SF MOMA- Exposed, Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera since 1870

The exhibition at the SFMOMA I visited this past weekend was called Exposed, Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera since 1870. I had tagged along with my friend to see the exhibit not really knowing what to expect. I partially knew what voyeurism meant, but after the exhibit I feel like I had a much better understanding of it. The dictionary definition is; a person who gains sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity, a person who enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others.

It was a really different experience to walk through this exhibit; it was sometimes awkward and weird. I come from a very conservative Catholic family where the sex is never talked about, let alone pleasure. And although I have been attending college for a few years now, it feels weird to actually let go of my conservativeness in public, and allow myself to be curious and question the photographs they had on display. The first thing we saw was a video of a woman undressing herself in front of the mirror, and it kept replaying with these loud gunshot noises. At first of course I was hesitant to see because there was nudity, but my curiosity finally took over me. But it did not last long before I started to feel uncomfortable. I was unable to view the name of the person who took the video, but from what I could tell it was made around the 70’s. It definitely related to the theme of voyeurism because there were so many people crowding and trying to see what was going on in there. I don’t think that anybody became publicly aroused but there was still that curiosity that led folks in there.

There was also a photograph by Richard Avedon of Andy Warhol’s scars on his torso, it really captivated my interest because I wanted to know what had happened. The scars looked surreal and I couldn’t believe what I saw. After visiting the museum I looked up to see what had happened to Andy Warhol and apparently it had been an attempted assassination and he had barely survived. They said that even afterwards he never really recovered because if he exerted himself he would start bleeding.

Like previously mentioned this exhibition was a very different experience, I would not feel comfortable seeing it with my parents. I feel like they would think I was a heathen, and they would disown me. Well maybe not that far, but still there was definitely some R-Rated content in there. I feel like in order to of had been prepared for this exhibit I would have had to read some background on the topic, or researched what the exhibit was featuring. Because there were some photographs I did not understand why they where there, and I want to know what the curator had in mind. If it was to have the shock and awe factor? Because they definitely shocked me.