BEING NEW PHOTOGRAPHY 2018 AT MOMA A "How Photography Capture What it Means to Be Human"

The new photography show at MoMA BEING NEW PHOTOGRAPHY 2018 just opened Wed. morning in preview.  The staff were still installing work as we walked through the empty galleries.  A little performance art to go with some big ideas and some rather raw photos that I don't think sufficed to make noteworthy.  We are greeted at the entrance to the exhibit by a regal female figurehead "All in One" by Aida Muluneh (b Ethiopia 1974).  Her large photo headshots with vivid pigmentation have a dazzling palette of startling white, yellow, red and blue.  The photos are riveting.  Muluneh uses multiple hands & facial adornments making the solitary figures appears as omnipotent goddesses.  In fact, the first gallery seems to pay tribute to women perhaps in honor of women's month.  There is a startling doppelgänger diptych photo of a women in black/white.  The photo radiates a soft smoky grey timber.  The woman's hair is shorn and she is wearing a grey hoody.  In the first photo she is staring away from the lens and in the 2nd, she is looking straight at the viewer with confident composure.  Her gaze is arresting.  Keeping with an amazonian theme are a collective of large black/white photos of women which are connected by a partial image of the woman pictured in full in the next series.  There's a driving energy but only in passing.  The massive assemblage of photos culled by Carmen Winant (b Amer 1983) which are the graphic, often squeamish photos of women giving birth "My Birth" ('18).  The narrow pathway in which one walks through is reminiscent of Serbian performance artist marina Abramovic's installation of 2 live nudes positioned in a doorway passthrough at the MoMA several years ago.  Provocative, sure but purposeful, I'm not sure and one is hard pressed to attach the import to art but rather merely attribute the omnipotence of women for giving birth, but enough said.  Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b Amer 1982) takes the thunder out from under the women with his semi-erotic and cleverly staged photos using "smoke & mirrors".  His self-portrait photo "Untitled" ('17) shows a black male nude with arched back sitting in front of a draping curtain.  This the strongest piece in the exhibit for its artistry, self-assurance and clever homage to the great Renaissance artists.  The last gallery has a series of photos taken by Matthew Connors's in North Korea from 2013-16.  These photos are mysterious, enigmatic and often sympathetic to their subjects.  A little girl dressed in school girl uniform with red scarf and skirt afloat stands rigid with her eyes closed.  Is she daydreaming, is she disassociated from others, is she frightened; the questions that this moment captures are endless.  The photo of a single swimmer in the nighttime is both haunting and alluring.  (How did Connors gain access to N. Korea?).    Stephen Shores eclectic photos at the MoMA but somehow much more energetic than the"New Photography". is worth another look.  "New Photography"