Photographing the exhibition: notes on documentation
Why documenting an exhibition well is almost as important as putting it up, and what gets lost when we don’t.
Every time we take down an exhibition, we’re left with the same feeling: something is gone forever. The works go back to their artists or their collectors. The space empties out. What remains are the photographs.
And yet documentation is always the last thing on the priority list. There’s hanging to do, lighting to set, texts to write, the opening to host. Photographic documentation gets done in a rush, with whatever we have—sometimes at the end, when the light is no longer right.
This year we decided to change that. We hired a photographer, Marta, with enough time and no rush. We asked her to photograph not only the works but the space, the relationships between pieces, the details that usually no one records.
The result was different. Not only technically better: narratively richer. The photos tell something about the exhibition that the works alone don’t.
Now we think documentation should be considered part of the exhibition itself. Not as an after-the-fact record, but as a parallel interpretation.