Off the Wall

With no inherent relation to scale, materiality, or context, the photographic image is a response to not only its subject but also the myriad possible forms it can take. After image “capture” comes output, and the choices of output are almost unlimited. The image might be printed on the pages of books and magazines, blown up into billboards or murals, incorporated into sculpture, painted over, collaged, projected, illuminated, compressed, digitized, or networked. And none of these formats need be definitive: the image can (and very often does) change shape, adapt, evolve, and exist in different states simultaneously.

For photography, the space of exhibition has frequently been an arena for experimentation and a forum for exploring relations to associated fields such as graphic design, architecture, and networked tools of communication. The image itself is only part of the equation; the form it takes is critical to determining