All Books and some Prints
Richard Prince

At the end of the 1970s in New York City, a generation of artists, later known as « The Pictures Generation» – according to Douglas Crimp – including Richard Prince, along with Cindy Sherman (shown at CPG in 2012) or Sherrie Levine, use mixed media, such as photography and film, for purposes of criticism of mass-media images. Artists like Richard Prince and Sherrie Levine insist on reproducibility infinity of photography and question, at the same time, the effects of media images in the art market.

If Sherrie Levine with her series entitled After Walker Evans also questions the notion of authorship and gender by re-photographing emblematic photographs of modernity, the reproducibility of photography as put forward by Richard Prince, is associated with a bitter outlook directed at American pop-culture, going from commercials such as the Marlboro Cowboys, to underground fanzines and even pulp fiction covers, not to mention the Jokes and Cartoons series that he extracts from their contexts of magazines such as “The New Yorker” and “Playboy”.

Having profoundly influenced the thinking of contemporary photography, Richard Prince is also an obsessive collector of all kinds of consumer products mass, like Walker Evans and his taste for the vernacular. It is a great honor for the Centre de la photographie Genève, to present in a single exhibition all (more than 120) publications that the artist has been able to edit during his 50 years of artistic practice.

In addition to almost all of this editorial work, the CPG will also show 17 photographic works – including a « Cowboy » – that propelled the artist to the forefront in 1982 at Documenta in Cassel.

Having already released the first catalogue of Richard Prince’s publications (1981-2014), Christophe Daviet-Thery – co-curator for the exhibition All Books and Some Prints that the CPG will present from March 10^th to May 2^nd, 2021 – will also direct the second volume of the catalogue of publications, which will be edited by Editions Centre de la photographie Genève.

The Centre de la photographie Genève is very thankful to Ellen + Michael Ringier, Switzerland, for their generous support and the loan of Richard Prince’s photographic works, as well as Blondeau & Cie, Switzerland.

Fore more information: daviet-thery@wanadoo.fr/ instagram : bookadviser

www. centrephotogeneve