Redux: Rediscovered Books and Writings

In 1979, Venice discovered photography--then turned its back on the medium. In a possible attempt to expand the Venice Biennale brand, the municipality, assisted financially by UNESCO and programmatically by the International Center of Photography, installed one of the largest photography exhibitions ever mounted in Europe. The catalog, Photography: Venice '79, expressed the tentative hope that this might be "the model for future such festivals." Instead it was a one-off that, in retrospect, provides a revealing glimpse of where photography stood globally and the contradictions that would henceforth make any exhibition employing the generic term photography highly problematic. Here, Rexer examines the catalog.