Pace University Art Gallery in Lower Manhattan is presenting three interconnected exhibitions—"Retold: Altered Photography," "Cut and Paste," and "Open for Interpretation"—that explore how photographic meaning is shaped by manipulation. The shows open with a free public reception on June 11, 2025, and feature historic newsroom prints from the George Stephanopoulos Collection at Pace, which retain visible marks of manual editing such as pen lines, white-out, and incisions from mid-20th century newspaper production. Contemporary artists including Nouf Aljowaysir, Garth Amundson, Pierre Gour, Juyon Lee, Negin Mahzoun, and Wendel A. White contribute works that use photographic alteration to reclaim personal narratives and challenge photography's authority as a neutral record. Student-curated selections and digital works from Pace courses complement the main exhibition, running through July 30, 2026.
This exhibition matters because it directly confronts the persistent myth of photographic objectivity by making visible the editorial processes that have always shaped images—from analog newsroom edits to contemporary digital manipulation. By placing historic altered prints alongside contemporary artworks, the shows illuminate how acts of cutting, editing, layering, and erasure reveal photographs as constructed and contingent rather than neutral records. In an era of deepfakes and AI-generated imagery, this historical perspective offers crucial context for understanding how visual meaning is produced and contested, making it relevant to current debates about media literacy and truth in images.