More Is More: Reinventing Photography Beyond the Frame

Images that redefine the big picture

This exhibition presents singular works of art created from multiple photographs, made by artists playfully pushing photography’s boundaries across space and time.

A multitude of perspectives

More Is More showcases artists from the mid-1960s to the 1980s, including David Hockney, Gordon Matta-Clark, Andy Warhol, Barbara Crane, and Nancy Burson. These innovators employed deconstruction, reconstruction, and repetition to expand photography’s physical and conceptual limits.

Set of three photos from blindfolded person trying to catch juggling balls

Collage of images of President Nixon speaking on TV

Our reality in repetition

In an era when mass image culture was reaching new heights in America through TV, movies, magazines, newspapers, and ads, artists embraced photography’s unique potential to merge these diverse, ephemeral influences.

Throwing convention to the wind

Photography found itself at the vanguard of creativity as a new generation of artists integrated performance, spontaneity, and chance into their practice — all key elements in More Is More. The artists deliberately engage chaos, imposing order not as a goal but to reveal and question the arbitrary, constructed nature of rules in both art and society.

Photograph of three orange balls thrown into blue sky with palm trees.

In the gallery

Using your phone, scan codes placed throughout the exhibition to hear audio guides about select works on view. And don’t miss the companion gallery of historic photographs in gallery L10.