If I Had A Hammer (FotoFest)

Hardcover | 16.76 x 3.05 x 24.13 cm | 296 pp

Schlit Publishing | 2022 | 9789053309568

The FotoFest Biennial 2022 central exhibition, If I Had a Hammer, considered the ways artists utilise images to unpack the ideological underpinnings that inspire collective cultural movements around the globe. Together, the twenty-three included artists propose alternative techniques of seeing and engaging with the world, working with both conventional and new media to shed light on the systems that encourage social theories and political imaginaries to become dogma at the click of a shutter or tap of a button.

The title is borrowed from Pete Seegar and Lee Hays’s 1949 protest song of the same name, which was written as a response to growing ideological divides and violence against progressive artists and thinkers in the U.S. during the era of Red Scare McCarthyism. Throughout this period, artists, activists, authors, and musicians, including Seegar and Hays, were made to testify in broadcasted congressional hearings and defend their right to free speech and protest.

This exhibition and book uses the historical context within which “If I Had a Hammer” was written as a starting point to explore how those who assert ideological supremacy often do so by employing the very tools used by the communities and individuals they hope to suppress. They use the tools of discursive circulation: broadcast media, text, song, art, and images.

FotoFest is a contemporary arts organisation co-founded by photojournalists Frederick Baldwin and Wendy Watriss. FotoFest is dedicated to advancing photography and visual culture through the presentation of exhibitions, public programs, and publications. The examination of social, cultural, and political histories and contemporary life through the lens of photography and related media is central to FotoFest’s mission.