Photographs help create our collective memory. Images from news reportage and photographs that provide social commentary or promote personal agendas all shape how we see our world and alter our view of the past. Are these photographic documents proof of an event or place, or is the artist manipulating us?

Proof features photographs from the Civil War to the present. The exhibition highlights familiar favorites from the collection, including classic documentary photographs by Walker Evans, Lewis Hine and Weegee, as well as major series commissioned by the museum from Lee Friedlander and Robert Glenn Ketchum. Contemporary artists who have filtered these documentary styles to question photographic truth are represented by recent acquisitions by Jennifer Williams, Josh Azzarella and Barbara Probst.

This exhibition is organized by the Akron Art Museum.