This is the press-conference on the opening of the latest installements on this ongoing series of exhibitions. New Photography was started 30 years ago by John Szarkowski when the times were very different: It is nowadays a herculanean attempt to get a grip on what’s going on in photography right now.

At least from these remarks, I don’t have any idea if they did a good job with navigating this ocean: You get the usual art-bla-bla and name-droppping(the “liquid image”, quoting Jeff Wall, although he said that in a completely different context and had a very precise idea of what he meant, not this wishy-washy metaphor of the “ocean of images”; the post-internet age, which is basically just a summary for the people for which the internet has become something that is “just there” and is no longer a topic in itself), evasive answers to the selection-process: At least from this press-conference I got the impression that they have no idea why they selected one photographer and left out another. But maybe, that is the theme here: That there no theme here and no concept.

Still, it’s the MoMa, so if you want to know what goes on and what will sell in the upcoming years, you probably have to look at that…

PS: And let me add here, that I have absolutely no idea why they have chosen the Oskar Schlemmer image as a background. Quentin Bajac briefly mentions Kracauer, but from this remark I cannot really defer if this is just a name-dropping or if there is an actual connection between Kracauer/Schlemmer/Bauhaus and this exhibition: From what I got he’s only using it to show the continuity of this feeling of being overwhelmed by a torrent of images. Is this just sloppy or am I just not understanding something here?!