There is a particular power to photography displayed in a gallery.
A gallery space is both communal and private. We see something, our head and heart respond, and we intimate the responses of others. The design of the exhibition, which includes everything from the color of the walls to ambient sound to the work itself, when done well, enhance the aesthetic or purpose of the work. With luck, we are moved, perhaps even overwhelmed.
“The End of Democracy in Five Acts”
An exhibition at The Gallatin Galleries in New York City, curated by Keith Miller and Lauren Walsh
Review by W. Scott Olsen
Whatever the work may be about, our reaction is personal. But—and here’s a thing to remember—our personal reaction is experienced in a public space, even if we’re alone in the gallery. Whatever we feel is in a context that asks us to connect our soul with our place, our context, our environment, our location, and our communities.
In other words, gallery exhibitions get into our feet as well as our heads. What was then and there, is also here and now.
There is an exhibition currently on display in The Gallatin Galleries at New York University (1 Washington Place, New York City) called The End of Democracy in Five Acts, which runs from September 9 until October 14, 2024. The exhibition includes images from five photographers, documenting responses to attacks on democracy in El Salvador, Kenya, Poland, Philippines, and India. These are not attacks with guns. These are the insidious attacks forwarded through legislation, courts, police, and surveillance technology. And while not a single image is set in New York, standing in the gallery it’s impossible to look at the work and not realize your head and your feet are in the same place.
As the exhibition booklet explains:
Almost a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, the most optimistic promises heralded by the twentieth century seem to be at an inflection point. Among them is electoral democracy as a sign of greater freedom, representation, and transparency. A number of countries have ceded ground to authoritarian right-wing forces not through violence or corruption, but instead through constitutionally sound and electorally justified paths. While this is not a new phenomenon, it seems to have specific contemporary attributes such as the use of new modes of propaganda and publicity, enhanced by social media’s ability to create “alternate truths,” massive online armies to foster a sense of destabilization in citizens, and rippling angry nationalistic populism.
The show was curated by the Gallatin School of Individualized Study professors Keith Miller and Lauren Walsh. The original idea was Miller’s, who then got in touch with Walsh. With the election season ramping up, political conversation and its implications in the United States reached a type of critical mass in their heads and the idea was to show the threat is global.
As Walsh explains,
We started narrowing down which countries we were interested in highlighting, particularly thinking about how we wanted to show that this was global. So, not just Europe or not just South America. From there, we identified six or seven countries. Keith was already in contact with Agata from Poland, and I know photojournalists around the world, so we started doing the outreach to see what would work and what kinds of images these journalists had.
For the exhibition, the gallery is divided into five spaces, a bit like three sided rooms, one for each photographer. The images are presented on foam core instead of fine-art framing, and there is a journalistic caption for each image. These captions establish context and situation. The walls are dark gray/blue, which enhances the effect of the spot lighting on the photographs.
Across from the images, on a wall that also contains windows looking out on the street, brief essays give history and allow for the oftentimes complicated and nuanced narratives to be explained. For example, the essay “Narendra Modi and the Future of Democracy in India” by Kapil Komireddi, across from the images by Jit Chattopadhyay, begins:
Narendra Modi did not stage a coup. He was lofted into power a decade ago in a free election. Once in office, he exhibited a disciplined outward commitment to the norms of democracy while vandalizing its vital organs. From the armed forces, which had always remained insulated from politics, to the central bank, whose independence was deemed sacrosanct by successive governments; from the Election Commission, which oversaw largely free and fair elections for six decades, to the network of public universities where young Indians from differing backgrounds mobilized against Hindu nationalism; and from the judiciary, which acted as the guardian of the Constitution and once likened Modi to Nero, to the free press that numbered among the world’s most vibrant—Modi succeeded in eroding the autonomy of virtually every institution that could act as a check on his authority or amplify his abuse of it. Modi’s success is a reminder that institutions are not self-animating instruments. How they function is contingent upon those who people them.
Reading the essays—each of them by accomplished writers and compelling stories—and watching New Yorkers walk by the windows (and currently scaffolding on the building’s exterior) makes a powerful connection to here and now.
The photographers are Hannah Reyes Morales (Philippines), Samson Otieno (Kenya), Jit Chattopadhyay (India), Fred Ramos (El Salvador), and Agata Szymanska-Medina (Poland). Every one of them has found a way to give a visual voice to an otherwise invisible culture change. Some of the images are portraits, with captions explaining a situation, such as Polish judge Krystian Markiewicz, who stood against anti-democratic reforms and thus became a target of a hate campaign. Other images include people being arrested, police dispersing crowds, an anti-government protester carrying a burning tire to a roadblock, and television news anchors on set.
Some of the images have the built-in drama of street confrontations. Most of the images are quieter, and when you read the captions, they reveal something more permanent and dangerous.
According to Walsh,
One of the big challenges was: how do you make a concept like the decline of democracy visible? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is there are a number of ways to make it visible. And then the challenge became, we want to show that there are different means through which democracy can be eroded, so we needed to make sure that the sets of images didn’t look too similar. We want the audience to see parallels and resonances across countries without portraying exact replications in how this phenomenon plays out. The photographers sent wide edits to us, and then we narrowed it down to the photographs in the show.
Standing in a small gallery on an early autumn afternoon, I found the exhibition to be wide-ranging, illuminating, and compelling. The images, of course, are troubling and demand a response, personal or public. The essays are insightful.
Again, from the exhibition booklet:
To be aware that threats against democracy are not isolated to a given country or region can be empowering. The goal with this exhibition is to make palpable the reality that has been transformed under contemporary conditions. Leaving these harmful forms of politics unaddressed seems only to ensure the success of oppressive, antidemocratic, and regressive regimes.
If you cannot make it to New York before the exhibit closes, although the gallery presentation is a deeper and more immediate experience, the exhibition, images and essays can also be found here.
Cynthia Gladis
October 7, 2024 at 15:53
I’m very glad to have seen this exhibit and gotten more exposure to photojournalism. These photos were powerful but also quite beautiful.