KANSAS CITY, MO.- Photographs, in their most basic state, are flat objects that represent a single moment in time. But some artists see the simple photograph as a building block or a piece of a larger puzzle, something they can deconstruct, reconstruct, and multiply. More Is More: Reinventing Photography Beyond the Frame opened Aug. 2 at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and features 43 photographs by artists on the hunt for something more. Set in the experimental time of the mid-1960s to 1980s, More Is More presents singular works of art created from multiple photographs, bringing together artists who built a new, hybrid visual language that playfully pushed photography’s physical boundaries and conceptual limits.
“In an era when TV and mass image culture was reaching new heights in America, artists embraced photography’s unique potential to merge these diverse, ephemeral influences,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, Director & CEO of the Nelson-Atkins. “Photography found itself at the vanguard of creativity as a new generation of conceptual and performance artists began integrating multiple images into their practice.”
By the 1970s, photography had clawed its way from the margins of the art world, gaining greater acceptance in museums, galleries, academia, and the market.
“Whether in long arches or decisive moments, photography has always been a medium of time,” said Marijana Rayl, assistant curator, Photography.
“Many photographers included in More Is More explore this defining characteristic, using multiple photographs to create sequential narratives that move the viewer across time and space.”
Much of the experimentation found in this exhibition is tinged with humor, narrative, and performance. In Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts), John Baldassari repeatedly threw three balls into the air at the same time and took a photograph, attempting to capture a moment they appeared in a straight line during the throw. In Eleanor Antin’s 100 Boots, produced between 1971 and 1973, the artist staged 100 rubber boots in various settings (riding a roller coaster, visiting MoMA) and then created postcards of the images that she mailed around the world.
Visitors will also experience photographs that have been montaged, manipulated, arranged and rearranged. Purchased by the museum last year, David Hockney’s Prehistoric Museum near Palm Springs, Sept. 1982, is composed of nearly 70 individual prints, measuring 85 x 57 inches. To make the collage, Hockney expansively photographed his subject and then assembled the prints to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Also featured will be two of Barbara Blondeau’s Time/Motion Panoramas made by keeping her camera shutter open to produce a seamless streak across an entire roll of film. The film is then printed, cut into thin strips, and reassembled into a long strip of dizzying movement.
Many of the photographs in this exhibition have never been on view at the Nelson-Atkins. More Is More: Reinventing Photography Beyond the Frame runs through Jan. 18, 2026.
