Shunk-Kender's Dual Role as Documentarians and Artists Explored at Centre Pompidou

The Centre Pompidou in Paris presents 'Shunk-Kender. L’art sous l’objectif (1957-1983)', the first monographic exhibition of the photographic duo Harry Shunk (1924-2006) and János Kender (1938-2009), running from March 27 to August 5, 2019. Curated by Julie Jones, the show draws from the duo's vast archive of over 250,000 documents, including 200,000 prints, 12,000 contact sheets, 126,000 negatives, and 26,000 slides, donated in part by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. Shunk and Kender, who met in Paris in the 1950s, photographed more than 300 artists from the late 1950s to early 1980s, including Yves Klein, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Robert Rauschenberg, Vito Acconci, Andy Warhol, and Yayoi Kusama. The exhibition highlights their dual role as commissioned photographers and artists, with works that function both as documents and autonomous art. It features portraits, performance documentation, and conceptual collaborations, emphasizing their ability to capture the essence of artists and their creative processes. The show also includes reproductions of their publications, revealing how their images contributed to art historical narratives, such as documenting the Nouveaux Réalistes' founding declaration in 1960. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Musée national d'art moderne and the Bibliothèque Kandinsky, which received 10,000 photographs in 2014. The Shunk-Kender archive is accessible online via the Getty Research Institute and the Bibliothèque Kandinsky.