What Matters Now? Exhibition
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
Hosts: Fred Ritchin, Deborah Willis, Stephen Mayes, Melissa Harris (Wafaa Bilal, not pictured)
Aperture’s inside-out exhibition in-progress What Matters Now? opened in its final form last Saturday night. The five Hosts: Wafaa Bilal, Melissa Harris, Stephen Mayes, Deborah Willis and Fred Ritchin, had two weeks to transform the blank walls of their areas into Proposals for a New Front Page. Their collaborative efforts yielded thought-provoking, outrage-inducing and even hopeful statements about the current state of media and photography. In addition to discussions led by the Hosts, public involvement truly made the exhibition a community effort. The Public wall currently exhibits over one hundred submissions from people worldwide, and those that could not attend the Aperture Gallery space for events and lectures joined the conversation through Twitter, Facebook and the website. The unusual form of the What Matters Now? exhibition was an experiment on Aperture’s part, but one that produced fascinating results. Using Aperture Gallery as a meeting hub, the goal of the exhibition was to start a conversation about what we are looking at, as a society, and why. The weeks’ events and Saturday’s well-attended opening demonstrates that many are concerned with issues regarding the media: particularly trust, engagement and active readership. Fred Ritchin, the creator of What Matters Now?, even plans to continue working on creating a new way of reading, collecting disseminating information.
Although the hosts are no longer adding to their walls, the Public Wall will continue to grow. You can submit images and text online here until Thursday, September 22, 2011.
What Matters Now?: Proposals for a New Front Page
through Saturday, September 24, 2011
10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th floor
New York, New York
