Quentin Bajac - following the artistic practice...

 

Quentin Bajac and Pieter Hugo in Auckland, Jan 2012

French curator Quentin Bajac, the Museum of Modern Art's new chief curator of photography spoke this week to The Wall Street Journal. His comments reflect the changing face and pace of camera based image making in a world where everybody has a camera and is using it, social media dominates and upwards of 250 million images are posted on facebook every day.

The following comments sum up Quentin Bajac's fresh and expansive curatorial view -

Rather than suggest what it would prefer artists to be doing, a photography department, in Mr. Bajac's view, has to reflect what they are actually doing. "Photographers can be nostalgic. Curators cannot. We have to follow the artistic practice."
In his opinion, the museum will in the future "not only be collecting prints but also media installations, files, images made especially for a website. We will have to adapt. Photography is no longer about the wall. The book form is basic to photography. Young photographers are self-publishing. We must be aware of that and work closely with the museum library. There are all these forms that we should collect."
Keeping abreast of the digital revolution, he realizes, will not be easy. "Historians and curators are facing a situation quite different from what John Szarkowski faced in the 1960s. Then, it was about access to images. Today, it's the opposite problem." 

You can read the full text of the WSJ interview HERE.