MOCP presents ‘history’ in Columbia’s ‘backyard’

File ‘Containerabbau,’ a photograph by Peter Dombrowe, is just one of the images featured in ‘Utopia’s Backyard,’ one of two shows in the Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan Ave.

While the photographic exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Open House during Manifest, “Utopia’s Backyard” and “The History of Another,” are the only exhibits at the festival not the work of graduating Columbia students, exhibit curator and associate director of the museum Natasha Egan still believes they serve a purpose for the Columbia student body.

“We are student oriented in more of an educational [way],” Egan said. “We don’t show the students’ work, but the students are here everyday and learn from the exhibitions that we show. That’s our role. The museum is sort of a cultural institution on campus here and we show exhibitions from outside the college—to [show] the students and the viewers the seriousness of the role of photographs in contemporary photography today.”

Added manager of development and marketing for the museum, David Carroll: “The museum was founded in 1984, and it was founded to exhibit, collect and promote contemporary photography. ....We say we are the only museum in the Midwest with the exclusive commitment to the medium of photography.”

The two exhibits to be shown by the museum at Manifest are near-polar opposites, both literally and conceptually.

While it is not uncommon for artists to use the fall of the Roman Empire as an inspiration for their work, New York City-based photographer Shimon Attie takes it a step further with his work, “The History of Another: Projections in Rome.”

“They’re photographs taken in Rome, and what he does is he projects archive images from the turn of the century of Roman Jews taken between 1890 and 1920 and he projects them on to the Roman ruins, in the present day. So they are pictures that deal with very much of a layer of history,” she said.

Attie combines the Roman ruins and 2,000 years of history with the projected image. The images join the present day world, even present day construction and some of the world’s most famous sites.
“They deal very much with history being collapsed into one moment,” Egan said.

The exhibit, started by the museum, will go on tour shortly after completing its run at Columbia on July 2.
Also at the museum during Manifest is “Utopia’s Backyard,” a collection of works based on the belief that Chicago and Hamburg, Germany, are sister cities. The works are from Hamburg-based artists Peter Dombrowe, Jeanne Faust, Beate Gutschow, Peter Piller and Jörn Zehe and are in celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the Hamburg-Chicago Sister Cities Program.

“There’s a lot of events all around Chicago that are dealing with Hamburg and Chicago’s relationship. This is for emerging photographers out of Hamburg and it’s called ‘Utopia’s Backyard’ for the artists in this all have an interesting twist on the idea of utopia,” Egan said.

Check out the Glass Curtain Gallery exhibit of the Master of Fine Arts thesis projects in the 1104 Center, 1104 S. Wabash Ave, and the graduating seniors photography exhibit in the Hokin Gallery and Annex in the Wabash Campus Building, 623 S. Wabash Ave.