Inscrutable

What lies beneath the unreadable? What happens when clarity becomes elusive? Inscrutable asks photographic artists to explore ambiguity, opacity, mystery, and the unknowable through the lens. We looked for work that resists easy interpretation—images that conceal more than they reveal, that provoke questions without offering answers.

We asked artists to consider the words of William Klein: “What would please me most is to make photographs as incomprehensible as life”, to consider the facades we present to the world, the cryptic nature of certain landscapes or structures, the tension between documentation and distortion, or the power of abstraction and silence in visual language.

Photographs have been used to lead and mislead almost since the invention of photography. And this can happen even if it was not the photographer’s intent when the image was created. Once a photograph is out in the world, we’ve seen many times where the image comes to symbolize something the artist never intended.

We also find there are times when we find it difficult to discern the artist’s intent. Would this be the fault of the photographer? Of the viewer? Or both?

Of course, Photoshop and now AI have radically changed the game when it comes to deception. But is advanced technology all that’s necessary to deceive us? Doesn’t lighting and camera angles alter the perception of an image?

Or maybe, it’s that we stop to ask these questions is what engages us in the first place…

Juror: Alyssa Ortega Coppelman