Manga Dreams: Anderson & Low

About

Photographers Jonathan Anderson and Edwin Low have collaborated since 1990, achieving consistent critical acclaim. Their extraordinary work blurs the distinction between photography and other forms of visual art, using old and new technologies to explore concepts of identity. This exhibition features highlights of a recent Anderson & Low project, Manga Dreams, parts of which were featured in the 2011 Venice Biennale. Using subjects hand-picked by the artists over many months and years, the series combines photography and digital techniques to create a strikingly intense merging of the real and the fictional. The images use this hybrid reality to explore the impact of manga and anime on youth culture world-wide, the impact of which is noticeable globally in its adoption by individuals as diverse as Chinese businessmen and the singer Lady Gaga. Manga Dreams will be the first museum exhibition of this work in the UK and the first of a series of similar exhibitions worldwide: it accompanies the book of the same title, published in 2010, and available in the Sainsbury Centre shop.