Photography exhibition to open on Sunday

Manama, Apr. 8 (BNA): The Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Center for Culture and Heritage is pleased to announce the group photography exhibition titled “DO YOU TRUST ME?” The exhibition will open on Sunday, 9 April 2017 at 7pm at the Bin Matar House in Muharraq. The edict that we are increasingly becoming a visual culture has never been more true – 2 billion new images and photographs are uploaded on social media every day around the world and circulated widely and indiscriminately. The advent of digital photography and smartphones equipped with increasingly sophisticated cameras and digital processing software has made taking photographs every easier. Now, it seems, everyone is a photographer. In the age of fake news and alternative facts, the exhibition DO YOU TRUST ME? explores the meaning of truth, reality and trust usually associated with the medium of photography. Questioning the choice and framing of subject matters, the editing of photographic series to create meaning and the photoshopping of individual images to change meaning, the circulation of images and the context within which they are seen, 13 artists confront the meaning of their photographic practice and the extent to which trust plays a role in the way their work is perceived. The participating artists are Asma Murad, Bader Al Balawi, Camille Zakharia, Enas Sistani, Ghada Khunji, Hanan Al Khalifa, Hesham Al Ammal, Janan Habib, Mai Al Moataz, Marwa Al Khalifa, Simon Impey, Tamara Pachachi, Wafa Al Ghatam Designed by the Goethe-Institut Gulf Region in cooperation with expert photographers and curators for photography exhibitions, DO YOU TRUST ME? is a photography project that questions the authenticity and reality traditionally associated with the medium of photography. DO YOU TRUST ME? takes a critical look at photographs, questioning the credibility and rendition of reality in photography both in journalism as well as in art. In times of social media and fast moving news, photographs and short videos are circulating at an uncontrollable speed. This development challenges and changes traditional journalism as well as the traditional understanding of art. Today the beholder of a picture has to ask more and more if one can trust what one sees. Over a period of six months, the Shaikh Ebrahim Center and the Goethe-Institut explored this subject matter through a series of public lectures, workshop and individual artist critiques. The current exhibition displays the work of artists who participated in this educational program but also other artists who responded to a general open call.