For Zoe Leonard, photography is greater than just using a camera. Photography can be a way of pondering, seeing and interacting.
He continues this focus in his latest series Al río/To the river in Musuem of Modern Art.
The works of Leonardo, an American artist involved in photography, sculpture and installation, are diverse in material, but at all times perfectly matched to the role of photography in ordering and understanding the world.
Interested in the role of photography in mapping and archiving, Leonard often turns her camera towards the quiet and on a regular basis.
Leonard took photos brick houses, with closed windows and doors; and tree trunks urgent against fences. IN Analog (1998–2009) observes the changing urban fabric of New York and the global movement of recycled objects and textiles at second-hand stalls.
Queer politics also influences her work. Strange Fruit (1992-1997), a group of fruit skins sewn along with thread, zippers and buttons, refers to loss, mourning and repair – tributes to the many individuals who died in the early days of the AIDS crisis, including a lot of Leonard’s friends.
She is maybe best known for I would like a presidenta piece she typed in 1992. This work gained latest life on a big scale installation on the New York highline during the 2016 US election, the same yr Leonard began photographing the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande.
Movement and displacement
Al río/To the River examines the section of river referred to as the Rio Grande in the United States and the Rio Bravo in Mexico. The river marks the politically contentious border between the U.S. and Mexico. Al río/To the river consists of photographs taken in 2016–2022 along this river/border, however it isn’t an odd document.
The images in Al río/To the River suggest narratives of movement and displacement. They suggest the basic noise of surveillance, industry and commerce. They observe the durability of trees, soil and birds, the movement of water, and the stiffness of partitions and bridges.
As with most of Leonardo’s works, human figures are sometimes in a roundabout way represented. Instead, their presence and stories are felt through objects, structures, stays.
In one painting, Leonard shows us the afterlife of a cleansing broom resting on a border. The broom suggests the cleansing work of employees who always cross the barrier between the two countries.
The exhibition is a fancy portrait of a border that trades in traces. In one photo sequence, Leonard focuses on tire tracks and rakes left on the ground by police cars. Another photo shows discarded tires attached to a rope, utilized by border patrol to level the soil to indicate signs of escaping bodies.
The next sequence of black and white photographs shows the lines of a farm field and a flock of flying birds. At the end of the sequence, birds in flight almost fill the frame.
These moments of beauty and movement provide a break from other photographs documenting the stiffness of fences and partitions, the sharpness of barbed wire.
There is not any single vision of the river here. There is rawness, but additionally beauty, surveillance and escape.
Fragments of the whole
Although most modest scale photographs are black and white gelatin prints, there are also color photographs. The color appears in a sequence of photos of vivid pink flowers blooming on the ground and in a set of close-up shots of the turbulent brown water of a river.
At the end of the exhibition, a series of iPhone photos document a live feed from Leonardo’s laptop of individuals migrating across the bridge.
All these photographs must be understood together: each is a layer or fragment of a more complex image.
Leonardo’s viewpoint is unstable and changing. Leonard photographed from either side of the river. Sometimes she pointed the camera towards the sky, at the ominous helicopters hovering in the air. Other times she observes what’s at her feet, or the cars standing in line in front of her at border crossings.
These points of view are, after all, Leonardo’s own. He emphasizes this by deciding to not crop the black fringe of the negative. This thin black frame from the unexposed fringe of the negative film reminds us that these photos don’t give us direct access to the river/border. Our access is mediated – framed – by the camera and Leonardo’s position.
The lens flare in a single photo reminds us that these photos are the results of the relationship between the lens, the sun, and Leonardo’s finger on the camera shutter.
Al río/To the River is organized around a set of rooms and divided into passages that reflect the flow of the river it observes. The exhibition offers each spatial and visual experiences.
In one room, windows overlook Sydney Harbour, which meets the river complex story. The wall in the same room is roofed with a grid of 34 photographs: an echo of the photographic contact sheet, again showing how Leonard raises the matter, form and scale of photography in conversation with questions on the politics of looking.
