iPhoneographer Dixon Hamby, whose tweet I followed to find this, said it best.
“This is sad.”
We are using the past tense, because the eyephoneography #1 show has now been suspended. It was supposed to last until October 1st, but the 48 exhibited images that had attracted so much interest in the past days were torn down by some people of the HUB-Madrid. It was a raptus of inexplicable madness that we are still digesting and thinking how to deal with.
This actually sickens me that people associated with an artistic hub would consider or allow such disrespect for the art displayed.
In a comment on their original post, the curators of the exhibit further explained:
We can’t say much due to the legal consequences of the act, which are being studied by our attorney. We cannot provide you with an explanation either since we weren’t the originators.
Here are some facts. We knew that in the two weeks of the exhibit (17/9-1/10) some events would have taken place during the evenings (when the HUB is closed to the public) . The photos could stay if the organizers of the other events agreed and we were to take them down if they didn’t. We also had the option of re-installing them once the evening event was over. We had already obtained agreements for the Monday 20/9 and Thurs 23/9 events but those organizing the event on Wed 22/9 wanted them down. We had until 7:00 pm of 21/9 to take down the show. For the morning we had arranged some important meetings with the director of PhotoEspana, the curator of photography of the FNAC Spain, and a curator of the Reina Sofia Museum. We would say that considering also the exposure on the cultural pages of “El Mundo” and “La Repubblica” two of the most read newspapers in Spain and Italy, and all the other agencies and art magazines that you can see in the right column of this blog, mobile photography never had that kind of exposure before in the art world.
Anyway we had already arranged to take down the images after the meetings to re-install them the day after.
However, all the photos were torn off in the morning and we had to cancel the meetings. No calls, no emails, no messages. The images had been mounted naked full bleed on 3mm dibond. Imagine how delicate they were. We found them piled up on a table like trash. Smudges, scratches, some attached with double-face tape one on top of other. A real tragedy. And believe it or not, we haven’t received an explanation.
Click here for the entire post on the eyephoneography website.
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