Create and Be Recognized: Photography on the Edge

The first survey of outsider photography This is the first survey of an electrifying subset of outsider art - outsider photography. Presented here is the work of seventeen artists, almost all self-taught, who use photography or photographic elements in their work. This is work of not just untrained or isolated artists, but those propelled by the extremes of disposition or circumstance. The dissemination of images of this art made by those set apart for various reasons from "normal" social behaviours - the mentally ill, prisoners, and eccentrics - infiltrated the art world in the early 1920s, and has long incorporated photography. Employing collage (affixing photos or reproductions to a background); photocollage (photographs cut and pasted together to form a new whole); and tableaux (works based on manipulation and staging), the artists here present work that is lyrical and frightening, but always fascinating.