In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary photography took on new power and meanings. In the aftermath of the Second World War, interactions shifted between citizens and their governments, between colonizers and the newly independent, and between other groups as new sociocultural dynamics evolved. This exhibition looks at how photographers around the world—from Bamako to Mumbai, Pretoria to Toronto—used their medium to celebrate, to witness, and to critique their worlds in new ways during a time of change.

Be it through sharply recorded detail or dynamic blurring, in the photography studio or on the street, in single images or in deliberate sequences, the artists chose a range of aesthetic approaches to bring the personal and the political into dialogue.

Documents, 1960s–1970s presents a broad and international field of documentary practice during a time of profound change. It includes work by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ernest Cole, Lutz Dille, Charles Gagnon, David Goldblatt, Bhupendra Karia, Paul Kodjo, Martha Rosler, Stephen Shore, Malick Sidibé, Ming Smith, Ian Wallace, and Garry Winogrand, as well as a selection of press photographs by Eve Arnold, Robert Cohen and others.

The exhibition is drawn from the AGO Collection and features a number of recent acquisitions, alongside select loans.

Presented in collaboration with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.