CURATOR CHARLOTTE COTTON
Charlotte
Cotton
"I commend all of the contributing photographers for being open and honest about their working practices and speaking intentionally and directly to their fellow photographers. Through this combination of newly made work, reflections on previous projects, and works-in-progress, we gain insight into this group's determination, urgency, and resourcefulness."
"At the core of curating is the pledge to take care of people and their creativity."
- Curator of Photographs, Victoria and Albert Museum
- Head of Programming, The Photographers' Gallery, London
- Curator and Head, Wallis Annenberg Photography Dept, LACMA
- Curator-in-Residence, Katonah Museum of Art, NY
- Curator-in-Residence, ICP, New York
- California Museum of Photography, Riverside
- The Photograph as Contemporary Art — 4th edition, 2020
- Photography is Magic
- Then Things Went Quiet
- Guy Bourdin — Venice Biennale
- Imperfect Beauty — V&A
- Founder, wordswithoutpictures.org & EitherAnd.org
Career highlights so far, Charlotte?
Sitting at a dinner table back in the early 2000s with Henri Cartier-Bresson and William Eggleston. I mean, that doesn't happen every day.
Greatest inspirations?
Other people. I'm a curator through and through. You don't do anything alone and you create for others. At the core of curating is the pledge to "take care" of people and their creativity.
Tell us about your creative process, how did you come up with the theme and the selection of artists?
The exhibition Close Enough shows the working processes of twelve women photographers who are or have been part of the Magnum collective. My curation has focused on creating visual and textual conversations between the photographers, their motivations, and their relationships with their photographic subjects. It's an intentionally very open and honest exhibition thanks to these incredible photographers who have been willing to reveal their questioning and deliberations. My aim has been to create a highly relatable set of conversations for visitors, anticipating that they also make pictures and similarly deliberate the big questions of why we make photographs now.
"Choosing the right form or platform for the voice is essential. The challenge of all curating is to stay true to the intention, to not overcomplicate or over-burden the form."
As a curator, what is the greatest challenge in presenting a voice?
I don't think of it as a challenge but primarily an honor to channel the energy and character of authored creative journeys. I think the challenge of all curating is to stay true to the intention, to not overcomplicate or over-burden the form of an exhibition, book, or live program. Choosing the right form or platform for the voice is essential.
What are you hoping people will feel, or learn from visiting the exhibition?
I hope visitors will feel inspired and galvanized by the honesty and openness of the remarkable photographers participating in this exhibition. Their resourcefulness and determination has been what I have felt most strongly throughout this journey with them.
Advice for first-time photography collectors?
Choose what compels you and what you want to live with. I don't think you have to commit to a collecting strategy until you run out of wall space.
Sabiha Cimen, Students playing with a colour smoke bomb during a picnic event, from Hafiz, 2017. © Sabiha Cimen / Magnum Photos
Magnum Photos is a cooperative of acclaimed, independent photographers who share an ongoing commitment to documenting world events, people, places, daily life, and culture. Founded in 1947, Magnum Photos has been telling stories of the past, defining the present, and shaping the future through photography for over 75 years, united by its values of uncompromising excellence, truth, respect, and independence. With more than 6.6 million followers across the internet, and a rolling program of museum shows, exhibitions, and events across the globe, Magnum photographers continue to inspire a growing worldwide audience. Follow: @magnumphotos
Why this exhibition, and this conversation, matter
There are curators who organise shows and curators who create conditions for honesty. Charlotte Cotton belongs to the second category. Close Enough is not an exhibition about the greatest hits of twelve distinguished careers. It is an exhibition about process, about deliberation, about the questions that photographers ask themselves before they press the shutter and after. That is a far harder thing to exhibit than finished work, and it requires a particular kind of trust between curator and photographer.
Cotton has spent twenty-five years building exactly that kind of trust. She has held some of the most significant photography curatorial positions in the world, written the book that shaped how contemporary photography is understood in ten languages, and consistently used her platform to ask the question that underlies all of her work: why do we make photographs now?
Close Enough is her answer to that question, given through the voices of twelve women whose work has defined what Magnum looks like in the 21st century. We are glad this conversation happened. Go and see the exhibition.
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Myriam Boulos, “I love you to death” on a seat of the abandoned Versailles theater, Beirut, Lebanon, November 16, 2013. © Myriam Boulos / Magnum Photos
Carolyn Drake, Lucy with Azaleas, from Knit Club, 2018. © Carolyn Drake / Magnum Photos
Alessandra Sanguinetti, Buenos Aires Province, from The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer, 2001. © Alessandra Sanguinetti / Magnum Photos