VII Photo Agency

vii by Ed Kashi
September 1 – October 7, 2011
Opening night: Thursday, September 15, 2011, 6:30pm
featuring a discussion with Stephen Mayes at 7pm
VII Gallery, New York

Ed Kashi talks to Stephen Mayes about some surprising discoveries made while re-editing several decades of work as an eminent photojournalist.
Pictures of people reacting to the camera are often discarded as uncomfortable reminders that the photojournalist’s camera can be an intrusion into the world it observes. These previously unseen images pulled from Kashi’s outtakes reveal the world looking right back at him, directly engaging us with his subjects in an array of spontaneous responses to the camera. The pictures are startling in their honesty, telling us much about the subjects and even more about the photographer and the practice of photojournalism. Kashi and Mayes will discuss the exhibition and the questions it raises about the assumed neutrality and invisibility of the photographer, our own role as viewers and the assumptions we make about the world as we see it in photographs.