Love Songs: Photography and Intimacy

June 2, 2023 – September 11, 2023
International Center of Photography

79 Essex St
New York, NY

Nobuyoshi Araki, Sentimental Journey, 1971. Collection MEP, Paris. Gift from Dai Nippon Printing Co.Ltd. © Nobuyoshi Araki, Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery.

Nobuyoshi Araki, Sentimental Journey, 1971. Collection MEP, Paris. Gift from Dai Nippon Printing Co.Ltd. © Nobuyoshi Araki, Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery.

A group show conceived as a mixtape of songs gifted to a lover, Love Songs features photographic projects about love and intimacy from 16 contemporary photographers, including 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 (alias no. 223), Sally Mann, RongRong & inri, Collier Schorr, and Karla Hiraldo Voleau.

Through the myriad lens of intimate relationships, Love Songs brings together series dating from 1952 to 2022 by some of the leading photographers of our time that explore love, desire and intimacy in all their most complex and contradictory ways. The exhibition is the U.S. museum debut for work by Aikaterini Gegisian and Lin Zhipeng (aka no. 223), the first New York City museum presentation of the work of Sheree Hovsepian and Motoyuki Daifu, and the U.S. debut of the work of Karla Hiraldo Voleau.

The New York presentation of Love Songs is organized by curator and writer Sara Raza, formerly of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Tate Modern, London. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), Paris, based upon an original idea by Simon Baker, and was curated at MEP by Frédérique Dolivet and Pascal Hoël. The English-language catalogue for the exhibition will be published by ICP and DAP.