Group Exhibition Sommes-nous? Tendance Floue

The French collective Tendance Floue (literally
meaning “fuzzy tendency”) offers a new approach to
photojournalism. Sommes-nous? (Are We?) is the
last in a trilogy of innovative publications that
they produced, which freed photography from any
obligation to generate meaning by removing images
from their context and allowing them to form
open-ended narratives. This exhibition draws upon
images from their latest book, which confronts the
subjectivities of its 12 members, by building a
new kind of objectivity that juxtaposes multiple
approaches to photography and eliminates notions
of individual authorship.

Tendance Floue states that: “a photo is not the
goal but the starting point.” Their practice
weaves photographs of places marked by history
with scenes from the everyday, challenging the
viewer to determine if these images belong in the
realm of art or the news. Created in 1991, in the
spirit of the Magnum Photos agency, the collective has
received wide acclaim for their unique exploration
of our current social climate, experimental
approach to authorship and strong utopian vision.
The group was closely mentored by renowned French
cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, who wrote,
“Photography is meaningless if it only reflects
the subject’s photographic desire and not the
world’s desire to be photographed and seen.”