Mousse 51 is a photo issue dedicated to exhibitions from 1985 to 1995, the last ten years or so before exhibitions went online, and possibly, before the exhibition view became a requisite genre. Up to twenty years ago, galleries and museum, art magazines and schools had no websites; viewing a show would mean, quite simply, visiting it. A great number of seminal shows—from small but consequential artists’ debuts in private galleries, to the innovative biennial iterations in

This issue of Mousse explores the ways in which concerns surrounding exhibition display and elements derived from exhibition architecture have been appropriated by contemporary artworks and art practices, and how artistic modes and attitudes have played a significant role in shaping the lexicon of exhibition design. We asked a diverse pool of guest contributors—artists, curators, writers, art and architecture critics—to select illuminating cases of cross-pollination, and to compile extended captions for their cho

Until Death Do Us Part focuses on the unexpected role cigarettes play in Chinese weddings. As a token of appreciation, it is customary for the bride to light a cigarette for each and every man invited. The bride and the groom are then invited to play some cigarette-smoking games o f an unprecedented ingenuousness. This publication pays homage to a tradition in which love and death walk hand in hand. These photos come fr

Photography, writes Jerry Thompson, is important for the way it works, not only as a medium but also as a instrument of knowledge. In fact, if we understand what photography is and how it works, we can how we conceive things and the world in general. On this basis, Thompson introduces and develops a lucid meditation on the photographic medium and about how it manages to describe the world in a concrete and profound way

In the follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut monograph Sleeping by the Mississippi, Alec Soth turned his eye to another iconic body of water, Niagara Falls. As with his photographs of the Mississippi, Soth’s pictures of Niagara are less about natural wonder than human desire. “I went to Niagara for the same reason as the honeymooners and suicide jumpers,” says Soth, “the relentless thunder of the Falls just calls for big passion.” Working ove