Photoink presents a photo books exhibition

As part of the Delhi Photo Festival 2011, Photoink presents an exhibition of books on photography published by Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. [dated October 2011]

As part of the Delhi Photo Festival 2011, Photoink presents an exhibition of books on photography published by Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. This photo books exhibition has been made possible by the support of Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council. 

Books by Fotomuseum Winterthur Edited by Urs Stahel, Director and Curator Fotomuseum Winterthur Discussions and debates on “visual literacy” have been widespread for years now. Early on Umberto Eco remarked that we are entering an era in which visual communication will be at least as important as language—if not more important. This statement is now over twenty years old. In the meantime we have entered into a new visual, networked epoch. In our everyday life, at work, in the media, in the culture of the Internet, we experience the incredible degree to which the word is being replaced by the image; how enormously the word is even repressed by images. Yet we are not being educated in pictures, in understanding pictures, in the language of pictures, in communicating with and manipulating pictures. We are facing the situation that we are all consumers of audiovisual images, but in the end we are all illiterate. So investigating these structures and functions has an eminently educational significance: we must be educated in pictures in order to be outfitted for communication in the present and for the future. 

It is not only crucial to learn to read and understand photographs, but to recognize that photography does not only document events, but also that it very much produces them. In a world saturated by the media, only what is “spoken,” what is shown, what is documented is considered important; everything else does not exist, is not there, not present. Photography produces the world through its image, which we remember and want to remember. Photography generates visual ideas about our world. Photography forms our future images of the world and forms of action. Regarding this the book is one of the very best medias to make us understand photography – and through it reality, our life, the circumstances we are dealing with. 

For more informatin on Fotomuseum, Winterthur click here. 
For more information on Photoink, New Delhi click here.