Seduced by Art. Photography Past and Present. CaixaForum Barcelona

What is the relationship between historical painting, early photography and the work being done by the most innovative photographers today? To answer this question, Seduced by Art. Photography Past and Present, a new exhibition at CaixaForum Barcelona, places contemporary photographs alongside Old Master painting and early photographic works.

Through the associations suggested by the show, visitors will see how early pioneering photographers claimed traditional “high art” subjects as their own, whilst, similarly, contemporary practitioners have revisited and reinterpreted the content underlying the images created by their predecessors.

Jointly organised with the National Gallery, London, this gaze at the influence that painting has exercised on the great photographers, presented at CaixaForum Barcelona, comprises 130 pieces that all adopt traditional genres -portraiture, nudes, still life and landscape. At the show, visitors will find surprising dialogues between works by such great masters as Turner, Gainsborough, Ingres, Vernet and Fantin-Latour, contemporary artists like Craigie Horsfield, Rineke Dijkstra, Thomas Struth, Richard Learoyd, Ori Gersht and Beate Gütschow, and early 19th-century photographers like Julia Margaret Cameron, Gustave Le Gray and Roger Fenton.

Seduced by Art. Photography Past and Present can be accessed at CaixaForum Barcelona from 22 February to 19 May 2013.     More information in the PDF press release