Josephine Pryde (born 1967, Alnwick, UK; lives Berlin and London) presents a new body of commissioned work for her first United States museum exhibition. In the context of the gallery, it could be said that the composition, lighting, and general style of Pryde’s photographs recall fashion and portrait photography, but this would ignore the fact that fashion and portrait photography refer to art photographs, snapshots, documentary footage, and more. A kind of loop develops in Pryde’s work, feeding back tropes and mutations in photographic traffic, and then presenting the results.

Here, she shows more than twenty photographs of hands shot with a macro lens so that detail can be enlarged in the final frame. The hands have brightly painted nails and are depicted in contact with a range of touch-sensitive devices—lamps, tablets, phones, human chests. The photographs may be viewed on foot; alternatively, a fully functioning miniature rideable train offers visitors a short trip from A to B and back again, along the route of the show.

Organized for CCA Wattis Institute by Curator and Head of Programs Jamie Stevens. Accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. Organized at ICA by Chief Curator Anthony Elms.