LACP Los Angeles Center of Photography / Staring at the Cloud: Collage Between Analog and Digital

Disruption in photographic arts started long before artificial intelligence upended the contemporary visual landscape. Artists such as Hannah Höch, John Heartfield and Man Ray used collage in their work during the first decades of the twentieth century as a way to negotiate their own vision and shock their viewers, reflecting the world, its conflicted realities, and political dynamics by assembling, montaging and refracting images.

Bringing those ideas to the twenty-first century, this open call invites submissions for works that consider the histories, present and future of photographic collages at this moment. Inspired by LACP’s home in Downtown LA, nestled between the Toy District and Little Tokyo, this call is interested both in the tactile playfulness of manipulating images, and the ways in which the gestures of cutting and pasting highlight power relations in civic spaces and private lives.