Brian Piper, Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator for Photography, spoke with photographer Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. Brown’s work is featured in the exhibition New Photography: Create, Collect, Compile.

New Photography presents the work of four photographers, all of whom work with, and critique, these new practices in photography. Unified by their understanding of the photograph as an ambiguous messenger, each of these artists creates, collects, or compiles photographs to trace narratives about identity, community, and power. These narratives are then presented in forms that invite us to consider the relationship between photographs and the spaces in which they are taken or viewed. Collectively, they assert that photography, as it currently exists, is a kind of open-source language.

Elliott Jerome Brown, Jr. (American, b. 1993) creates a photography installation that invites us to relate imaginatively to the world in each photograph and reminds us that while photography is often about selection and collection, it is also always about omission and dispersion.

New Photography is on view at NOMA November 6, 2020 through March 7, 2021.

Virtual programs at NOMA are made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this video do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.