So the Story Goes: Photographs by Tina Barney, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, and Larry Sultan
September 16-December 3, 2006
Regenstein Hall

Overview: Photography has always been the perfect medium for recording one’s life. Contemporary artists Tina Barney, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, and Larry Sultan use their own daily experiences as their inspiration and offer viewers a glimpse into their private realities. Just as no two people keep the same diary, each of these five photographers has created highly personal, shifting, and intriguing visions of his or her life.

Tina Barney photographs her close family and friends, and her photographs have the look of spontaneous snapshots, even in cases in which she directed the scene and used her own family members as her “actors.” Philip-Lorca diCorcia brings together images of his family made over two decades in his project A Storybook Life, but since the photographs are not labeled or ordered by date, we are left to guess at the role each person plays in the drama of his life. Nan Goldin is famous for showing moments of utmost intimacy--funerals, lovemaking, sickness--and before her camera nothing seems off limit. Sally Mann’s family has been her most constant muse and subject; she began photographing her three children in the mid-1980s and poetically preserved their childhood and adolescence. Larry Sultan photographed his aging parents in the series Pictures from Home, capturing the allure and letdown of living the American dream. All of these photographers prompt us to ask how photographs tell a life’s story.

Tina Barney. Jill and Polly in the Bathroom, 1987. Restricted gift of the Auxiliary Board; Susan and Doug Lyons; Robert H. Glaze; Mary and Leigh Block Fund. Copyright 2005 Tiny Barney, courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.

Curator: Katherine Bussard, assistant curator of photography

Catalogue: A 128-page catalogue will accompany So the Story Goes, published by Yale University Press. The publication will feature an introductory essay by exhibition curator Katherine Bussard and entries on each of the five artists as well as full-color reproductions.

Related Event: "Snap: The First Photography Benefit Gala," September 15, 2006. Join the invitation list for the event.

Organizer: The Art Institute of Chicago