POSITION

TIME

LOCATION

43.676701° N, 4.627800° E

07.13.26, 11:59AM EST

ARLES, FRANCE

HARD COPY AT LES RENCONTRES DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE, ARLES

HARD COPY AT LES RENCONTRES DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE, ARLES

From the mechanics of photocopy-based curation to site-specific analog exhibition.

From the mechanics of photocopy-based curation to site-specific analog exhibition.

Collier Schorr

Marking the fourth iteration of the curatorial project and the second collaboration between artist-curator Aaron Stern and David Campany, Creative Director of the International Center of Photography (ICP), Hard Copy opened in Arles as a site-specific exhibition during Les Rencontres de la Photographie, in partnership with Le Plac’Art Photo. Occupying a functioning local copy shop and Amazon package drop-off center, the installation positions the works at the intersection of democratic distribution and material friction. Both the showcase and its curatorial methodology reframe photography by utilizing commercial photostatic machines to highlight how low-fidelity reproduction alters contemporary image consumption.

The fourth edition of Hard Copy features a series of repurposed, enlarged, and gridded photocopies from a roster of international photographers: Christopher Anderson, Mark Borthwick, JH Engström, Justine Kurland, Jim Mangan, Jeff Mermelstein, Olivia Reavey, Collier Schorr, and Peter Sutherland. Positioned within a space traditionally reserved for utilitarian transactions, these temporary, low-cost paper artifacts function as material interventions against the rapid consumption of digital media. 


The exhibition marks the chronological progression of the project initiated by Aaron Stern, following previous iterations at Frieze New York in 2024, Webber Gallery in Los Angeles in 2025, and an institutional presentation at the ICP in New York in the spring of 2026. Hard Copy Arles considers how the physical degradation of toner on paper alters the domestic and commercial value of contemporary photography.

Jeff Mermelstein

“HARD COPY IS HOPEFULLY A TOOL FOR CONNECTION IN THE REAL WORLD.” — AARON STERN

CYANA

DAVID + AARON

CYANA DJOHER

For those meeting you both for the first time, how would you each introduce yourselves? Where did you grow up, and what kind of visual environment shaped the way you learned to look? And how did the two of you meet and decide to build Hard Copy together across these last two editions?

DAVID CAMPANY

I’m a curator, writer, teacher, and Creative Director of the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. I loved cinema when I was a kid but got really fascinated with the photos in books about movies.


We met in New York. Aaron reached out to me, and I’d seen his Hard Copy Los Angeles show. I liked his curiosity and sense of experimentation, and thought it was time for Hard Copy to come to ICP, so we co-curated a big show of fifteen artists. It was great to present photocopies from A4 to mural size pinned to the wall alongside two other shows with pretty high production values.

AARON STERN

I’m Aaron Stern, and I worked as an artist before becoming a curator. I was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in the D.C./Maryland area, and I have lived in New York for over 25 years.


My parents shaped my visual environment from a young age. They’re both from New York, and they exposed me to cinema and art early on. I spent a lot of time in museums in both places.

David saw the second iteration of Hard Copy (Hard Copy Los Angeles) and asked me to bring it to ICP. It was the best experience I’ve had doing this, thanks to David. I learned a good amount. When I was asked by my friend Clement of Le Plac’Art Photo to bring the show to Arles, I knew I wanted to do it with David again.

CYANA DJOHER

David, you've spent decades writing about photography's relationship to reproduction, from A Handful of Dust onward. What did you recognize in Aaron's project when it first crossed your desk, and why co-curate it rather than write about it?

DAVID CAMPANY

I made a lot of photocopy art as a student and really explored what was aesthetically possible. Today, of course, most people under 25 have probably never seen a photocopy machine. It’s a little exotic, like Polaroid, maybe. But artists have explored it since at least the 1950s, so there’s a long history there.

01 Jim Mangan

02 JH Engström

CYANA DJOHER

David, you've spent decades writing about photography's relationship to reproduction, from A Handful of Dust onward. What did you recognize in Aaron's project when it first crossed your desk, and why co-curate it rather than write about it?

DAVID CAMPANY

I made a lot of photocopy art as a student and really explored what was aesthetically possible. Today, of course, most people under 25 have probably never seen a photocopy machine. It’s a little exotic, like Polaroid, maybe. But artists have explored it since at least the 1950s, so there’s a long history there.

The operational logic of Hard Copy is rooted in the physical limits of late-twentieth-century telecommunications. The project emerged directly from OK, No Response, a book published by Stern following a pandemic-era image exchange conducted via analog fax with artist Lucy Helton. By operating a thermal-paper fax machine in a domestic kitchen, the curators established a method where images had to be translated into compressed, binary line-art to travel across telephone networks. This reliance on a physical, automated receiver situated the work within a historical lineage of mail-art and photostatic experimentation, positioning physical transmission as an alternative to the high-resolution screens that  dominated visual communication during periods of social isolation.

Justine Kurland

CYANA DJOHER

Aaron, Hard Copy grew out of OK, No Response, the book you made after exchanging images by fax with Lucy Helton during the pandemic. A contactless machine keeping a visual conversation alive during a "contactless" era; an exchange The Brooklyn Rail notes eventually drew in eighteen others. At what point did a private correspondence become a curatorial method?

AARON STERN

Lucy gave me her fax machine in April of 2020 so she could fax me her ongoing work using this method. I gladly obliged. Soon after, I was on the phone with my friend Jeremy Everett, who was stuck in Paris, and Kovi Konowiecki, who was isolated in Long Beach, California. I loved what they both sent me.


I’d worked with Xerox and laser printers for many years prior to the fax, so it resonated with me. I showed them to Lucy and said, "I think we should ask other artists."

CYANA DJOHER

The fax was printing images at the exact moment everything else was being pushed onto screens in the name of hygiene. What did the physical print give that exchange that a digital one couldn't, and is that where the project's whole argument for paper begins?

AARON STERN

My whole thing about photography is that I want it to feel more like an object. For the past 15 years, I’ve been drawn to the imperfections and tonality of Xerox and laser prints. I like that they’re not so precious. I want to be able to hold and feel a print without a pair of white gloves on.


The fax was a similar experience. What was interesting and different about the fax machine was that each artist was participating directly. They had to physically upload the image to a website, which would then send the message to the machine sitting in my kitchen in New York.

CYANA DJOHER

The process is stable across iterations: an artist's work is photocopied, rescanned, and sometimes enlarged to mural scale. How far can a copy drift from its source before it stops being that artist's work according to you? And when Aaron photocopies another artist's image, who is the author of the print on the wall?

DAVID CAMPANY

The blurring of authorship is a productive disturbance. None of the work was made originally as photocopies. So, there are additional layers of curatorial and technical authorship.


The curatorial process and structure of Hard Copy rely both on a highly collaborative network of practitioners and on the recontextualization of photography and authorship through the mechanical order of the copier. Rather than enforcing a singular visual style, the curation bridges distinct generations, promoting the circulation of these images through analog formats rather than digital networks.

CYANA DJOHER

Practically speaking, how does a Hard Copy curation happen? Who approaches the artists, who selects the source images, who runs the machine, who decides scale and placement on the wall, and where do the two of you divide that work?

DAVID CAMPANY

We get together, draw up a list of artists (usually with specific projects or images by them in mind), and bust out the address book. We explain the idea, and they almost invariably say "yes," so they must be interested!

CYANA DJOHER

Aaron, you told Surface Magazine that the selection begins with instinct, knowing which images will render best through the Xerox, and which artists share an attitude toward reproduction and circulation. Can you make that instinct explicit? What does an image need to survive the toner?

AARON STERN

I can’t tell you that. I see what I see, and I know when something will translate – or, more importantly, when it won't. It’s a printing method that I’ve worked on for many years.

CYANA DJOHER

Hard Copy is on its fourth iteration in two years: Frieze New York in 2024, Webber Gallery in Los Angeles in 2025, the ICP in spring 2026, and now Arles. You told Surface that what you care about most is what the project leads to next. Is it heading toward a definitive form, a book, a permanent collection, a method other curators can borrow, or is the iteration itself the work?

AARON STERN

I’ve made a book or zine for the previous three exhibitions of Hard Copy, and I plan on keeping this tradition. What happens next is definitely what I care about most. I enjoy changing the show and traveling it to places I’d like to visit. I hope it’s a vehicle to keep doing that: Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, West Africa, Latin America, and so on.

CYANA DJOHER

From Frieze to Arles, the project keeps choosing environments built on speed, density, and commerce – everything the show argues against. How does it behave differently here in Arles, in a photobook context with Le Plac'Art Photo, at a festival built around the print, than it did across a multi-floor institutional show in New York?

AARON STERN

The Rencontres d’Arles is a huge festival that has been going on for over 50 years. For almost as many years, there have been informal pop-up shows around the town. Who could resist the chance to make a photocopy show in the gallery space of the town’s chief copy shop?

CYANA DJOHER

The fax was printing images at the exact moment everything else was being pushed onto screens in the name of hygiene. What did the physical print give that exchange that a digital one couldn't, and is that where the project's whole argument for paper begins?

AARON STERN

My whole thing about photography is that I want it to feel more like an object. For the past 15 years, I’ve been drawn to the imperfections and tonality of Xerox and laser prints. I like that they’re not so precious. I want to be able to hold and feel a print without a pair of white gloves on.

The fax was a similar experience. What was interesting and different about the fax machine was that each artist was participating directly. They had to physically upload the image to a website, which would then send the message to the machine sitting in my kitchen in New York.

CYANA DJOHER

The process is stable across iterations: an artist's work is photocopied, rescanned, and sometimes enlarged to mural scale. How far can a copy drift from its source before it stops being that artist's work according to you? And when Aaron photocopies another artist's image, who is the author of the print on the wall?

DAVID CAMPANY

The blurring of authorship is a productive disturbance. None of the work was made originally as photocopies. So, there are additional layers of curatorial and technical authorship.


The curatorial process and structure of Hard Copy rely both on a highly collaborative network of practitioners and on the recontextualization of photography and authorship through the mechanical order of the copier. Rather than enforcing a singular visual style, the curation bridges distinct generations, promoting the circulation of these images through analog formats rather than digital networks.

CYANA DJOHER

Practically speaking, how does a Hard Copy curation happen? Who approaches the artists, who selects the source images, who runs the machine, who decides scale and placement on the wall, and where do the two of you divide that work?

DAVID CAMPANY

We get together, draw up a list of artists (usually with specific projects or images by them in mind), and bust out the address book. We explain the idea, and they almost invariably say "yes," so they must be interested!

Peter Sutherland

CYANA DJOHER

Aaron, you told Surface Magazine that the selection begins with instinct, knowing which images will render best through the Xerox, and which artists share an attitude toward reproduction and circulation. Can you make that instinct explicit? What does an image need to survive the toner?

AARON STERN

I can’t tell you that. I see what I see, and I know when something will translate – or, more importantly, when it won't. It’s a printing method that I’ve worked on for many years.

CYANA DJOHER

Hard Copy is on its fourth iteration in two years: Frieze New York in 2024, Webber Gallery in Los Angeles in 2025, the ICP in spring 2026, and now Arles. You told Surface that what you care about most is what the project leads to next. Is it heading toward a definitive form, a book, a permanent collection, a method other curators can borrow, or is the iteration itself the work?

AARON STERN

I’ve made a book or zine for the previous three exhibitions of Hard Copy, and I plan on keeping this tradition. What happens next is definitely what I care about most. I enjoy changing the show and traveling it to places I’d like to visit. I hope it’s a vehicle to keep doing that: Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, West Africa, Latin America, and so on.

CYANA DJOHER

From Frieze to Arles, the project keeps choosing environments built on speed, density, and commerce – everything the show argues against. How does it behave differently here in Arles, in a photobook context with Le Plac'Art Photo, at a festival built around the print, than it did across a multi-floor institutional show in New York?

AARON STERN

The Rencontres d’Arles is a huge festival that has been going on for over 50 years. For almost as many years, there have been informal pop-up shows around the town. Who could resist the chance to make a photocopy show in the gallery space of the town’s chief copy shop?

By locating the latest iteration within a working copy shop and pick-up spot, Hard Copy directly addresses the spatial parameters of contemporary art presentation. The transition from the institutional galleries of the ICP to a commercial drop-off center in Arles strips the work of conventional museum framing.


The physical limitations of the venue, characterized by irregular wall structures, active sales equipment, and stacks of shipping boxes, force a departure from standard spatial grids and white cube logics. Instead of relying on protective glass, archival mounting, and precise lighting, the exhibition integrates directly into the infrastructure of daily labor, treating the copy shop as an active technical participant in the exhibition's production.

CYANA DJOHER

The Arles roster differs substantially from New York, featuring Mark Borthwick, Olivia Reavey, Jim Mangan, Peter Sutherland, Jeff Mermelstein, Christopher Anderson, JH Engström, Collier Schorr, and Justine Kurland. What determined this list, and what does it make possible that the ICP configuration did not?

DAVID CAMPANY

Some artists are common to both the NYC and Arles shows, but they’re not showing the same images. New names also help to keep it lively for us.

AARON STERN

Arles was in a very raw, untraditional space. We took over half of a copy shop/Amazon package drop-off and pickup spot. The wall structures were unusual and challenging.


I think we picked artists who would be open to having their work presented in a loose and creative way. Christopher Anderson, Collier Schorr, and Mark Borthwick have all worked with Xerox prior to Hard Copy. Mark sent me scans of early '90s Xeroxes he made, which I reprinted using my machines. We met up in Paris the week before the show, where I showed him the stack I had produced, and together we discussed how to install it.

CYANA DJOHER

Olivia Reavey just completed her MFA at Yale, where Collier Schorr is a senior critic, and both are in the show. Was that generational dialogue a deliberate curatorial structure, or an accident of selection?

DAVID CAMPANY

Hard Copy at ICP had artists ranging in age from 24 (Grey Sorrenti) to 78 (Stephen Shore). A trans-generational roster really helped the show to avoid being pigeonholed as the enthusiasm of a particular age group.

AARON STERN

It was very deliberate. I knew that Olivia had just finished at Yale, where Collier is a senior critic. I wanted her work to sort of be in dialogue with Collier’s. They are from different generations, but both feel like generation-defining artists.

CYANA DJOHER

For someone who saw Hard Copy at the ICP, what will feel genuinely new in Arles? What does this iteration test that the previous three did not?

DAVID CAMPANY

The ICP show was institutional and formal to a degree that it had to be. Showing in a copy shop has none of that.

AARON STERN

We were sort of flying blind leading up to this iteration, aside from a hand-written sketch of the space from Clement and a picture of a room filled with dozens of small printers. But this is a fun problem for both David and me.


Photography is always about problem-solving.

We made a 16-foot-long panoramic collage for both Collier’s and JH’s Xeroxes. For Jim, Peter, Jeff, and Justine, I made varying sizes of larger reprinted Xeroxes. We had a grid of 45 smaller 8x10 prints of Mark’s, and a mix of different-sized collaged prints for Chris. Olivia came into the fold late, so I gridded one of her images using the machines in my studio and produced a series of A4 prints.

01 Hard Copy Exhibition, Arles, France, 2026.

02 Mark Borthwick

01 Hard Copy Exhibition, Arles, France, 2026.

02 Mark Borthwick

CYANA DJOHER

The photocopy is cheap to produce, stapled and taped to the wall, yet it now circulates through institutions that assign value to unique objects. How do you hold the democratic, reproducible logic of the copy inside the market structures the project operates in? And what does the editorial layer around each show – the zines, the print production, do to that equation?

DAVID CAMPANY

I find it genuinely more interesting to not think about any of that. None of the work was made as commodities, but if some end up that way, so be it. Art history and the art market have a habit of fetishizing old ephemera. Think of Fluxus and Mail Art.

AARON STERN

I don’t think much about this at all. Each Xerox print is unique. There are imperfections every time one is printed.

CYANA DJOHER

The project has been framed as a resistance to the pace of digital image production. Aaron, you've said outright on your blog that you want people to print their pictures and get off their phones. Two years and four iterations in: do you see evidence that the physical copy changes how audiences engage with images, or does the show risk becoming an aesthetic of resistance rather than a practice of it?

AARON STERN

I’ve seen brands and other artists start to implement this aesthetic recently, so I think it’s having some influence. But most importantly, it is having a positive impact on the people who come to see the shows.


I see a sea of smiling faces at each exhibition. Truly, I think it registers in a really positive way on people's brains. Yes, it is inexpensive and somewhat easy to produce, but it has a certain sensibility that seems to be resonating with people. Hard Copy is hopefully a tool for connection in the real world. I hope people see that we made the zine for the Arles show in the space during the show, and that it influences others to do the same.

CYANA DJOHER

Photocopy technology dates to 1938, and its history as an image-making tool remains, in David's words, largely unwritten. These prints are toner on degradable paper, often discarded after each show. Should Hard Copy itself be archived? And if so, what is the artifact: the copy, the file, or the method?

DAVID CAMPANY

I prefer to have no interest in the material after it’s shown. Aaron takes a slightly different view.

CYANA DJOHER

The Arles roster differs substantially from New York, featuring Mark Borthwick, Olivia Reavey, Jim Mangan, Peter Sutherland, Jeff Mermelstein, Christopher Anderson, JH Engström, Collier Schorr, and Justine Kurland. What determined this list, and what does it make possible that the ICP configuration did not?

DAVID CAMPANY

Some artists are common to both the NYC and Arles shows, but they’re not showing the same images. New names also help to keep it lively for us.

AARON STERN

Arles was in a very raw, untraditional space. We took over half of a copy shop/Amazon package drop-off and pickup spot. The wall structures were unusual and challenging.


I think we picked artists who would be open to having their work presented in a loose and creative way. Christopher Anderson, Collier Schorr, and Mark Borthwick have all worked with Xerox prior to Hard Copy. Mark sent me scans of early '90s Xeroxes he made, which I reprinted using my machines. We met up in Paris the week before the show, where I showed him the stack I had produced, and together we discussed how to install it.

CYANA DJOHER

Olivia Reavey just completed her MFA at Yale, where Collier Schorr is a senior critic, and both are in the show. Was that generational dialogue a deliberate curatorial structure, or an accident of selection?

DAVID CAMPANY

Hard Copy at ICP had artists ranging in age from 24 (Grey Sorrenti) to 78 (Stephen Shore). A trans-generational roster really helped the show to avoid being pigeonholed as the enthusiasm of a particular age group.

AARON STERN

It was very deliberate. I knew that Olivia had just finished at Yale, where Collier is a senior critic. I wanted her work to sort of be in dialogue with Collier’s. They are from different generations, but both feel like generation-defining artists.

CYANA DJOHER

For someone who saw Hard Copy at the ICP, what will feel genuinely new in Arles? What does this iteration test that the previous three did not?

DAVID CAMPANY

The ICP show was institutional and formal to a degree that it had to be. Showing in a copy shop has none of that.

AARON STERN

We were sort of flying blind leading up to this iteration, aside from a hand-written sketch of the space from Clement and a picture of a room filled with dozens of small printers. But this is a fun problem for both David and me.


Photography is always about problem-solving.

We made a 16-foot-long panoramic collage for both Collier’s and JH’s Xeroxes. For Jim, Peter, Jeff, and Justine, I made varying sizes of larger reprinted Xeroxes. We had a grid of 45 smaller 8x10 prints of Mark’s, and a mix of different-sized collaged prints for Chris. Olivia came into the fold late, so I gridded one of her images using the machines in my studio and produced a series of A4 prints.

Olivia Reavey

CYANA DJOHER

The photocopy is cheap to produce, stapled and taped to the wall, yet it now circulates through institutions that assign value to unique objects. How do you hold the democratic, reproducible logic of the copy inside the market structures the project operates in? And what does the editorial layer around each show – the zines, the print production, do to that equation?

DAVID CAMPANY

I find it genuinely more interesting to not think about any of that. None of the work was made as commodities, but if some end up that way, so be it. Art history and the art market have a habit of fetishizing old ephemera. Think of Fluxus and Mail Art.

AARON STERN

I don’t think much about this at all. Each Xerox print is unique. There are imperfections every time one is printed.

CYANA DJOHER

The project has been framed as a resistance to the pace of digital image production. Aaron, you've said outright on your blog that you want people to print their pictures and get off their phones. Two years and four iterations in: do you see evidence that the physical copy changes how audiences engage with images, or does the show risk becoming an aesthetic of resistance rather than a practice of it?

AARON STERN

I’ve seen brands and other artists start to implement this aesthetic recently, so I think it’s having some influence. But most importantly, it is having a positive impact on the people who come to see the shows.


I see a sea of smiling faces at each exhibition. Truly, I think it registers in a really positive way on people's brains. Yes, it is inexpensive and somewhat easy to produce, but it has a certain sensibility that seems to be resonating with people. Hard Copy is hopefully a tool for connection in the real world. I hope people see that we made the zine for the Arles show in the space during the show, and that it influences others to do the same.

CYANA DJOHER

Photocopy technology dates to 1938, and its history as an image-making tool remains, in David's words, largely unwritten. These prints are toner on degradable paper, often discarded after each show. Should Hard Copy itself be archived? And if so, what is the artifact: the copy, the file, or the method?

DAVID CAMPANY

I prefer to have no interest in the material after it’s shown. Aaron takes a slightly different view.

INTERVIEW + TEXT

EDITOR

INTERVIEW + TEXT

EDITOR

IMAGES

IMAGES

CYANA DJOHER (@NOTCYANA)

SOUKITA (@BYSOUKITA)

ICP (@ICP)