“Visual Vernaculars: An Ode to Everyday Images”
Robin Coste Lewis
EXHIBITION ON VIEW
August 2023 — August 2024
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019
Poet Robin Coste Lewis’ newest exhibition, Visual Vernaculars, highlights the role photography can play in the construction of a self-image, giving form to interrelated social identities, relationships, and communities. The gallery draws from the Museum of Modern Art’s expansive collection of photographs, often termed “vernacular” because of their relationship to forms of expression beyond formal fine art contexts. The exhibit will be on display through August 2024.
During her residency as part of the Ford Foundation Scholars in Residence, Coste Lewis expressed an interest in the Museum’s holdings of photography. Her recent book, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness (2022), explores poetry, photography, and human migration through the photographic vernacular of her own family.
The introduction of the Kodak camera in 1888 facilitated a veritable explosion of photographic production in everyday life. Visual Vernaculars unites intimate portraits and touching snapshots alongside a selection of works inflected by the logic of the everyday. Coste Lewis wrote a number of texts that were inspired by the artworks on view.
“Speaking directly to the pictures on view, her poetic ruminations reveal the role of photography in the construction of a self-image, giving form to interrelated social identities, relationships, and communities,” says Associate Curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo.
The collection explores how photography is as much an art and technology of reproduction as it is a profound philosophy. Photography is such a rare and fluid thing, both technology and art form, in its ability to be and do many things. As exemplified by Visual Vernaculars, photography can pose philosophical questions, tell a visual joke, or play with perception.
“Visual Vernaculars: An Ode to Everyday Images” in on view at MoMA through August 2024.
