Love Songs

What Makes It Great? / Featured / June 29, 2023

By Elin Spring

You know that moment when you stop holding your breath and let yourself exhale? And the sense of urgency and contentment that follows with your next inhalation? I think that’s a good analogy for our current cultural moment. All around, I sense a vital quest for connection, whether at a park or a Broadway play, a ballet performance or jazz concert, in a grocery line or on a dog walk. Perhaps this ubiquitous determination to connect with others is our collective inhalation, a manifestation of the craving and exhilaration that follows the suffocating deprivation of the pandemic. One such incarnation of that longing is “Love Songs: Photography & Intimacy,” an exhibition conceived as a mixtape of songs gifted to a lover. A gathering of series dating from 1950 to 2022 by sixteen contemporary international artists, “Love Songs” mines the nuances and complexities of desire and intimacy at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City through September 11^th, 2023.

Installation view of Leigh Ledare’s Double Bind in “Love Songs” at the ICP in NYC (photo by Elin Spring).

Although the longing for intimacy is at the core of this diverse exhibition, one of its repeated themes is the idea of different perspectives. Whether images converse within a series or between artists, the desire for connection is often explored through its contradictions. The stage is set at the start of the show by American Leigh Ledare’s 2010 conceptual project Double Bind. Conceived and scripted based on an existing relationship triangle, Ledare traveled to a remote cabin with his ex-wife and photographed her over four days. Then, she duplicated the same scenario, but with her new husband (also a photographer). Ledare printed both sets of B&W images and mounted his on black mattes and the new husband’s on white mattes, displaying them in alternating frames for maximum comparative effect.

Installation view of Leigh Ledare’s Double Bind in “Love Songs” at the ICP in NYC (photo by Elin Spring).

I’m guessing this intriguing and obviously painstaking process was intended to impress viewers with the differences in point of view, but for me it had the opposite effect. The photographs are essentially interchangeable. My takeaway is: love is love is love. This large and diverse exhibit bears me out, demonstrating that love’s myriad forms share fundamental human emotions without regard to nationality, race or gender.

Installation view of Sentimental Journey, 1971, by Nobuyoshi Araki, courtesy of MEP, Paris and ICP, NYC (photo by Elin Spring).

Organized in collaboration with Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), both the Parisian curators and Sara Raza, ICP curator of Love Songs, sought a broad range of artists and approaches. Ledare’s set piece proves to be an effective point of departure. In another study of contrasts, Nobuyoshi Araki’s 1971 Sentimental Journey recounts a youthful infatuation on his honeymoon along one wall of a long hallway, with the opposite wall displaying his 1989 Winter Journey, the tender visual journal of his wife’s untimely illness and death.

From the series The Eye of Love, 1952, by René Groebli, courtesy of MEP, Paris and ICP, NYC.

Mirroring either end of Araki’s lifespan, René Groebli’s 1952 The Eye of Love is a graceful and nuanced ode to his wife on their honeymoon while Sally Mann’s 1990’s series Proud Flesh expresses a profound love, admiration, and empathy for her longtime husband stricken with Muscular Dystrophy. Using an antiquated wet-plate collodion process, Mann embraces the random effects and imperfections of this technique to symbolize the ravages of disease. In contrast, Nan Goldin’s iconic diary The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1973-86) utilizes color, flash and skewed camera angles to chronicle the artist’s wild and violent young love affairs with a raw frankness that she shares with Mann, but to strikingly different effect.

Installation view of “Hephaestus”, 2008 from the series Proud Flesh by Sally Mann, courtesy of the artist and Gagosian (photo by Elin Spring).

“Nan and Brian in Bed, New York City, 1983” from The Ballad of Sexual Dependency by Nan Goldin, courtesy of MEP, Paris.

The perspectives of these internationally renowned photographers discourse with an engaging range of views by emerging artists from across the globe. This generation’s imagery features more diverse gender identities and relationships, using a fresh mix of techniques that often incorporate the written word.

Installation view from the series On War and Love, 2006, by Fouad Elkoury, courtesy of the artist and ICP, NYC (photo by Elin Spring).

In his 2006 series On War and Love, Fouad Elkoury draws parallels between Lebanon’s 33-day war with Israel and the demise of his relationship with his girlfriend in diaristic images and journal entries tracing both conflicts. Conversely, the Chinese/Japanese duo RongRong&inri’s 2000 project Personal Letters tracks the blossoming of their love story across a geographical divide in co-created, passionate correspondences.

From the series Personal Letters, 2000, by RongRong&inri, courtesy of the artists and ICP, NYC.

“Conditions” 2018, by Clifford Prince King, courtesy of the artist and STARS, Los Angeles.

Inner conflict, yearning, rage, and rebellion are rendered with youthful explosions of color: Clifford Prince King’s imagery of queer Black love and liberation harbors charged metaphors; Lin Zhipeng (aka No. 223)’s playful images reject the Chinese government’s authoritarian grip in Photographed Colors of Love; Motoyuki Daifu freezes the cacophony of his young adopted family’s mundane daily activities in his large-scale, high-impact and paradoxically exalting Lovesody (2008); Aikaterini Gegisian’s 2019 series of collages, Handbook of the Spontaneous Other, features jarring juxtapositions of found magazine and pornographic images in an explosive feminist treatise against commodification.

Installation view of “Mask & Cherry” 2011, from the series Photographed Colors of Love by Lin Zhipeng (No. 223), courtesy of the artist and MEP, Paris (photo by Elin Spring, with apologies for reflections).

Installation view from the series Lovesody, 2008, by Motoyuki Daifu, courtesy of MEP, Paris (photo by Elin Spring, with apologies for reflections).

Installation view from the series Handbook of the Spontaneous Other, 2019 by Aikaterini Gegisian, courtesy of the artist and ICP, NYC (photo by Elin Spring, with apologies for reflections).

In muted counterpoint, Iranian-born Sheree Hovsepian’s mellifluous mixed media works combine fragments of photographed female contours with earth-toned pieces of string, ceramic and wood in compositions that seem at once visually and geometrically unified. In bridging two cultures with drastically opposing views of the female body, Hovsepian portrays the ultimate bond of finding peace with oneself in a chaotic and polarized world.

Installation view of “Euclidean Space” 2022, mixed media work by Sheree Hovsepian, courtesy of the artist and ICP, NYC (photo by Elin Spring).

Love Songs is a big show and happily does not fall prey to cataloging “types” of love in laundry-list fashion. Rather, the curators have cherry-picked sixteen contemporary international photographers whose passionate depictions each delve deeply into the idea of intimate human connection: Nobuyoshi Araki, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Motoyuki Daifu, Fouad Elkoury, Aikaterini Gegisian, Nan Goldin, René Groebli, Hervé Guibert, Sheree Hovsepian, Clifford Prince King, Leigh Ledare, Lin Zhipeng (No. 223), Sally Mann, RongRong&inri, Collier Schorr, and Karla Hiraldo Voleau.