Initially emerging as a documentary tool, photography photography has evolved into a significant artistic medium that conveys aesthetic, cultural, and political meanings. This study examines the transformation of photography into an art object, with a particular focus on curatorial practices and art management frameworks. It explores how meaning is constructed through modes of exhibition, thematic organization, spatial design, and viewer interaction. Within this process, curators are considered not merely as technical arrangers but as intellectual agents shaping visual narratives. While Barthes' concepts of studium and punctum reveal the individual and cultural layers of viewer experience, the theoretical approaches of Foucault’s mechanisms of surveillance, Butler’s theory of gender performativity, and Baudrillard’s notion of simulation provide a critical basis for understanding photography’s relationship with ideology and social structures. Case studies including Ara Güler’s exhibition Two Archives, One Selection and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Le Grand Jeu illustrate how curatorial strategies can profoundly influence photographic meaning. These examples demonstrate that photography’s exhibition is not merely a matter of aesthetic presentation but functions as an apparatus for constructing visual culture, reshaping collective memory, and fostering critical reflection.