alfonso Cuarón’s 2018 film Roma and later adopted as the title of Billie Eilish’s song, the title of this exhibition WHEN I WAS OLDER invites multiple interpretations. For some, it may simply be a speech error, where someone meant to say “When I was younger” or “When I am older.” For others, the phrase may evoke the concept of reincarnation, although the suggestion that the speaker remembers their past life conjures uncanny feelings. It could also imply a possibility of a world where time flows non-linearly. Attempting to capture ephemeral moments of love and youth, the exhibited photographs reflect on photography’s power to reveal our complex and tangled relationship to time as mortal beings. As John Berger puts it, “Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.”
Whether it is Niko Devera’s abstracted portraits of intimacy, Yaejin Lee’s playful snapshots at a desolate urban beach, or Raphaël Gaultier’s rhythmical shot of couples outside of a New York City bodega, the young figures in the photographs have precarious quality to them. In Iman Bordji’s close-up bodies embracing each other on the floor and in Sofia Kayumova’s aerial view of a couple holding hands, subjects seem easily breakable.
This is also the case with Chris Perez’s portrait of a young girl, originally a part of The Atlantic’s 2022 American Saturday Night Series: Harlem Block Party. Taken out of the original context, it creates an interesting juxtaposition with other subjects in the exhibition, as well as Kristina Kiseleva and Ashley Curcuru’s seemingly calm but slightly skewed urban landscapes.
Collectively, they capture the vulnerable state of youth as well as the fragile condition of individuals as they try to connect with someone, which is expressed not only through the subjects shown in the frames but in the young energy of the photographers that bleeds into their photographs. That energy is sensitive, hopeful, and vital, but at the same time, hazy, susceptible, and lost. Enriched by this tension, the exhibited works give us a peek into the generation whose first language is image and show us how comfortable they are in using that language to express their relationship with the world, time, and their loved ones.
*Image by Niko Devera.