guest room: "a little bit of magic"

Guest room is a format that fosters collaboration and sparks creative exchange. For this edition, Assistant Curator of Photography at SFMOMA Shana Lopes and artist Aspen Mays introduce the theme "A Little Bit of Magic".

"Since its invention in 1839, photography has been called a “magic mirror” and even a form of “natural magic.” The earliest viewers struggled to explain how light, chemistry, and optics could produce such convincing illusions. “Magic” became the easiest way to describe what no one quite understood. In every generation of photographers, there have always been some artists who have turned away from the documentary characteristics of the medium to instead create images that challenge the logic of the real world. Again and again, they return to magic and, in so doing, bring spectacle and wonder back into photography.

We invite artists to consider how magic functions within photography today. What happens when the medium feels overly rational or even the opposite, wildly implausible? Where do artists reinsert illusion and misdirection back into their work? We welcome work that engages doubling, substitution, sleight of hand, constructed realities, staged impossibilities, reenactment, and the pleasure of participating in an illusion. In a moment shaped by synthetic imagery and information overload, how might magic once again become a way to push back or re-enchant the medium of photography?"