As part of the George Eastman Museum’s 75th anniversary celebration, this exhibition features acquired works that showcase significant developments in photographic practice. The exhibition title echoes New Acquisitions/New Directions/New Work, 1981–1989, presented thirty-five years ago on the 40th anniversary of the opening of George Eastman House. Alongside photographs made over the preceding decade, this iteration includes works by artists who were often overlooked or marginalized in the past, but whose contributions are touchstones for contemporary art.

Throughout the exhibition, the photographic image figures as a tool to fortify—but also unsettle—ideas about history and identity. Major themes in the exhibition examine the power of archives, digital image culture, the social structures of race and gender, and the landscape as a repository for history. While some of the artists embrace photography as a documentary medium, others develop strategies to destabilize the authority of the image. The many tactics on view include appropriation, abstraction, performance, montage, serialization, and other creative and conceptual interventions.

New Directions also features a selection of photobooks from the museum’s Richard and Ronay Menschel Library. Along with the artworks on display, these publications evidence the wealth of possibilities in recent approaches to the photographic image.

Curated by Phil Taylor and Louis Chavez, Department of Photography