Exhibition: ‘Helen Levitt’ at Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona

Exhibition dates: 24th September, 2025 – 1st February, 2026

Curator: Joshua Chuang

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1940 from the exhibition 'Helen Levitt' at Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona, Sept 2025 - Feb 2026

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Helen Levitt’s photographs from 1938-1940 are some of the earliest of her artistic career. “Her interest in photography blossomed when, aged 18, and having dropped out of high school, she began working in the darkroom of a commercial portrait photographer.”1

At the age of 23 she bought a secondhand Leica camera and walked the streets of New York – mainly Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the Bronx and Spanish Harlem – observing the social interactions of children and adults in this teeming metropolis. But she was not a flâneuse,2 strolling around the city observing but not interacting with her surroundings … she was fully engaged in the activity of the city.

What amazes me is that her vision as an artist was so well (in)formed at such a young age. And that the concerns and investigations into the nature of play, love and life in New York as a young, strong, independent “New Woman” remained constant throughout her life and decades long photographic career.

In her photographs there is an (in)direct engagement with the people that surrounded her (in her early works “she often hid her camera under her coat to capture candid, unnoticed moments on the streets”), an exchange of energy from the photographer to the subject and back through the camera onto the film… evidencing a generosity of spirit on the part of the artist towards her subjects. Here there is no pressing the camera into the face of the victim a la Garry Winogrand to evince a reaction, but a genuine sense of compassion and empathy towards the people who live in the great city of New York.

Influenced by social realism and the idea the photography could be an agent for change, avant-garde European film, surrealism and contemporaneous dance and theatre Levitt, “decided I should take pictures of working-class people and contribute to the movements,” Levitt later said of that time. “And then I saw pictures of [Henri] Cartier-Bresson and realised that photography could be an art – and that made me ambitious.”1

Levitt’s photographs are performative and theatrical, an engagement between artist, subject and viewer in the cause of art. “In her photographs, she presents the street as an almost theatrical landscape where the smallest interactions and gestures are incredibly resonant.”1

Levitt was not interested in concept nor didactic narrative. She was interested in the presence of the image before you … in just what you see.

As with any great art, the artist (even as she is ambitious) seems to be without ego. She lets the picture and the emotions tell the story without the shadow of the artist getting in the way (unlike much contemporary art and photography). For the work of art to have value in itself.

Thus, her photographs speak to us directly, or not at all.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Sean O’Hagan. “Helen Levitt: the most celebrated, least known photographer of her time,” on The Guardian website Sun 3 Oct 2021 [Online] Cited 28/11/2025

2/ “The flâneuse is not a female flâneur, but she is a version of the flâneur. She does not experience the city in the same way as he does. It is hard to define the archetype of the flâneuse, because the flâneur himself consists of paradoxes and many subcategories. Key concepts for flâneur and flâneuse are the amount of spare time, the aesthetic detachment towards objects, crowd and sceneries they see and their ambiguity about it.”

Akkelies van Nes and Tra My Nguyen. “Gender Differences in the Urban Environment: The flâneur and flâneuse of the 21st Century,” in Daniel Koch, Lars Marcus and Jesper Steen (eds.,). Proceedings of the 7th International Space Syntax Symposium. Stockholm: KTH, 2009

Many thankx to Fundación MAPFRE for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Levitt was part of a highly intellectual cultural and political milieu in New York in the 1930s and her photography reflected her deep interest in surrealism, cinema, leftwing politics and the new ideas that were then emerging about the role of the body in art.”

Walter Moser, curator

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1938 from the exhibition 'Helen Levitt' at Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona, Sept 2025 - Feb 2026

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1938
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' [113th Street] c. 1938

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1938
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Helen Levitt (1913-2009) began photographing the streets of New York, her hometown, in the late 1930s, focusing mainly on poor neighbourhoods such as Hispanic Harlem and the Lower East Side, where the street clearly takes center stage as the setting for everyday life. Her camera was directed mainly at children and their games in the streets. These scenes of children occupy a central place in a body of work that, as a whole, captivates us with its ability to transform everyday scenes into images that convey all the emotion, mystery, and humour that life can contain, and with which the viewer establishes an immediate connection even though they lack an explicit narrative. Her work soon gained the recognition it deserved, and in 1943 the MoMA in New York organised her first solo exhibition (Photographs of Children).

Later in her career, she also became closely interested in film and colour photography. In 1948, she collaborated on the documentary The Quiet One and co-directed In the Street, another documentary about the streets of Hispanic Harlem. Both titles were highly influential in the subsequent evolution of documentary filmmaking by artists such as Jonas Mekas and Andy Warhol.

After receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959 to explore chromatic techniques, she began experimenting with colour photography, a medium in which she would also develop pioneering work.

A socially committed artist, Levitt was one of the first women to forge a professional career in photography. This exhibition is the first to be based on her entire body of work and archives, which have only recently been made available to the public.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE website

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Dedicated full-time to her artistic activities, the photographer Helen Levitt (New York, 1913-2009) did not begin to gain public recognition until relatively late in life. Although her name has always been associated with “street photography,” as it was precisely the streets of her native city that provided the context for the production of her images, throughout her career Levitt made forays into film, visited other countries such as Mexico, and also focused on colour photography. Her images, almost invariably ambiguous and mysterious although not necessarily at first glance, are also characterised by their spontaneity, warmth and sensitivity. The movements and gestures of the figures captured by her lens and the communication between them transcend that inclination to “photograph children” which many critics pointed out after her first exhibition at the MoMA in 1943, entitled Helen Levitt: Photographs of Children.

Levitt’s work as a whole goes far beyond the latter aspect, revealing her acceptance of the pleasures, terrors and complexity of existence at all ages, traits often overlooked by the viewer when immersed in the harsh reality of the urban landscape. The exhibition, the first to be devoted to the artist on the basis of the entirety of her work and archives, which have only recently become available for study, offers a broad overview of Levitt’s career through nine sections and around 220 photographs. It includes previously unexhibited images, as well as work produced in Mexico in 1941 and a large proportion of the artist’s work in colour, which she explored from the 1950s onward. It also features her film In the Street, directed by Levitt in collaboration with Janice Loeb and James Agee, and a projection of her colour slides.

Born in Brooklyn to a Russian-Jewish family, Helen Levitt dropped out of high school early and began her photography training in a Bronx studio. Influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson, she pursued independent photography, capturing everyday life in New York neighbourhoods between 1938 and 1942. Her first solo exhibition was at the MoMA in 1943. She also experimented with film, making In the Street, and with colour photography, which gained her a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959. Levitt continued to work intermittently,
exploring new settings such as the subway and rural areas. Her creative output is recognised for its ability to capture moments of human connection in complex urban environments.

Key themes

Enigmatic photographs

Helen Levitt’s images possess a mysterious quality that transforms them into true visual enigmas. Her unique and highly perceptive gaze turns everyday scenes into compositions that are hard to define, creating an immediate connection with the viewer even when there is no clear narrative to explain them.

A pioneer with her own voice

Helen Levitt was one of the first women to make her way in the world of photography, especially in the field of street photography. She always avoided constructing an explicit narrative in her images and preferred not to talk about them. Far from diminishing its value, that decision is one of the key traits that make her work so interesting. Despite this characteristic of reserve, Levitt’s photographs connect with the viewer through the universal emotions they convey.

Text from Fundación MAPFRE

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'Mexico City' 1941

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Mexico City
c. 1941
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1942
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Helen Levitt

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Helen Levitt (1913-2009) became a photographer in the mid-1930s after meeting Henri Cartier-Bresson and seeing his radical new pictures made with a discreet, handheld camera. By the end of the decade, she had developed a unique sensibility, one informed by Surrealism and a love of avant-garde cinema but focused on the interactions of ordinary people in the streets, sidewalks, stoops, and vacant lots of her native city.

Grounded in gritty realism but brimming with subversive humor, mischief, and pathos, Levitt’s pictures are openended and enigmatic, concealing as much as they reveal. Her uncanny photographs of urban children and their games brought Levitt early renown even as she remained attentive to the quiet gestures and movements of a broader swath of humanity observed with her 35mm Leica, especially in Spanish Harlem, where the activity of everyday life often spilled out of doors.

Following a months long foray in Mexico City, Levitt began to work in filmmaking, leading to a long hiatus in her photographic activity. In 1959, advances in the sensitivity colour film spurred her to take to the streets again with her Leica. She continued to photograph in color throughout the 1970s, reverting to black-and-white film for a series of pictures taken in the New York City subway. Levitt continued to photograph intermittently until the early 1990s, when she became known as the “unofficial poet laureate” of New York and her oeuvre universally acknowledged as one of the most timeless and affecting in the history of the medium.

Early Work / Graffiti / Gypsies

Only a few examples survive from Levitt’s first year using a Leica camera. Amid the backdrop of the Great Depression, her pictures of lone figures hunched over or lying on the ground appear documentary in their impulse, while other depictions of people in urban surroundings are notably more ambivalent in their view.

In 1937, while employed by the Federal Art Project to teach at a public school in East (Spanish) Harlem, Levitt noticed the many chalk drawings and messages illicitly scrawled by children on streets and buildings on her way to work, and began to document them in all their variety, innocence, and vulgarity. She sometimes also portrayed the artists themselves posing next to their ephemeral interventions.

Around 1938, on the advice of Walker Evans, Levitt began to use a right-angle viewfinder, a device that allowed her to face one direction while pointing her camera in another. This was particularly effective in recording the uninhibited interactions of the “gypsy” families prevalent in Spanish Harlem and Yorkville. Drawn to their way of life, she also borrowed Evans’s 4 x 5-inch view camera and tripod to make portraits of “gypsy” children in their homes.

1938-1940 / Mexico City / A Way of Seeing

By 1940 Levitt had established her terrain, subject, and approach. In a rare statement, she later described her intent “to seize upon and record those apparently accidental disarrangements that nevertheless and in seeming contradiction provide a more intense apperception of reality.” Uninterested in portraying New York City as a bustling metropolis, Levitt instead saw it as
an environment whose “size and varied character constantly forces into the open material for my camera.” The working class, immigrant neighbourhoods she frequented – where adults chatted on stoops, mothers and children leaned out of windows, and children were left to their own devices – proved to be an especially fertile ground for her work.

In 1941, again inspired by Cartier-Bresson’s example, Levitt, a reluctant traveler, went to Mexico City with a friend to photograph there. Initially struggling with the challenge of working in new environment, she was eventually able to find her artistic footing, producing a body of work that at once acknowledged rawer social realities while locating a subtle lyricism unique to the city and its people. It would be her only trip abroad.

Upon her return to New York City, Levitt picked up where she left off, picking up on more sober themes of melancholy, alienation, and what she referred to as “the deep repressions of the unyoung.” After having photographed for a decade, Levitt collaborated with her friend, the writer and critic James Agee, to edit and sequence a book of her New York photographs. Envisioning the project as an urban counterpart to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, his 1941 collaboration with Walker Evans, Agee wrote an extensive essay to accompany Levitt’s pictures that heralded their lyric qualities, the sum of which presented “unified view of the world, an uninsistent but irrefutable manifesto.” After a series of setbacks, the book, eventually given the title A Way of Seeing, was not published until nearly two decades later in 1965.

In the Street

In the mid-1940s, along with her friend and patron, Janice Loeb, Levitt began to shoot footage around New York City with a home movie camera. They were joined by James Agee, who encouraged them to conceive of an experimental project that would serve as a cinematic extension of Levitt’s still photographs. This led the three of them to collaborate on the pioneering short film that was first screened in 1949 and then released in 1952 under the title In the Street, a forerunner of the cinéma verité style. By the end of the 1940s and for the next two decades, filmmaking became Levitt’s primary occupation.

Color / Subway / 1980s

In 1959, Levitt was granted a Guggenheim fellowship to experiment with “the latest techniques in colour photography.” Her Leica loaded with colour slide film, she walked some of the same streets she had frequented in the 30s and 40s, newly attentive to the chromatic character of her compositions. After the bulk of her slides were stolen by a burglar in 1970, Levitt redoubled her efforts, photographing throughout the decade with renewed zeal, developing an intuitive system of colour that was at once transporting and transparent. In 1974, a continuous projection of forty of Levitt’s slides were featured at MoMA in New York, after which she began to realise select images as dye transfer prints.

Around the same time, Levitt also decided to revisit the subterranean theatre of New York City subway as a site to make pictures, having served as a decoy for Walker Evans’s subway project work more than three decades earlier. With her subjects largely stationary in train cars and platforms, Levitt attended to the nuances of expression and gesture, recording quiet dramas amid unflattering light and cramped quarters.

From the 1980s onwards, Levitt continued to photograph, but only intermittently, working mainly in black and white, both in the city and outside it.

Text from Fundación MAPFRE

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' 1975

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1975
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'Brooklyn, New York' 1982

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1982
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
Nd
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
1971
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
1976
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

Fundación MAPFRE
KBr Photography Center
Avenida Litoral, 30 – 08005 Barcelona
Phone: +34 93 272 31 80 (Attention only during the opening hours of the exhibition hall)

Opening hours:
Mondays (except holidays): Closed
Tuesday to Sundays (and holidays): 11am – 7pm

Fundación MAPFRE website

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Exhibition: ‘Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing’ at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Exhibition dates: 13th June, 2025 – 4th January, 2026

Curator: Maria L. Kelly, High Museum of Art assistant curator of photography

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991) 'Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #37' 1953 from the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991)
Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #37
1953
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Adair and Joe B. Massey in honour of Gus Kayafas

Aaron Siskind was recognised for the ways he rendered his surroundings into often stark shapes and forms, which reflected his fascination with contemporary trends in abstract art. He was an influential teacher at Chicago’s Institute of Design, which was founded by László Moholy-Nagy as the New Bauhaus. This image of a person flying or falling comes from a series Siskind made of the contorted bodies of divers plunging into Lake Michigan. He masterfully created its disorienting effect through tight focus on the floating figure without contextual elements.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

While contemporarily AI-powered technologies are revolutionising the way we interact with and consume media, enabling us to “to process and analyse vast amounts of data quickly, making it easier to find and access the information we need” in the 1920s and 1930s there was also a revolution in the way artists (and their use of the camera) viewed and felt the world – one not based on information, image quality or duplicity in the veracity of the image but one based on the word, perspective – be that point of view, context, close ups, surreality, fragmentation, scale, concept, construction, colour, aesthetics, identity, gender, or radical experimentation.

In this departure from traditional photographic methods, “New Vision photographers foregrounded experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages and compositions that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints, and these extended to movements such as surrealism and constructivism.” (Press release)

To me, this New Vision is about experiencing different perspectives – experiencing, sensing, feeling and seeing the world in a new light. After the disasters and machine-ations, the destruction of a conservative way of life before the First World War, here was a way to grasp hold of (and picture) the speed of a new world order, the dreams of physiological analysis, the diversity of new identities, and the fluidity of rapidly evolving technological and social cultures.

While today this (r)evolution continues at an ever expanding pace with the consumption of huge amounts of information and images, I believe it may be advantageous to rest for a while on certain experiences and images … so that we let the daggers drop from our eyes, to ‘not make images’ in our minds eye but just to be present in the viewing of a photograph, so that we appreciate and understand every aspect of the great life spirit of this wondrous earth.

Then and now, new vision.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the High Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

The New Vision movement of the 1920s and 1930s offered a revolutionary approach to seeing the world. It represented a rebellion against traditional photographic methods and an embrace of avant-garde experimentation and innovative techniques. László Moholy-Nagy, an artist and influential teacher at the Bauhaus in Germany, named this period of expansion the “New Vision.” Today, the term encompasses photographic developments that took place between the two World Wars in Europe, America, and beyond. New Vision photographers foregrounded inventive techniques, including photograms, photomontages, and light studies, and made photographs that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints. These approaches – which also extended to more defined movements like Surrealism – spoke to a desire to find and see different perspectives in the wake of World War I.

Uniting more than one hundred works from the High’s photography collection, the exhibition traces the movement’s impact, from its origins in the 1920s to today, and demonstrates its long-standing effect on subsequent generations.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing

Named by the influential German artist and teacher László Moholy-Nagy, the “New Vision” comprised an expansive variety of photographic exploration that took place in Europe, America, and beyond in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement was characterised by its departure from traditional photographic methods. New Vision photographers foregrounded experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages, and light studies, and made photographs that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints.

This exhibition, uniting more than one hundred works from the High’s robust photography collection, will trace the impact of the New Vision movement from its origins in the 1920s to today. Photographs from that era by Ilse Bing, Alexander Rodchenko, Imogen Cunningham, and Moholy-Nagy will be complemented by a multitude of works by modern and contemporary artists such as Barbara Kasten, Jerry Uelsmann, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Abelardo Morell to demonstrate the long-standing impact of the movement on subsequent generations.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026

Installation views of the exhibition Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 – January 2026
Photos: Mike Jensen

The High Museum of Art presents “Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing” (June 13, 2025 – Jan. 4, 2026), an exhibition uniting more than 100 works from the High’s robust photography collection to trace the impact of the New Vision movement from its origins in the 1920s to today. Works include century-old photographs exemplifying themes from the movement and modern and contemporary images that emphasise the relevance of current artistic and social practices as a response to the technological and cultural changes that occurred in the early 20th century.

“This exhibition provides an opportunity to illuminate photographers’ creativity and innovative practices, all inspired by the progression of the medium in the 1920s and 30s,” said High Museum of Art Director Rand Suffolk. “Many of the works are rarely on view, so it will be an exciting experience for visitors to see them and learn about photographers’ abilities as they reflect reality while experimenting with technique and perspective.” Named by the influential German artist and teacher László Moholy-Nagy, the “New Vision” comprised an expansive variety of photographic exploration that took place in Europe, America and beyond in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement was characterised by its departure from traditional photographic methods. New Vision photographers foregrounded experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages and compositions that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints, and these extended to movements such as surrealism and constructivism.

“Experiments in Seeing” features nearly 100 photographers. It also demonstrates how the New Vision movement revolutionised the medium of photography in the early 20th century in response to the great societal, economic and technological shifts spurred by the upheaval of the two World Wars. Photographs from that era by Ilse Bing, Alexander Rodchenko, Imogen Cunningham and Moholy-Nagy have been complemented by a multitude of photographs by modern and contemporary artists such as Barbara Kasten, Jerry Uelsmann, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Abelardo Morell to demonstrate the long-standing impact of the movement on subsequent generations.

The first section of the exhibition delves into experimental techniques that foreground the light-sensitive aspects of photography, followed by works created through in-camera manipulations or additions to the surfaces of the prints. Subsequent sections explore inventive methods of capturing unexpected views of the world articulated with radical angles or detailed close-ups. Other works showcase surreal approaches to subjects such as humanlike forms and bodies, the use of mirrors and doubling, and everyday scenes heightened by uncanny moments or distorted through the interplay of light, shadow and water.

“Not only does the early 20th century and its art movements continue to be influential, but that time also echoes our current moment – one that feels similarly consequential and innovative with the development of new emerging technologies and methods of communicating,” said Maria L. Kelly, the High’s assistant curator of photography. “The movements and happenings of a century ago are akin to those of today and those shown in the exhibition. There remains a desire for alternative ways to see and approach the world through art, and particularly through photography.”

“Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing” is on view in the Lucinda W. Bunnen Galleries for Photography located on the Lower Level of the High’s Wieland Pavilion.

Press release from the High Museum of Art

“Light was considered the medium that permits photography. But for me it became the main subject: the protagonist of my photography.”

Ilse Bing, c. 1920s

Light Experimentation

After the trauma of World War I, many artists felt compelled to reconsider conventional art making methods to better reflect and engage with the world. Some photographers turned their attention to the essential element of photography: light. Through innovative visual investigations, cameraless photographs were produced, viewes of the world altered, and scientific discoveries made.

Experimentations with illumination and light-sensitive paper in the darkroom gave rise to photograms, enabling artists to pursue abstraction and to wield light as a sculptural element. The process of solarisation – reversing tones in a print using a flash of light during developing – provided an unconventional view of a subject. Early attempts to capture traces of light on film led to scientific innovations such as using strove lights to freeze movement, depicting magnetic fields, and tracing electrical currents on light sensitive paper.

These processes aim to reveal the invisible, with the elements of change as a constant companion. While artists can insert some control over the elements, the process ultimately shapes the final image. Many artworks in this section exist as unique prints, challenging the assumption of the reproducibility of photography, and emphasising the singularity of the creative moment.

Wall text from the exhibition

Francis Bruguière (American, 1879-1945) 'The Light That Never Was on Land or Sea' c. 1925 from the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026

Francis Bruguière (American, 1879-1945)
The Light That Never Was on Land or Sea
c. 1925
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation

Nathan Lerner (American, 1913-1977)
Light Drawing #8 (Smoke)
1938-1939
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Hilary Leff and Elliot Groffman

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Untitled [Seated Woman with Necklace, Solarized]
1943
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of the Estate of Ilse Bing Wolff

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Camera Movement on Flashlight, Chicago
c. 1949
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Dr. Robert L. and Lucinda W. Bunnen, Collections Council Acquisition Fund, Jackson Fine Art, Powell, Goldstein, Frazer and Murphy, Jane and Clay Jackson, Beverly and John Baker, Roni and Sid Funk, Gloria and Paul Sternberg, and Jeffery L. Wigbels
© 2018 The Estate of Harry Callahan

Abelardo Morell (American born Cuba, b. 1948)
Still Life with Wine Glass: Photogram on 20″ x 24″ Film
2006
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Friends of Photography
© Abelardo Morell

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Lightning Fields 182
2009
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase through funds provided by patrons of Collectors Evening 2012
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Inspired by William Henry Fox Talbot, an inventor of photography who was fascinated with electromagnetic conduction, Hiroshi Sugimoto began applying charges of electricity directly to unexposed photographic film. After months of honing his technique in the darkroom, he managed to achieve remarkable results with a handheld wand charged by a generator. His Lightning Fields photographs are made without a camera or lens. Here, the abstract visual trace of an electric charge measuring over 400,000 volts sweeps across the composition, reading like the textures of a human hand, the upward tentacles of a fern, or the stark branches of a tree.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Hans-Christian Schink (German, b. 1961)
2/26/2010, 7:54 am – 8:54 am, S36° 49.622′ E 175° 47.340′
2010
From the series 1h
© Hans-Christian Schink

Abelardo Morell (American born Cuba, b. 1948)
Camera Obscura: View of Philadelphia from Loews Hotel Room #3013 with Upside Down Bed, April 14th, 2014
2014
Pigmented inkjet print
High Museum of Art Atlanta, gift of Dr. Roger Hartl
© Abelardo Morell

V. Elizabeth Turk (American, b. 1945)
Calaeno
2018
Van Dyke print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection
© Elizabeth Turk

V. Elizabeth Turk is an Atlanta-based photographer whose work explores the connections between the human body and the natural world. To make this print, Turk used an analog process from the 1800s that involves coating a large sheet of paper with light-sensitive chemicals. She then arranged her model on top of the sheet and exposed it to light, creating a ghostly silhouette, before repeating the exposure with plants. The resulting photogram is a unique image in which botanical forms intersect with the body, alluding to bones, veins, and skin and suggesting a visceral bond between humans and the environment.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

“The limits of photography are incalculable; everything is so recent that even the mere act of searching may lead to creative results. […] The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as of the pen.”

László Moholy-Nagy 1928

Radical Viewpoints

From photography’s inception in 1839, camera technology involved cumbersome equipment and time-consuming development processes until the advent of lightweight cameras in the 1920s. Photographers were then able to work more nimbly, transforming photography into a medium capable of capturing fleeting moments, unusual viewpoints, and multiple perspectives. The exploration of unexpected angles became a hallmark of New Vision photography. Sharp diagonals, extreme vantage points, and shortened perspectives opened novel pathways of perceiving otherwise commonplace environments.

Alexander Rodchenko, a pioneer in this method, championed the camera’s ability to reveal, stating, “in order to teach man to see from all viewpoints, it is necessary to photograph […] from completely unexpected viewpoints and in unexpected positions […] We don’t see what we are looking at. We don’t see marvellous perspectives.” This approach aimed to provide a fuller impression of subjects, prompting viewers to seek and appreciate what might otherwise be overlooked.

Though these early photographs may not appear groundbreaking today, their makers’ carefully considered methods transferred how photography is used. This is evident in photographers’ creative interpretations of their surroundings over the past century.

Wall text from the exhibition

Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Sbor na demonstratsia (Gathering for a Demonstration)
1928
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Joseph and Yolandra Alexander, Moscow/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
© Estate of Alexander Rodchenko/RAO, Moscow/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Alexander Rodchenko was a key figure in the movements of New Vision and Constructivism – abstract and functional art that reflected an industrial society. Advocating “to achieve a revolution in our visual thought,” he explored various methods, such as photographing from unexpected angles, to capture dynamic views and expose new realities. With a new, lightweight 35 mm camera, he often photographed from his apartment balcony to create dramatic scenes of the street below. The perspective in this photograph flattens the building’s stories into one visual field, giving the image a theatrical quality as an onlooker peers over the railing.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
The Bridge
1929
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Arnold H. Crane
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A central figure among twentieth-century American photographers, Walker Evans created works in his early career that sample from the New Vision aesthetic, which he may have encountered while abroad in Paris in 1926. His photographs of New York City, made after he returned to the United States, feature dramatically angled or cropped scenes of architecture and city life. Evans made numerous photographic studies of the Brooklyn Bridge from both below and on the bridge, portraying it less as a recognisable landmark and more as a hulking expanse whose form fills each tight frame.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian 1895-1946)
Stage Set for Madame Butterfly
1931
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation

Moholy-Nagy, a leader of the New Vision, had an expansive artistic practice that included painting, photography, sculpture, film, and more. As a teacher at the Bauhaus, which connected art and industry, he believed in technology’s potential to advance art and society. In 1929, he became set designer at the Kroll Opera House and created avant-garde sets with translucent and perforated materials, often making light itself a sculptural element. Lucia Moholy, a photographer, writer, teacher, and Moholy-Nagy’s first wife, was commissioned as Kroll’s stage photographer. In this image, which either artist may have made, the sharp angle shot from above complicates the set of Madame Butterfly, emphasising intersecting, moving elements and heightening areas of light and shadow.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Lucas Foglia (American, b. 1983)
Esme Swimming, Parkroyal on Pickering, Singapore
2014
Pigmented inkjet print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Irene Zhou
© Lucas Foglia

Close Ups

Similar to the practice of using unusual angles to offer unexpected perspectives, some photographers began capturing highly detailed, close-up views of objects. This approach affords a study of texture, pattern, and structure that may otherwise go unnoticed by the human eye. By eliminating surroundings that could offer a narrative, the physicality of the object becomes the primary focus, allowing it to transcend beyond its everyday existence.

Practitioners of straight photography in the United States and the concurrent New Objectivity movement in Germany shared a core desire to unearth a balance of the familiar and the foreign within intricate images of forms. While Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston perfected carefully composed studies of plants and other natural matter, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Alexander Rodchenko, and Ralph Steiner explored scientific and industrial objects. Such images celebrated the technological advancements of the time and revealed how mechanical structures often mimic those found in nature, suggesting a shared framework, and a shared beauty, between humanmade and natural. The emphasis on detail and abstraction invites viewers to reconsider their perceptions of both the ordinary and the extraordinary in the world around them.

Wall text from the exhibition

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Agave Americanus
1929
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Agave Design I
c. 1920
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust

Edward Weston (American 1886-1958)
Palma Cuernavaca II
1925
Palladium print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection to mark the retirement of Gudmund Vigtel
© Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents

Ralph Steiner (American, 1899-1986)
Electrical Switches
1929
Gelatin silver print
8 x 10 5/16 inches
Purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Weed Against Sky, Detroit
1948
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of the Callahan and Hollinger Families
© 2018 The Estate of Harry Callahan

Eugenia de Olazabal (Mexican, b. 1936)
Espinas
c. 1985
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of the artist

“Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise: in the very creation of a duplicate world, of a reality in the second degree, narrower but more dramatic than the one perceived by natural vision.”

Susan Sontag, 1973

Surreality

Surrealism emerged as an artistic movement in reaction to the horrors of World War I. The often disconcerting imagery and literature of the movement reflected a world that felt disorienting and chaotic and captured how the very foundations of reason and humanity were tested and questioned through the realities of war. In his Surrealist Manifesto (1924), French writer Andre Breton advocates for a rejection of rational ways of approaching the world in four of dreams and imagination as pathways to new creative expressions.

Photography played an important role in the Surrealist movement. Artists valued how the medium could capture spontaneous moments that reveal the unexpected, be manipulated to stage scenes, or be altered with darkroom processes. They harness photography in a multitude of ways to create dreamlike and unconscious associations with reality. In these galleries, artists explore uncanny moments and create links to the human psyche by focusing on humanlike forms and fragmented body parts, mirrored and doubled views, and the impact of light and shadows in space.

Wall text from the exhibition

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Men’s Fashions (Avenue des Gobelins)
1925, printed 1956
Gelatin silver print
Purchase

Eugène Atget was the great chronicler of Paris at the turn of the century. His vast photographic archive captures a city on the precipice of modernisation. Though his photographs of empty city streets were documentary in nature, the Surrealists admired their dreamlike quality and claimed Atget as one of their own despite his protestations. They believed any photograph could shed its original context and intent when viewed with a surrealist sensibility. Atget’s photograph of mannequins peering out of a shop window appealed to the movement by embodying the uncanny valley, where the human likeness of a nonhuman entity evokes both affinity and discomfort in viewers.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Florence Henri (Swiss born United States, 1893-1982)
Composition
1932, printed 1972
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Dr. Joe B. Massey in honor of Maria L. Kelly

Florence Henri is well known for her manipulations of light and form that create complex, surrealist scenes. She used angled mirrors to frame, obscure, and replicate portions of scenes to dissolve a sense of perspective and space, as seen in this still life comprising mirrors, pears, and an image of the sea. After only one semester studying under László Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus in 1927, Henri shifted her focus from painting to photography and began using various experimental techniques such as photomontage, multiple exposures, photograms, and negative printing.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Barbara Kasten (American, b. 1936)
Construct NYC
1984
Dye destruction print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection
© Barbara Kasten

Barbara Kasten’s art is as much about the process of setting up innovative still life scenes as it is about the photographs she makes of them. Her Constructs series focuses on large-scale complex assemblages that she builds in her studio using a wide variety of materials, including painted wood, plaster, mirrors, screens, and fibers. Her work is not digitally altered; instead, she complicates the scene using mirrors and light, much in the tradition of Florence Henri, whose photograph is also on view in the exhibition.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Manipulations

This final section features photographers from the New Vision period to the present day who experiment with physically manipulating photographs. Through approaches such as double exposure, photomontage, surface alteration, and multilayering, they challenge and expand our perceptions of reality. The artworks in this section prioritise the creative process through labour, intention, intervention, and theatricality.

Double exposures is the process of photographing multiple images with the same negative within the camera, resulting in layered images that often provide a frenetic, multifaceted view of a scene. In contrast to the in-camera process of double exposure, photomontage combines separate images in the darkroom to produce a final photograph that emphasises the image’s artifice and absurdity. Physically disrupting the surface of photographs with alterations such as adding unnatural colour, drawing connections, stitching into prints, or inscribing texts augments the visual experience and offers emotional and narrative depth. Finally, whether through ancient visual techniques like the camera obscure or new technologies like digital screens, these artists create enigmatic scenes by layering and physically transforming subject, composition, and image.

Wall text from the exhibition

Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992)
Protest
1940
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase

Charles Swedlund (American, b. 1935)
31 St. Beach
c. 1955
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Steven Nordman
© Charles Swedlund

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1964
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from a friend of the Museum

Lucinda Bunnen (American, 1930-2022)
Untitled
1974
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Lawrence and Alfred Fox Foundation for the Ralph K. Uhry Collection
© Lucinda Bunnen

Duane Michals (American, b. 1932)
Untitled
1989
From the Indomitable Spirit Portfolio
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Paul Mpagi Sepuya (American, b. 1982)
Studio (0X5A8180)
2021
Archival pigment print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Donald and Marilyn Keough Family Foundation
© Paul Mpagi Sepuya

Noémie Goudal (French, b. 1984)
Phoenix V
2021
Dye coupler print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase through funds provided by patrons of Collectors Evening 2023

Noémie Goudal visualises “deep time” (geological history of the planet) and paleoclimatology (study of past climates) to challenge our perception of the world. Referring to the ancient continental split two billion years ago that formed South America and Africa, this image features the Phoenix atlantica, a palm tree that grows on both sides of the Atlantic. Goudal arranged strips of photographic prints of the palms made on one continent in front of the physical palms on the other and rephotographed the scene. The resulting image interweaves the two continents, creating a glitchy, kaleidoscopic view meant to unsettle our sense of stability and the constancy of the planet.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Naima Green (American, b. 1992)
It Lingers Sweetly
2022
Pigmented inkjet print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the LGBTQIA+ Photography Centennial Initiative

Naima Green’s practice centres connection and collaboration to cast a tender lens on her own queer community of colour. Her lyrical portraits take shape in intimate domestic spaces and airy outdoor environments that embody havens for the people in those spaces. Through double exposure and serial photographs, she provides what she calls “multiple entry points” into a moment in time, translating movements and emotions into a single image. She explains her interest in double exposure “as a means of capturing things that can’t be held in just one way … ,” allowing her to “play with loosening the narrative and letting go of some control.”

Text from the High Museum of Art website

The High Museum of Art
1280 Peachtree St NE
Atlanta, GA
30309

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm
Sunday 12 – 5pm
Monday closed

The High Museum of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Paul Outerbridge: Photographs’ at Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 25th September – 8th November, 2025

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959) 'Girl with Fan' c. 1936 from the exhibition 'Paul Outerbridge: Photographs' at Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, September - November 2025

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959)
Girl with Fan
c. 1936
Vintage color carbo photograph
17 x 13 inches
© Paul Outerbridge; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

I think I was born in the wrong era!

My favourite era in the history of photography is the period between the wars.

The avant-garde photographers of the period were so inventive, challenging the act of looking through modern photographs featuring radical perspective, fragmentation, scale, concept, construction, colour, aesthetics, identity, gender, fashion, performance, photogram, photo collage, to name just a few.

Favourites include Germaine Krull (European, 1897-1985) and her magnificent book MÉTAL (1928) with its dissection of the Eiffel Tower; Florence Henri (Swiss born United States, 1893-1982) and her experimental compositions featuring mirrors and reflections; Claude Cahun (French, 1894-1954) and Marcel Moore (French, 1892-1972) and their subversion of gender norms; August Sander (German, 1876-1964) and his archetypal photographs from “People of the 20th Century”; Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956) and his revolutionary photographs; Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) revealing photographs of New York subway passengers; Jakob Tuggener’s (Swiss, 1904-1988) alchemical photographs picturing the world or work and industry; Helmar Lerski‘s (Swiss, 1871-1956) metamorphosis of the human face; and Margaret Bourke-White‘s (American, 1906-1971) modern industrial America to name, again, just a few.

There are so many fantastic photographers from this period, pushing the boundaries of what was possible in photography without loosing sight of the stories they wanted to tell, and the immediacy and presence of the photograph.

Paul Outerbridge Jr. is another from the period, a much under appreciated artist in the vanguard of experimental photography, “a bold innovator, transforming ordinary objects, such as milk bottles, collars, eggs, into fractured Cubist constructions of light and form…

Throughout his career, Outerbridge pursued abstraction as both a visual language and an artistic philosophy. His still lifes, nudes, and commercial commissions all demonstrate his preoccupation with fractured planes, geometric tension, and the transformation of the commonplace into the extraordinary.” (Press release)

That’s what I like about this man’s photographs: their bold but radical simplicity, clear visualisation of the pictorial statement, and formal abstracted beauty.

His photographs are, and will remain, a joy to be/hold.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Fahey/Klein Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959) 'Ide Collar' 1922 from the exhibition 'Paul Outerbridge: Photographs' at Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, September - November 2025

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959)
Ide Collar
1922
Platinum photograph
4 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches
© Paul Outerbridge; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959)
Wine Glass on Checker Board
1922
Vintage platinum photograph
4 1/8 x 3 3/16 inches
© Paul Outerbridge; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959)
Jello Mould in Dish
1923
Vintage platinum photograph
5 x 4 3/4 inches
© Paul Outerbridge; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959)
Men’s Scarfs
1924
Vintage platinum photograph
4 5/8 x 3 7/8 inches
© Paul Outerbridge; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959)
Woman in Bed (under satin sheets)
c. 1933
Vintage silver gelatin photograph
15 3/8 x 13 9/16 inches
© Paul Outerbridge; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Fahey/Klein Gallery is pleased to present Paul Outerbridge: Photographs, a landmark exhibition celebrating the visionary work of Paul Outerbridge (1896-1958), one of the most resourceful and provocative photographers of the twentieth century. This exhibition brings together a rare selection of Carbo prints, silver gelatin photographs, and platinum prints, tracing the evolution of a modernist whose daring vision helped redefine the possibilities of photography through Cubist experimentation and radical abstraction.

Outerbridge emerged in the 1920s as a bold innovator, transforming ordinary objects, such as milk bottles, collars, eggs, into fractured Cubist constructions of light and form. His platinum and silver gelatin prints reduced subjects to intersecting planes and geometric rhythms, revealing a structural beauty aligned with the avant-garde movements of his time. These works positioned him among artists and contemporaries such as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Edward Steichen, and demonstrate his embrace of Cubism’s challenge: to fracture reality and reassemble it as pure abstraction.

In the 1930s, Outerbridge turned to the technically demanding Carbo process, creating some of the most vibrant and enduring color photographs of the era. Here too, abstraction was his guiding principle. Color became a tool not just for description, but for reimagining form, flattening, faceting, and animating planes into startling compositions that rival the abstract canvases of Picasso and Kandinsky. His photographs were hailed as both artistic and technical sensations. As Outerbridge observed:

“One very important difference between monochromatic and color photography is this: in black and white you suggest; in color you state.”

Outerbridge’s practice blurred the boundaries between fine art and commercial photography. His Ide Collar (1922), published in Vanity Fair, was more than an advertisement. It was celebrated as both functional and formally radical. A chessboard of fractured black-and-white squares disrupted by the crisp curve of a collar. Duchamp himself hung the photograph in his Paris studio, recognising its affinity with the readymade and its radical modernist edge.

Paul Outerbridge’s work appeared in Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, House Beautiful, and McCall’s, and in exhibitions worldwide. After relocating to Southern California in 1943, he continued to write about and practice photography until his death in 1958. Today, his technical virtuosity, daring subject matter, and relentless pursuit of beauty secure his place as a pioneer who expanded the medium’s expressive range.

Text from the Fahey/Klein Gallery website

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959)
Girl in Bathing Suit
1936
Color carbo photograph
13 1/16 x 9 15/16 inches
© Paul Outerbridge; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959)
Window with Plants
1937
Color carbo photograph
14 x 11 9/16 inches
© Paul Outerbridge; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959)
Political Thinking
1938
Color carbo photograph
15 7/16 x 12 11/16 inches
© Paul Outerbridge; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Paul Outerbridge Jr. (American, 1896-1959)
Nude with Mask and Hat
c. 1936
Color carbo photograph
17 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches
© Paul Outerbridge; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Fahey/Klein Gallery
148 North La Brea Avenue,
Los Ángeles, CA 90036

Opening hours

Fahey/Klein Gallery website

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Online exhibition: ‘Gary Krueger (re)Discoveries’ from Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, California

October 2025

Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945) 'Los Angeles' c. 1970s from the online exhibition 'Gary Krueger (re)Discoveries' from Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, California, Sept 2025

Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles
c. 1970s
Vintage gelatin silver print
5 x 7 inches, 8 x 10 inch sheet

There’s a scene in one of my favourite movies, 1971’s American romantic black comedy-drama Harold and Maude directed by Hal Ashby, in which the glorious Ruth Gordon (in her best ever role) saves a tree from dying in the city by loading into the back of a ute, driving it at full speed through toll gates and out to the country to plant it in the forest, pursued by a motorcycle cop.

The joyful absurdity of her actions is mirrored in the terrific juxtapositions in life that are Gary Krueger’s considered photographs: for example, a “future tree” a circle with words in a lump of concrete surrounded by a constellation of fossil fuel oil stains.

As I said in a previous posting on the artist’s work, “Krueger’s street photography inverts the normal meaning of bathos… in that a silly or very ordinary subject suddenly changes to a beautiful or important one. There is black humour aplenty in these photographs as they picture the happenstance anachronisms of a major American city.”

An encouragement to think beyond the obvious!

More from the wonderful Gary Krueger can be found on the Art Blart posting Gary Krueger’s City of Angels, 1971-1980.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Joseph Bellows Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Maude saves a Tree from the film Harold and Maude (1971) with Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort, directed by Hal Ashby

Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles
c. 1970s
Vintage gelatin silver print
5 x 7 inches, 8 x 10 inch sheet

Gary Krueger (re)Discoveries presents a new collection of photographs from the artist’s archive. These vintage photographs display a sometimes frenetic and often bizarre and fragmented world. Taken mostly in Los Angeles, California in the mid to late 1970s, Krueger’s curiosity and instincts helped him to create a remarkable body of street photography, one that he describes as “split-second juxtapositions in life.”

After graduating High School in 1963, Gary Krueger (1945 – ) drove his 1954 Ford west from Cleveland, Ohio, to study graphic design and photography at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1964 to 1967. Later Cal Arts, Chouinard was a professional art school founded in 1921 by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard. In 1961, Walt and Roy Disney guided the merger of Chouinard and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music to establish the California Institute of the Arts. Notable alumni include Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Joe Goode, and Allen Ruppersberg, with whom Krueger collaborated on Ruppersberg’s narrative photo works, including 23 Pieces (1969) and 24 Pieces (1970). Upon graduation from Chouinard, Krueger was hired by WED, Disney’s “Imagineering” Division. to photograph the Park and its events. He eventually left WED to pursue a successful career as a commercial and editorial photographer.

“Gary Krueger’s plain ol’ photographs (unless I’m missing a point) – small, tough, and sharp – are good, granite reportage. Baldessari’s “Fables” and Krueger’s no-nonsense photos cut like a hot ripsaw through the cool, marshmallow quality of both exhibitions.” – Peter Plagens, from a 1973 ARTFORUM review of the exhibition, Southern California: Attitudes 1972, at the Pasadena Art Museum.

Gary Krueger’s work is represented in The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. His work has recently been feature in The Guardian, Creative Review, Huck and The Eye of Photography.

Press release from Joseph Bellows Gallery

Gary Krueger (American, b. 1945)
Los Angeles
c. 1970s
Vintage gelatin silver print
5 x 7 inches, 8 x 10 inch sheet

Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girrard Avenue
La Jolla, California
Phone: 858 456 5620

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm and by appointment

Joseph Bellows Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Richard Avedon ‘In the American West’ 1979-1984′ at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris

Exhibition dates: 30th April – 12th October, 2025

Curator: Clément Chéroux, Director, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Sandra Bennett, twelve year old, Rocky Ford, Colorado, August 23, 1980
1980
Gelatin silver print
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Myths of the American West

This is a magnificent exhibition of the 103 photographs that form American photographer Richard Avedon’s series and subsequent book of the same name, In The American West 1984.

“Avedon spent the next six years, from 1979 to 1984, traveling to 189 towns in 17 states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming – and even up into Canada. He conducted 752 sittings, exposing 17,000 sheets of film through his large-format view camera.”1

“For five years, Avedon photographed miners, drovers, showmen, vendors, and vagabonds, alone or in small groups, in front of his view camera against a white background that enhanced their features, postures, and expressions. He thus created a striking portrait of this region and its residents, a departure from traditional representations and glorifications of the myth of the American West.”2

Using relatively small reference prints (40 x 50cm) not originally intended for exhibition made by the photographer at the time to produce the prints for his book, the hanging of this exhibition “on the line”, “follows the book, from the first to the last image… The blank pages are represented on the wall by a gap equivalent to the width of a frame, like a half-space. We have thus reproduced the rhythm of someone leafing through the book. We can see through this that Richard Avedon and Marvin Israel (1924-1984), artistic director, have constructed the rhythm of these images in a very precise manner”3, one which follows “the dynamics of the photograph on the page, and the inter-relationships, scaling and sequencing of groups of photographs.”

Breaking with the code of social documentary photography, Avedon brings to this project all his undoubted skill as a New York fashion photographer, reassigned to the artistic sphere: clarity of purpose, simplicity of representation, aesthetic beauty, clinical detail and contextless backgrounds.

While there is a long history of the use of plain backgrounds in portrait photography dating back to the infancy of the medium, Avedon was one of the first to employ such a technique in contemporary (I’d like to say postmodern) photo-portraits, where the subject is disassociated from their location, job, culture and is posed by the director of the theatrical show.

Over the five years of the project, Avedon worked closely with his subjects, often advertising for people to be photographed, street-casting his sitters, paying them for their time and providing prints of the resultant photographs. He or one of his assistants “took a Polaroid photograph of each of the models intended to pose. Clément Chéroux (curator of the exhibition) notes that, “Comparing these polaroids with Avedon’s portraits shows his ability to transcend the appearance of his models.”4

During the photographic sessions Avedon shot not from behind his camera but to the side, like the director of a play in rehearsal, front of stage. “He had a strong connection with his subjects, mimicking their position, and asking them to respond to a very small gesture by showing himself moving in one direction or another, and I think a lot of the work is in this relationship that he was establishing with the subject. Photographic literature usually focuses on the framing, the composition, but for me, this kind of interaction he was able to develop with the subject is where the work is, where he’s transforming the people that he met into a Richard Avedon photograph.”5

“A conductor of his own composition, Richard Avedon was able to weave an unparalleled fusional relationship with his models, while implacably directing them through his gaze, gestures or voice.”6

Thus, through his imagination, his direction and his creative experience Avedon conjured a subjective view of the American West every bit as much as myth as those cowboys in John Wayne movies, a kind of counter-mythology undercutting the eulogising of the American West, but a staged, fabricated, youthful, desolate, mysterious mythology none the less – a series which captures the ethos of the era (global recession, disease, dis/ease) counter to the one hoped for, “representing a sad, unsmiling America, which does not correspond to the one dreamed of.”7

Think that damned foreigner Robert Frank and his book The Americans, pointing the bone at the belly of the United States of America, holding a mirror up to their reflection8 and they certainly not liking what they saw. Indeed Avedon, while American and respectful of his subjects, could be seen as an interloper from New York exposing through his photographs the underbelly of this vast country colonised through divine providence and Manifest Destiny.

Avedon, while undercutting the myth of the American West through his storytelling, doesn’t seek to document, exploit or misrepresent his subjects, but to subjectively present them as on a theatrical set devoid of scenery – where their very appearance becomes scene / seen. As he himself said, “My concern is… the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own.”

“Richard Avedon showed his own America, those we do not see, those we pass by without pausing, those who do the work, those who make America work.”9

Neither the series nor the exhibition are without fault, however.

While I believe that Avedon’s exceptional magnum opus In The American West has become one of the truly iconic photographic portrait series of the 20th century it can also be seen as problematic, not in the photographic sense, but in the sense that the photographs did not reflect the diverse reality of the West’s population. While the series may be Avedon’s subjective mythologising of the American West some people, myself included, find the lack of representation of Black Americans, Asian Americans and other ethnicities that have been integral to the development of the American West a point of contention. Are they not those that also do the work, those who also make America work, as much as those Avedon chose to photograph? Indeed there is a “significant demographic blind spot” in the whole series…

The other blind spot is the inability of commentators such as myself to publish some of the preparatory Polaroids that Avedon and his assistants took before posing his subjects. I asked the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson for some of the Polaroids to illustrate this posting and they said that none were available. Since the exhibition promotes the presence of these unpublished documents and the curator Clément Chéroux notes their importance for their ability to compare them with Avedon’s finished portraits, showing “his ability to transcend the appearance of his models,” they become vital to understanding Avedon’s creative process … and it would have been great to see the visualisation of his subjects from beginning to end.

Examples of these Polaroids are rare online but some can be seen in the article “Before And After: Polaroids then Magic from Richard Avedon, In the American West,” on the Flashbak website June 9, 2025.

Finally, in the juxtaposition of Polaroid and finished portrait we can begin to perceive the magical transformation and artistry and humanism of the man, Avedon, as he visualises his ode to the American West, composing his subjects so that they engage with the viewer directly from the photographic frame – the dynamics of the photographs creating iconic images of memorable characters, collectively constructing the rhythm of these images (from dark to light, from sublime to industrial) into an unforgettable sequence of photographs.

Bravo Richard Avedon!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Word count: 1,254

1/ Text from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art website [Online] Cited 10/10/2025

2/ Text from the YouTube website translated from the French by Google Translate [Online] Cited 23/09/2025

3/ Nathalie Dassa. “Richard Avedon: The Living Forces of the American West,” on the Blind Magazine website, May 12, 2025 [Online] Cited 22/09/2025

4/ Karen Strike. “Before And After: Polaroids then Magic from Richard Avedon, In the American West,” on the Flashbak website June 9, 2025 [Online] Cited 10/10/2025

5/ Clément Chéroux quoted in Christina Cacouris. “Richard Avedon’s Rugged American West Comes to Paris,” on the Aperture website, June 26, 2025 [Online] Cited 23/09/2025

6/ Justine Grosset. “Richard Avedon, In the American West,” on the Phototrend website May 5, 2025 [Online] Cited 10/10/2025

7/ Nathalie Dassa, op.cit.,

8/ Holding a mirror up to their reflection, i.e. to hold something up to scrutiny, to reveal an unpleasant truth, or to show something for what it truly is, often with the intent of providing insight or understanding.

9/ Nathalie Dassa, op.cit.,

Many thankx to the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“I don’t think the West in these portraits is any more accurate than John Wayne’s West.”

Richard Avedon at the exhibition opening in 1985

“Avedon’s most compelling photographs are about performance – his performance as well as his subjects’ – and depend on the engagement of their personalities. For this reason it is difficult to separate the photographer from the man. Indeed it is partly owing to the ineluctable presence of Avedon’s own psychology that his portraits transcend the mainstream of cultural history.”

Anonymous. “Body of Evidence,” on the Frieze website, 06 March 1994 [Online] Cited 23/09/2025

“Listen carefully to the stories of others and they may tell us something of ourselves. The story of any person exists first in the mind of its teller, perpetually renewing itself as, like smoke in wind, it is constantly shaped and reshaped in the flux of daily life. Narratives constructed from various facts, memories and rumours are added to, subtracted from, come together and fall apart in a continuous reassembling of experience and imagination. The human mind is a place where fact meets fiction, where reality and fantasy mingle easily and endlessly with fabrication, half-truths and invention. As they say, looking at something is no guarantee you will actually see it.”

Glenn Busch from A Man Holds A Fish 2024

Richard Avedon – In the American West

To mark the 40th anniversary of Richard Avedon’s iconic work, In The American West, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson presents, from April 30 to October 12, 2025, in collaboration with the Richard Avedon Foundation, an exceptional exhibition entirely dedicated to this iconic series.

Between 1979 and 1984, at the request of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, Richard Avedon traveled the American West and photographed more than 1,000 of its inhabitants. For five years, Avedon photographed miners, drovers, showmen, vendors, and vagabonds, alone or in small groups, in front of his view camera against a white background that enhanced their features, postures, and expressions.

He thus created a striking portrait of this region and its residents, a departure from traditional representations and glorifications of the myth of the American West. The sheer power of the 103 works that make up the final series and the book of the same name make In The American West a pivotal moment in Avedon’s work and a major milestone in the history of photographic portraiture.

The exhibition presented at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson from April 30 to October 12, 2025, displays for the very first time in Europe all the images that appear in the original work, accompanied by previously unpublished documents.

Text from the YouTube website translated from the French by Google Translate [Online] Cited 23/09/2025

Richard Avedon photographing for In The American West

“We have some testimonies about the way that Avedon was working, and we know that he was not behind his camera, he was standing next to it. He had a strong connection with his subjects, mimicking their position, and asking them to respond to a very small gesture by showing himself moving in one direction or another, and I think a lot of the work is in this relationship that he was establishing with the subject. Photographic literature usually focuses on the framing, the composition, but for me, this kind of interaction he was able to develop with the subject is where the work is, where he’s transforming the people that he met into a Richard Avedon photograph.”

Clément Chéroux quoted in Christina Cacouris. “Richard Avedon’s Rugged American West Comes to Paris,” on the Aperture website, June 26, 2025 [Online] Cited 23/09/2025

Installation view of the exhibition Richard Avedon ‘In the American West‘ at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, April – October 2025

“The hanging follows the book, from the first to the last image,” explains Clément Chéroux. “The blank pages are represented on the wall by a gap equivalent to the width of a frame, like a half-space. We have thus reproduced the rhythm of someone leafing through the book. We can see through this that Richard Avedon and Marvin Israel (1924-1984), artistic director, have constructed the rhythm of these images in a very precise manner.”

Nathalie Dassa. “Richard Avedon: The Living Forces of the American West,” on the Blind Magazine website, May 12, 2025 [Online] Cited 22/09/2025

“Here, the works are displayed throughout the building in classic fashion – in a single line – and in unusually small formats (40 × 50 centimetres). “These are the reference prints, made by the photographer at the time, to produce the prints for his book and the enlargements shown in his exhibitions,” explained Clément Chéroux, the foundation’s director. These prints were not intended for exhibition, but nonetheless their remarkable quality allows the public − for the first time in Europe − to discover this exceptional work in its entirety.”

Claire Guillot. “Richard Avedon’s photographs of the American West at Paris’s Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson,” on the Le Monde website, August 13, 2025 [Online] Cited 23/09/2025

Installation views of the exhibition Richard Avedon ‘In the American West‘ at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, April – October 2025

To mark the 40th anniversary of Richard Avedon’s iconic work In the American West, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, in collaboration with the Richard Avedon Foundation, presents an exclusive exhibition focused on this emblematic series.

Between 1979 and 1984, commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, Richard Avedon traveled across the American West to photograph over 1,000 of its inhabitants. For five years, Avedon photographed miners, herdsmen, showmen, salesmen and transient people, amongst others with rich histories, alone or in small groups, before his camera, against a white background that enhanced their features, postures and expressions, for a striking portrait of the territory and its residents, in stark contrast to traditional depictions and glorifications of the legend of the American West. The force of the 103 works that compose the book makes In the American West a pivotal event in Avedon’s career, and a milestone in the history of photographic portraits.

For the first time in Europe, the exhibition at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson presents the whole series of images included in the original publication, while also showcasing the stages of its production and reception. The exhibition includes a full selection of engravers prints, which served as reference materials for both the exhibition and the 1985 book, as well as previously unpublished documents, such as preparatory Polaroids, test prints annotated by the photographer, and correspondence between the artist and his models.

To mark this anniversary, Abrams, the book’s original publisher, is reissuing the long out-of-print book.

Richard Avedon short biography

Richard Avedon was born to parents of Russian Jewish heritage in New York City. As a boy, he learned photography, joining the YMHA Camera Club at the age of twelve. Avedon joined the armed forces in 1942 during World War II, serving as Photographer’s Mate Second Class in the Merchant Marine. Making identification portraits of the crewmen with his Rolleiflex twin lens camera – a gift from his father – Avedon advanced his technical knowledge of the medium and began to develop a dynamic style. After two years of service he left the Merchant Marine to work as a photographer, making fashion images and studying with art director Alexey Brodovitch at the Design Laboratory of the New School for Social Research.

In 1945, Avedon set up his own studio and worked as a freelance photographer for various magazines. He quickly became the preeminent photographer used by Harper’s Bazaar.

From the beginning, Avedon made portraits for editorial publication as well: in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar, in Theater Arts, and in Life and Look magazines. From the outset, he was fascinated by photography’s capacity for suggesting the personality and evoking the life of his subjects. Only rarely did he idealize people; instead, he presented the face as a kind of landscape, with total clarity.

Avedon continued to make portraiture and fashion photography for magazine publications throughout his career. After parting ways with Harper’s Bazaar in 1965, he began a long-term relationship with Vogue that continued through 1988. In later years, he established formidable creative partnerships with the French publication Egoiste, and with The New Yorker. In the pages of these periodicals, Avedon reinvigorated his formalist style, investing his imagery with dynamism and theatricality. In addition, he supported his studio by making innovative advertising work for print and broadcast – defining the look of brands like Calvin Klein, Versace, and Revlon.

As his reputation grew and his signature aesthetic evolved, Avedon remained dedicated to extended portraiture projects as a means for exploring cultural, political, and personal concerns. In 1963-1964, he examined the civil rights movement in the American South. During the Vietnam War, he photographed students, countercultural artists and activists, and victims of the war, both in the United States and in Vietnam. In 1976, on a commission for Rolling Stone magazine, he produced The Family, a composite portrait of the American power elite at the time of the country’s Bicentennial election.

In 1985, Avedon created his magnum opus – In the American West. He portrayed members of the working class: butchers, coal miners, convicts, and waitresses, all photographed with precisionist detail, using the large format camera and plain white backdrop characteristic of his mature style. Despite their apparent minimalism and objectivism, however, Avedon emphasised that these portraits were not to be regarded as simple records of people; rather, he said, “the moment an emotion or a fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.”

Publication

Richard Avedon’s acclaimed work In the American West was first published in 1985 by American publishing house Abrams. For its 40th anniversary, Abrams is republishing the work in its original format.

Text from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Roger Tims, Jim Duncan, Leonard Markley, Don Belak, coal miners, Reliance, Wyoming, August 29, 1979
1979
Gelatin silver print
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

“This was the beginning of his emblematic project “In the American West” that took him across 17 US states, where he photographed nearly 1,000 people from 1979 to 1984 and revealed a poor, hardworking America, far removed from the clichés and the myth of the glorious American West. He carried out this series with neither sociological intent nor a concern for objectivity. “This is a fictional West,” he said. “I don’t think the West of these portraits is any more conclusive than the West of John Wayne.””

Claire Guillot. “Richard Avedon’s photographs of the American West at Paris’s Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson,” on the Le Monde website, August 13, 2025 [Online] Cited 23/09/2025

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Ronald Fischer, beekeeper, Davis, California, May 9, 1981
1981
Gelatin silver print
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

“He needed to create disjunctions,” says Clément Chéroux. “The beekeeper remains a great image of the 20th century. After placing an ad, he chose this man suffering from alopecia, who no longer had any hair, no eyebrows. He took him to an entomologist who covered him with queen pheromones to attract bees. Through this staging, he wanted to make the audience understand that nothing is more complex than simplicity.”

Nathalie Dassa. “Richard Avedon: The Living Forces of the American West,” on the Blind Magazine website, May 12, 2025 [Online] Cited 22/09/2025

“The subjective part of the project is clear. And most of the photographs were from encounters where he photographed people he met as they were. He also stated very clearly that a few photographs were set up, and the photograph of the Bee Man is a good example of that. He first published an advertisement in the American Bee Journal to find the type of person he was interested in – we have the advertisement in the exhibition, we found the original magazine where it was published. So, he looked for that person and made some drawings in preparation for the shoot. He clearly had a dream of a specific image that he wanted to realize. And he made clear that he wanted to have this photograph to show the subjective part of the project, that it was not exclusively a documentary project. I think the Bee Man shows us that there isn’t truth on one side and fiction on the other. It’s much more complex.” …

“Just before the Bee Man, we have the coal miners, these very strong dark images and then suddenly you have the white body of Ronald Fisher with all these little bees. We wanted to respect this in the exhibition, the sense that it was not just a collection of twentieth-century photographs of Americans, but it was a group of images, a full sentence.”

Clément Chéroux quoted in Christina Cacouris. “Richard Avedon’s Rugged American West Comes to Paris,” on the Aperture website, June 26, 2025 [Online] Cited 23/09/2025

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
David Beason, shipping clerk, Denver, Colorado, July 25, 1981
1981
Gelatin silver print
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

“The year after [Glenn Busch’s] Working Men was published came fashion photographer Richard Avedon‘s In the American West (New York: Abrams, 1985), the consistent theme of which, as Richard Bolton in Afterimage argues, sees “human experience as manifested in [no]thing but style,” a quality, less sombre, but equally arch, exoticising and stereotyping that is found also in the Small Trades studio series of 1950-51 by Irving Penn.”

James McArdle. “October 8: Prosopography,” on the On This Date In Photography website 08/10/2025 [Online] Cited 08/10/2025

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Jesse Kleinsasser, pig man, Hutterite Colony, Harlowton, Montana, June 23, 1983
1983
Gelatin silver print
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Ruby Mercer, publicist, Frontier Days, Cheyenne, Wyoming, July 31, 1982
1982
Gelatin silver print
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

“Avedon was aware of the subjectivity of what he presents. He was also very familiar with art history and pictorial references, such as those of Rembrandt. He made carcasses of sheep and cattle appear like hallucinations among the workers. His photography is therefore no more objective than that of John Wayne’s westerns. And that is what he had been criticised for: representing a sad, unsmiling America, which does not correspond to the one dreamed of. These are the people that Walker Evans and the traveling photographers sought out during the conquest of the West. He demonstrated this paradox. And this is the term Roland Barthes uses for him: the paradox of all great art. Richard Avedon showed his own America, those we do not see, those we pass by without pausing, those who do the work, those who make America work.”

Nathalie Dassa. “Richard Avedon: The Living Forces of the American West,” on the Blind Magazine website, May 12, 2025 [Online] Cited 22/09/2025

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Petra Alvarado, factory worker, on her birthday, El Paso, Texas, April 22, 1982
1982
Gelatin silver print
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Boyd Fortin, thirteen year old rattlesnake skinner, Sweetwater, Texas, March 10, 1979
1979
Gelatin silver print
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Avedon took this portrait in 1979 in Texas during the annual snake hunt in the small town of Sweetwater.

The portraits from In the American West may not be romantic images – no pomp and circumstance – but they are dignified. Coal miners, cotton farmers, and cowboys stand tall and proud. Avedon worked quickly, street-casting his subjects alongside his assistant Laura Wilson, setting up white paper backdrops and shooting instinctively. Post-production was another matter entirely: Chéroux’s exhibition showcases the meticulous care that went into each print, with Avedon’s instructions for dodging and burning scrawled across pictures.

Christina Cacouris. “Richard Avedon’s Rugged American West Comes to Paris,” on the Aperture website, June 26, 2025 [Online] Cited 23/09/2025

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Richard Garber, drifter, Interstate 15, Provo, Utah, August 20, 1980
1980
Gelatin silver print
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Blue Cloud Wright, slaughterhouse worker, Omaha, Nebraska, August 10, 1979
1979
Gelatin silver print
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Cover of Richard Avedon’s book In The American West

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
79 rue des Archives
75003 Paris

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11am – 7pm
Closed on Mondays

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Exhibition: ‘Street Photography. Lee Friedlander, Joseph Rodríguez, Garry Winogrand’ at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

Exhibition dates: 3rd May – 12th October, 2025

Curator: Barbara Engelbach

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934) 'New York City' 1966 from the exhibition 'Street Photography. Lee Friedlander, Joseph Rodríguez, Garry Winogrand' at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, May- October 2025

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
New York City
1966
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1966
22 x 32.9cm
Museum Ludwig, Köln
© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York and Luhring Augustine, New York
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

I know and greatly admire the presence and directness of legendary American photographer Lee Friedlander’s photographs containing fractured planes within the image construction.

I know and appreciate (if not admire) the immediacy and in your face obstinacy (shoot at all costs!) of American photographer Garry Winogrand’s photographs.

What I didn’t know was the excellent 1980s social documentary and humanist work of the American photographer Joseph Rodríguez – for me, the unexpected hero of this exhibition.

Rodríguez’s moody, high contrast photographs of humanity and street scenes pictured from behind the wheel of his taxi in New York proffer an intuitive, empathetic and subjective view of the city and its people at a time of great economic and social upheaval.

“The photographs in the Taxi series are a significant document of the 1980s in New York, a period marked by economic and social upheaval and the AIDS crisis. On his journeys crisscrossing the city, Rodríguez does not depict despair,
but rather shows people maintaining their dignity in the face of difficult and uncertain times.” (Text from Museum Ludwig)

Uncertain times, uncertain angles and perspectives, uncertain light give rise to a powerful body of work made certain by the talent of an impressive photographer. Glorious work.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Museum Ludwig for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
'New York City' 1962 from the exhibition 'Street Photography. Lee Friedlander, Joseph Rodríguez, Garry Winogrand' at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, May- October 2025

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
New York City
1962
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1962
22 x 32.9cm
Museum Ludwig, Köln
© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
New York City
1963
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1963
22 x 32.9cm
Museum Ludwig, Köln
© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York and Luhring Augustine, New York
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Lee Friedlander

(*1934 in Aberdeen, Washington, lives and works in New York City, New York)

Lee Friedlander began photographing at the age of fourteen and studied under Edward Kaminski at the Art Center School in Los Angeles until 1955. In 1956, he moved to New York, where he met Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, and Garry Winogrand. As early as the end of the 1950s, he made his first photographic forays into the streets of New York. His often humorous photographs reveal the complexity of American society, which he documented in thoughtful compositions.

In 1962, Friedlander photographed a parade in which American President John F. Kennedy also participated. His interest, however, was not in the event itself, but in the fleeting moments on the sidelines. One of the photographs taken that day shows a waiter and a boy attentively gazing out the window of a café. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the crowd behind them is actually a reflection of the audience gathered outside for the parade. Due to the reflection, the café’s advertising signs also appear to be on the same plane as the signs on the opposite side of the street. Such interweaving of perspectives through reflections, as well as picture-in-picture constructions and unusual cropping, characterize Friedlander’s work of the 1960s. By focusing his camera on the often unnoticed details of daily life, capturing them with precise focus and exposure, he found a new way to depict contemporary America. His own presence, as a reflection or a shadow, in many of these images draws attention to the process of photography itself.

Friedlander does not create complete series. Each shot stands on its own as a “sharp and crudely amusing, bitterly comic observation” (Walker Evans). He initially used a Leica 35mm, whose wide angle he valued. In the early 1990s, he discovered the depth of field of the Hasselblad camera, which he also used to photograph the suburban towns of San Angelo, Texas. His subjects remained the same, only he continually reinvented them. In the 1990s, Friedlander created his photographs of flower stems trapped in glass containers and surrounded by a veil of condensation, transforming a sober detail of everyday life into a contemporary memento mori – a reminder of transience. The self-portraits, which unvarnishedly depict his ageing body, date from the same period.

Text from Museum Ludwig translated by Google Translate

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
New York City
1965
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1965
22 x 32.9cm
Museum Ludwig, Köln
© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York and Luhring Augustine, New York
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
Philadelphia, PA
1965
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1965
20.5 x 30.6cm
Museum Ludwig, Köln
© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
Mount Rushmore
1969
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1969
22 x 32.9cm
Museum Ludwig, Köln
© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York and Luhring Augustine, New York
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

The street life of cities has always been a fascinating subject for photographers, who have approached it in a variety of ways, from candid images documenting urban unrest to portraits that shine a spotlight on individuals. Since the nineteenth century, cities and photography have been directly linked through the idea of modernity. With the introduction of compact cameras such as the Leica, street photography developed into its own genre in the mid-twentieth century. Small-format cameras gave photographers greater flexibility and enabled them to respond quickly while remaining discrete. They explored public space without obtruding and, in contrast to staged photography, captured candid and spontaneous moments that had previously been considered unworthy photographic subjects. Influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s concept of the “decisive moment,” these photographers sought to capture the fleeting instant when light, composition, and subject aligned to convey the significance of an event.

This exhibition in the Photography Rooms at the Museum Ludwig is dedicated to three protagonists from two generations of street photography: Garry Winogrand (b. 1928 in New York, d. 1984), Lee Friedlander (b. 1934 in Aberdeen, Washington, based in New York), and Joseph Rodríguez (b. 1951 in Brooklyn, based in New York). Despite all three photographers sharing the same subject matter, each one pursues a singular approach that produces distinct results. Iconic photographs from the 1960s to the 1980s are displayed alongside lesser-known examples from each photographer’s oeuvre. All of the works on display were included in donations made by the Bartenbach Family in 2015 and Volker Heinen in 2018, or have been acquired by the Museum Ludwig since 2001.

The landmark exhibition New Documents at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1967 helped launch the careers of Winogrand and Friedlander. Their striking photographs broke with visual conventions, such as a level horizon line or a centred main subject. Winogrand frequently tilted his viewfinder, producing skewed horizon lines that offer a new view of reality and make his images appear spontaneous, as does his purposeful use of blurriness, overexposure, underexposure, and backlighting. Friedlander, in turn, created compositions in which the viewer’s gaze is hindered by obstructions, such as shadows, signs, architectural elements, and streetlights, or is disoriented by reflections.

Winogrand and Friedlander, who are represented in the exhibition with twenty images each, both use photography in a self-reflective way that brings the formal aspects of photography to the fore. This encourages an analytical gaze, producing an emotional distance between the viewer and the subject, which often results in ambivalent images where the intention of the photographer remains unclear. Winogrand and Friedlander each developed their own distinct style, embracing originality and authorship by merging documentary photography and personal expression. While they attempted to distance themselves from photojournalism and social documentary photography, eschewing event-based, narrative-focused, and emotionally charged imagery, Rodriguez’s work deliberately engages with these genres. He aspires to give visibility to marginalised people by communicating with his subjects and attempting to tell their stories. Many of his photographs are accompanied by short commentaries that provide information about the context in which each image was created. Rodríguez’s pictures employ unusual perspectives and surprising compositions, and his use of reflections emphasises the subjectivity of the photographer’s empathic gaze beyond the momentariness of the shot. The exhibition features around twenty photographs from his Taxi series.

This is the first exhibition in the new Photography Rooms at the Museum Ludwig, centrally located on the second floor.

Text / press release from the Museum Ludwig website

Installation view of the exhibition 'Street Photography. Lee Friedlander, Joseph Rodríguez, Garry Winogrand' at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, May - October, 2025

Installation views of the exhibition Street Photography. Lee Friedlander, Joseph Rodríguez, Garry Winogrand at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, May – October, 2025
Photo: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv/Vincent Quack

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Coney Island, New York
1952
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1973
21.7 x 32.6cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand/Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Utah
1964
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1978
23 x 34cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand/Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Garry Winogrand

(*1928 in New York City, New York, d. 1984)

For many years, Garry Winogrand found his subjects right on his doorstep, on the streets of his birthplace and longtime home, New York. Whether they depict individuals or groups of people, his photographs are characterised by a special dynamism, which is also the result of the unusual perspectives of his shots. Often chaotic, sometimes surreal, the images tell stories from everyday life in the big city, but also from mass events such as sporting events or political demonstrations.

Winogrand distanced himself from both the social documentary photography popular in the 1930s and 1940s and from photojournalism, with which he himself earned his living for a long time. He was concerned with shifting the perspective from the object of the photograph to the camera: “I photograph to find out what things look like when photographed.” In his photographs, Winogrand found a formal equivalent for the diverging social forces of the 1960s. He captured passersby on the streets and public squares with a wide-angle lens in such a way that the horizons tilted and a clear center of gravity was missing. His photographs of women in public often deviated from this principle. He dedicated the book Women are Beautiful to this motif, which he returned to repeatedly throughout his career, in 1975. In another project, beginning in 1969, he focused on the media world in order to – as he put it – “study the events produced in the news.” With a distanced perspective, Winogrand captured press conferences, demonstrations, open-air festivals, and the hustle and bustle of the art world – the spectacles and pseudo-events of a society in transition.

Text from Museum Ludwig translated by Google Translate

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
New York City
1969
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1978
22.9 x 34.2cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand/Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Circle Line Statue of Liberty Ferry, New York
1971
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1973
21.7 x 32.4cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand/Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled, from: Women are Beautiful
1970
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1981
21.7 x 32.4cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand/Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled, from: Women are Beautiful
1973
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1973
21.7 x 32.4cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand/Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Joseph Rodríguez (American, b. 1952)
East Village, New York
1984
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1988
25.3 x 37.4cm
© Joseph Rodríguez, Courtesy Galerie Bene Taschen
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

“When I drove a cab, my taxi cab was a rolling psychology office. Everybody had something to say. Sometimes it’s just light conversation like the weather or kids. Baseball. But then you get all kinds of incredible stories. I was learning the foundations of humanism in my cab.”

Joseph Rodríguez

“To drive a cab back then, you either had to have a death wish or come to the job with a biography that inured you to the danger or graced you with such intuitive empathy/curiosity that to see and hear and sometimes engage with the cavalcade of humanity sliding in and out of your backseat trumped the nightly game of Russian roulette.”

Richard Price penned these poignant words that open photographer Joseph Rodríguez’s book, Taxi: Journey Through My Windows 1977-1987

Joseph Rodríguez

(*1951 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, lives and works there)

Joseph Rodríguez was a teenager when street photography was celebrated in New York with exhibitions such as New Documents at the Museum of Modern Art, which also brought Friedlander and Winogrand to the fore. Rodríguez studied graphic design and photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York and the New York City Technical College. In 1985, he graduated with a degree in photojournalism and documentary photography from the International Center for Photography in New York. During his studies, he worked as a taxi driver, photographing his passengers and street scenes from behind the wheel. The exhibited works are from the Taxi series. They document, on the one hand, Rodríguez’s work as a taxi driver, who has to try to secure well-paid long-distance rides to earn a living and cover the costs of his hired taxi. During his twelve-hour shifts, Rodríguez captures city life in the various neighborhoods at different times of day, from nightlife to the busy hours of the day. His shots of passersby in the rearview mirror, of a sunrise, or of someone urinating in public who believes they are unobserved, testify to the fleeting nature of the moment. Rodríguez also engages directly with his passengers. His portraits convey the openness and respect with which he treats them. Rodríguez sees himself in the tradition of social documentary photography. He advocates the goal of giving visibility to those who are overlooked. He often adds short comments to his images that shed light on what is being photographed. He also uses unusual perspectives, surprising crops, and reflections. However, these emphasize the subjectivity of his empathetic gaze beyond the momentary nature of the moment.

The photographs in the Taxi series are a significant document of the 1980s in New York, a period marked by economic and social upheaval and the AIDS crisis. On his journeys crisscrossing the city, Rodríguez does not depict despair,
but rather shows people maintaining their dignity in the face of difficult and uncertain times.

Text from Museum Ludwig translated by Google Translate

Joseph Rodríguez (American, b. 1952)
220 West Houston Street, New York
1984
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1988
25.3 x 37.2cm
© Joseph Rodríguez, Courtesy Galerie Bene Taschen
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Joseph Rodríguez (American, b. 1952) 'I picked him up at a club and I took him to Brooklyn. He was a happy camper, New York' 1984 from the exhibition 'Street Photography. Lee Friedlander, Joseph Rodríguez, Garry Winogrand' at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, May- October 2025

Joseph Rodríguez (American, b. 1952)
I picked him up at a club and I took him to Brooklyn. He was a happy camper, New York
1984
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1988
24.8 x 36.8cm
© Joseph Rodríguez, Courtesy Galerie Bene Taschen
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Joseph Rodríguez (American, b. 1952)
At the Garage, my cab broke down, New York
1984
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1988
25.3 x 37.5cm
© Joseph Rodríguez, Courtesy Galerie Bene Taschen
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Joseph Rodríguez (American, b. 1952)
Meatpacking District, I picked him up from one of the clubs. He was a drag performer and I was taking him home to Brooklyn, New York
1984
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1988
24.8 x 36.6cm
© Joseph Rodriguez, Courtesy Galerie Bene Taschen
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Joseph Rodríguez (American, b. 1952)
Greenwich Village, The Anvil, New Jersey
1984
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1988
25.0 x 36.8cm
© Joseph Rodríguez, Courtesy Galerie Bene Taschen
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

“14th Street & West Side Highway. That’s the back of the Anvil. These guys would come outside to take a leak. And of course they’re having a conversation, so who knows what happened after that.” ~ Joseph Rodríguez

The Anvil was a gay BDSM after-hours sex club located at 500 West 14th Street, Manhattan, New York City, that operated from 1974 to 1985.

Joseph Rodríguez (American, b. 1952)
Pulaski Skyway, New Jersey
1984
Gelatin silver paper, print after 1988
24.8 x 36.8cm
© Joseph Rodríguez, Courtesy Galerie Bene Taschen
Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Museum Ludwig
Heinrich-Böll-Platz, 50667 Köln, Germany

Opening hours:
Tuesday through Sunday: 10am – 6pm

Museum Ludwig website

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Online exhibition: ‘Stephen Salmieri: Coney Island’ from Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, California

September 2025

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945) 'Coney Island' 1968 from the exhibition 'Stephen Salmieri: Coney Island' from Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, California, September 2025

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1968
Vintage gelatin silver print

I love these photographs!

What’s not to like… generously sympathetic photographs that exhibit no pretension, containing interesting backgrounds and wonderful characters. The incongruity of a muscle man in leopard skin bathers in a snowy landscape at Coney Island … no worries!

“In the images, storefront booths, midway games, carnival architecture, and the shoreline provide the backdrop to Salmieri’s descriptive and engaging portraits.”

I particularly like the wonderful photograph of the large gentleman with tattoos in a white singlet sitting at a table surrounded by a halo of light bulbs. I also like how Salmieri gives some of his portraits context by including background information in his photographs.

The artist joins a rite of passage for many American photographers in taking photographs at Coney Island – that is, to capture the magic and mystique of this theatrical, carnivalesque place – one full of history, ceremony, community, tradition, fun, drama, people, sun and sand.1

Luminaries to have photographed there include Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Weegee, Garry Winogrand, Bruce Davidson, Lisette Model, Walker Evans, Leon Levinstein, Arlene Gottfried, Harold Feinstein and Edward J. Kelty to name just a few.

Stephen Salmieri’s charismatic photographs are strong enough to join this pantheon of stars and the “vaunted tradition” of picturing Coney Island.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Bakhtin’s idea of the carnivalesque and the carnival paradigm accords to certain patterns of play where “the social hierarchies of everyday life… are profaned and overturned by normally suppressed voices and energies.”

“The carnival offers the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realise the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things.”

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World (trans. Hélène Iswolsky). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, p. 34.

Many thankx to the Joseph Bellows Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

For more information on the history and photography of Coney Island please see the exhibition posting Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008 and Forever Coney: Photographs from the Brooklyn Museum Collection at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, November 2015 – March 2016

“These spare and emotional first images of a forgotten community, now lost in time, allowed me to forge a vision at a pivotal moment in my young life.”

Stephen Salmieri

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1968
Vintage gelatin silver print

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1971
Vintage gelatin silver print

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1968
Vintage gelatin silver print

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1969
Vintage gelatin silver print

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945) 'Coney Island' 1969 from the exhibition 'Stephen Salmieri: Coney Island' from Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, California, September 2025

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1969
Vintage gelatin silver print

Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to present an online exhibition of Stephen Salmieri’s photographs of Coney Island. Made between 1967 and 1972 with an array of cameras and black and white film, these images portray a cast of beachgoers and amusement park locals within the surrounding environment of one of America’s earliest and most illustrious seashore amusement parks.

The exhibition showcases Salmieri’s finely crafted vintage black and white prints. In the images, storefront booths, midway games, carnival architecture, and the shoreline provide the backdrop to Salmieri’s descriptive and engaging portraits. In a published statement on the photographs, the artist explains his process and motivation:

“The world of Coney Island has changed dramatically since I made these photographs. It was my first self-assigned project at twenty years of age, having just graduated from the School of Visual Arts. In choosing my subject I gravitated naturally to the familiar destination of my adolescent bike adventures.

I made the hour ride to Coney Island with all my cameras in tow all year round. I carried a 4 x 5 field camera, a 6 x 6 cm and a 35 mm format, and lots of Tri-X film.

In 1969, CAMERA magazine approached me at my first exhibition at the Underground Gallery. In my naivety, I did not realise that Coney Island was also the choice territory for such luminaries as Robert Frank, Lisette Model, Leon Levinstein, and Weegee. It wasn’t until the magazine published these photographs as part of their seminal Coney Island issue in 1971 that I realised I had become part of a vaunted tradition.

These spare and emotional first images of a forgotten community, now lost in time, allowed me to forge a vision at a pivotal moment in my young life.”

Salmieri’s photographs from this body of work were also featured in the exhibition Forever Coney: Photographs from the Brooklyn Museum Collection.

Salmieri’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Brooklyn Museum, New York, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, Flint Institute, Michigan, the Museum of the City of New York, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Publications include “American Grilles” (1978, Hartcourt-Brace) and “Cadillac: An American Icon” (1985, Rizzoli).

Text from the Joseph Bellows Gallery website

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1970
Vintage gelatin silver print

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1971
Vintage gelatin silver print

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1972
Vintage gelatin silver print

Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1967-1972
Vintage gelatin silver print

Robert Frank (American, 1924-2019)
Coney Island
4th of July, 1958
Gelatin silver print

Edward J. Kelty (American, 1888-1967)
Harlem Black Birds, Coney Island
1930

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Couple at Coney Island, New York
1928
Gelatin silver print

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Afternoon Crowd at Coney Island, Brooklyn' 1940

Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (American born Ukraine, 1899-1968)
Afternoon Crowd at Coney Island
July 21st 1940

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Coney Island, New York City, N.Y.
1952
Gelatin silver print

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Coney Island
1955
Gelatin silver print

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Man in hat, trunks, socks and shoes, Coney Island, N.Y. 1960
1960
Gelatin silver print

Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933)
Two Youths, Coney Island
1958
From the series Brooklyn Gang

Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girrard Avenue
La Jolla, California
Phone: 858 456 5620

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm and by appointment

Joseph Bellows Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Elliott Erwitt. Icons’ at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy

Exhibition dates: 28th June – 21st September, 2025

Curator: Biba Giacchetti

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
England, Birmingham, 1991
1991
40 x 50cm
© Elliott Erwitt
Private Collection

Small intimacies

My apologies that I haven’t been writing that much in recent postings, but I am still recovering from my hip replacement operation and the pain is still ongoing over 6 weeks after the operation. I’m a little exhausted to put it mildly…

With this sumptuous exhibition of photographs by Elliott Erwitt – in a beautiful palazzo with painted ceilings and classical sculptures with the walls painted a glorious colour of green – you get what is says on the tin: Erwitt’s iconic and humanist photographs of dogs, children and celebrities, “visual double-takes and finely tuned one-liners.”

That is all the media images consisted of, his famous photographs.

I know that the exhibition, and the artist’s reputation, rests on his “icons” but I just wish we could see past these to his other photographs, photographs of everyday people, captured in the midst of their ordinary lives; photographs that contain a little more gravitas, a little more depth of poignancy / spirit / energy, revealing small intimacies not readily seen and acknowledged.

That Erwitt is capable of such images can be see in photographs such as Italy, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, 1965 (below), USA, New York City, 1969 (below) and that most gut wrenching, heart breaking of images, USA, Arlington, Virginia, Jacqueline Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, November 25, 1963 (below) – where Erwitt reveals the grief of loss and finally touches the marrow of what it is to be human.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx of the Palazzo Bonaparte for allowing me to publish the photographs and video in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy

Installation walk through of the exhibition “Elliott Erwitt. Icons,” dedicated to the late master of visual irony and empathy, Elliott Erwitt. This major show offers an intimate look into the universe of one of contemporary photography’s most significant figures, whose work transformed everyday life into profound visual poetry.

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt's photograph 'France, Paris, 1989'

Installation views of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing in the bottom image, the Erwitt’s photograph France, Paris, 1989

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at right Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, 1953

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, USA, Santa Monica, California, 1956 (below); at second left, USA, New York City, 1955 (below); at third left, USA, Louisiana, Shreveport, 1962; and at right, USSR, Bratsk, Siberia, 1967 (below)

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, Santa Monica, California, 1956
1956
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 1955
1955
Gelatin silver print
50 x 60cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USSR, Bratsk, Siberia, 1967
1967
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Starting June 28th, 2025, Palazzo Bonaparte will open its doors to an extraordinary exhibition, “Elliott Erwitt. Icons,” dedicated to the late master of visual irony and empathy, Elliott Erwitt. This major show offers an intimate look into the universe of one of contemporary photography’s most significant figures, whose work transformed everyday life into profound visual poetry.

With over 80 celebrated photographs, “Elliott Erwitt. Icons” invites visitors to experience Erwitt’s distinctive style – irreverent, poetic, and deeply human. He possessed a remarkable ability to capture the lightness of the joy of living, becoming the most insightful and moving chronicler of the human comedy. His lens made us smile, reflect, and feel, turning fleeting moments into unforgettable images.

A Glimpse into Erwitt’s Vision

Erwitt, who passed away in November 2023 at the age of 95, was a master at transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. His “Icons” are not just photographs; they are symbols of his unique perspective and our shared collective memory. As he once put it, “In the saddest and most wintry moments of life… suddenly the sight of something wonderful can change the aspect of things, your state of mind. The type of photography I like, the one where the instant is caught, is very similar to this break in the clouds. In a flash, a wonderful photo seems to come out of nowhere.”

This exhibition, curated by Biba Giacchetti, a leading international Erwitt expert, along with technical assistance from Gabriele Accornero, offers a comprehensive yet concise overview of his genius. From his anthropomorphic dogs to powerful world leaders, from iconic movie stars like Marilyn Monroe to intimate family moments, Erwitt’s gaze was both incisive and empathetic. He captured not only the irony of daily life but also its underlying complexity.

Beyond the Famous Faces

While the exhibition features renowned portraits of figures such as Che Guevara, Jack Kerouac, Marlene Dietrich, Fidel Castro, and Sophia Loren, it also highlights historical moments like the Nixon-Khrushchev dispute, Kennedy’s funeral, and the Frazier-Ali fight. Yet, Erwitt’s democratic approach to his medium shines through in his focus on everyday people, captured in the midst of their ordinary lives.

A significant portion of Erwitt’s work showcased his love for dogs, whose free-spirited nature he admired. Many photographs are taken from a dog’s-eye view, often revealing only the feet or legs of their owners. Erwitt ingeniously employed playful tactics, like sounding a horn or mimicking a bark, to elicit natural reactions from the animals, resulting in humorous and endearing compositions.

An Unmissable Summer Event

The “Elliott Erwitt. Icons” exhibition, running until September 21st, 2025, marks the opening of Palazzo Bonaparte’s summer exhibition season. Following the success of the recent Edvard Munch retrospective, this show pays homage to a globally beloved master of photography. Visitors will have the unique opportunity to journey through Erwitt’s surreal, romantic, and playful vision of the world, always capable of grasping the essence of things.

Press release from Palazzo Bonaparte

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing from left to right, 'taly, Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia, 1965'; 'France, Versailles, 1975'; and 'Spain, Madrid, 1995'

Installation views of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing in the bottom image from left to right, Italy, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, 1965; France, Versailles, 1975; and Spain, Madrid, 1995 (below)

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
Italy, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, 1965
1965
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
Spain, Madrid, 1995
1995
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, 1969 (below)

“A 1969 scene in Amagansett, New York – a sober, soot-stained Victorian office block with a single storefront whose sign (“Tony’s of Worth Street”) is written in cheerful white paint – somehow combines the austerity of Atget with the irreverent glee of Weegee.”

Andrew Dickson. “Elliott Erwitt’s Visual One-liners,” on The New Yorker website October 14, 2016 [Online] Cited 02/09/2025

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 1969
1969
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

From June 28 to September 21, 2025, Palazzo Bonaparte welcomes the most ironic and disarming gaze in twentieth-century photography: Elliott Erwitt. An exhibition that is much more than an exhibition: it is an invitation to observe the world with lightness, empathy, and wonder.

An unmissable event, which recounts – through over 80 iconic shots – the long and brilliant career of an artist capable of capturing the soul of the twentieth century and transforming ordinary moments into unforgettable images, with a profoundly human yet always surprising gaze.

On display in Rome are icons of an era, of a way of looking at the world with lightness and intelligence. “Icons” because each of Erwitt’s shots has become a symbol of his poetics and of our collective memory.

Erwitt is more than just a photographer: he is the poet of human comedy, the unerring witness to life’s small and large absurdities, which he recounts with disarming irony, subtle poetry, and timeless grace. His images – famous, unforgettable, often dazzling – manage to be simultaneously light and profound, intimate and universal. They are shots that make you smile, reflect, and move you.

Elliott Erwitt was – and is – a key figure in the visual culture of our time. His images, books, reportages, illustrations, and advertising campaigns have spanned the decades, appearing in international publications and influencing generations of photographers and artists. This exhibition is a journey through his work and an invitation to look at the world with new eyes: with lightness, empathy, and wonder.

A member since 1953 of the historic Magnum agency – founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, among others – Erwitt has chronicled the last sixty years of history and contemporary civilisation with journalistic flair, capturing the most dramatic yet humorous aspects of the life that has passed before his lens.

“In life’s saddest, wintry moments, when a cloud has enveloped you for weeks, suddenly the sight of something wonderful can change the face of things, your state of mind. The kind of photography I like, the one that captures the moment, is very similar to this break in the clouds. In a flash, a wonderful photo seems to come out of nowhere.”

With these words, Erwitt sums up the spirit and poetics with which he filters reality, representing it with his mastery, capturing its sometimes playful, sometimes irreverent, or almost surreal aspects, which make him an undisputed master of the human comedy.

Curated by Biba Giacchetti, one of Erwitt’s leading international experts, with technical assistance from Gabriele Accornero, Elliott Erwitt. Icons is a snapshot of history and customs, a concise and comprehensive journey through his genius and his perspective on the world, from his anthropomorphic dogs to the world’s powerful figures, from the great movie stars – Marilyn Monroe above all – to his children. But it is also a tribute to the man who, with a gentle and disenchanted gaze, was able to portray the world for what it is: tragicomic, tender, absurd, unique.

The exhibition features famous portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Che Guevara, Kerouac, Marlene Dietrich, Fidel Castro, Sophia Loren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and photographs that have made history, such as the Nixon-Khrushchev quarrel, Kennedy’s funeral, and the great fight between Frazier and Ali. Other iconic photographs, beloved by the public for their romantic power, such as the California Kiss, include more intimate and private ones, such as the snapshot of his newborn firstborn, observed by her mother on the bed.

Above all, Erwitt casts an incisive yet empathetic gaze, revealing not only the irony of everyday life, but also its complexity.

With the same attitude, Erwitt reserves his attention for any other subject, pushing the democratic quality that is typical of his medium to the extreme. His imagery is populated predominantly by ordinary people, men and women, captured in the midst of the normality of their lives.

From portraits of famous people to more ironic and sometimes irreverent images, we move on to some self-portraits where Erwitt no longer leaves anything to chance or intuition, but constructs a self-other, where eccentricity for its own sake is metaphor and pure surreal fun.

Special attention is paid to dogs, whose irreverent, free-spirited attitude Erwitt appreciated, unfettered by the common rules that condition humans, is what Erwitt appreciated.

Many of his shots are “from the dog’s point of view,” allowing only the shoes or parts of their owners’ legs to appear in his compositions. Erwitt wanted these photographs to be comical, and for this reason he employed ingenious strategies, such as blowing a trumpet or emitting a kind of bark, to elicit the most natural reaction from the animals.

The exhibition – on view until September 21st – marks the opening of Palazzo Bonaparte’s summer exhibition season, following the recent resounding success of the Edvard Munch retrospective and paying tribute to one of the world’s most beloved masters of photography. Visitors will have the opportunity to retrace his vision of the world: surreal, romantic, playful, always capable of capturing the essence of things.

The exhibition, “Elliott Erwitt. Icons,” is produced and organised by Arthemisia, in collaboration with Orion57 and Bridgeconsultingpro. The exhibition’s main partner is the Fondazione Terzo Pilastro – Internazionale with Fondazione Cultura e Arte and Poema.

The exhibition’s special partner is Ricola, mobility partner Frecciarossa Treno Ufficiale, and technical sponsor Ferrari Trento.

Text translated from the Italian by Google Translate from the Palazzo Bonaparte website

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at right, Erwitt’s photograph USA, Pittsburgh, 1950 (below)

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'Pittsburgh, USA' 1950

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, Pittsburgh, 1950
1950
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at right, Erwitt’s photograph France, Honfleur, 1968

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing from left to right, France, Honfleur, 1968; USA, New York City, 1977; and USA, New York City, 1955

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph Ireland, Ballycotton, 1991

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, Marilyn Monroe (with hand), 1956

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, USA, New York City, 1953; and at right, USA, NewYork, 1956 (below)

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, NewYork, 1956
1956
Gelatin silver print
40 x 50cm
© Elliott Erwitt
Private Collection

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, USA, Los Angeles, 1960; and at right, USA, Arlington, Virginia, Jacqueline Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, November 25, 1963 (below)

Note: wrong title and date underneath the photograph on the right-hand side

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, Arlington, Virginia, Jacqueline Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, November 25, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print
© Elliott Erwitt
Private Collection

Elliott Erwitt was not just a photographer, but an unparalleled visual storyteller, capable of transforming the moment into history, the everyday into art, irony into poetry. His images evoke in the viewer emotions that move on different registers, from emotion to laughter, to the most spontaneous amusing. Having passed away in November 2023 at the age of 95, he left us an immense legacy: an archive of photographs that span eras, cultures, and feelings with a universal language, inviting us to look at the world with greater indulgence and wonder, always standing by our side in that profound lightness that he himself defined as “The Art of Observation.”

His lens captured iconic moments in history: the tense confrontation between Nixon and Khrushchev, Kennedy’s funeral, the legendary fight between Frazier and Ali. He portrayed legends of our imagination – Marilyn Monroe, Che Guevara, Marlene Dietrich – but he also captured moments of extraordinary intimacy and summarised universal feelings in a single shot: a stolen kiss in the rearview mirror, the gaze of a mother on her newborn baby, a dog lost in thought. Images that transcend time to become iconic.

What makes Erwitt unique is his ability to intertwine emotion and intelligence, making us laugh and moved, surprising us with his irony and his ability to grasp the profound meaning of existence. He has captured the absurd and the surreal with a sharp and light-hearted gaze, always finding in every scene a spark capable of making it memorable.

His anthropomorphic dogs, the protagonists of entire photographic series, are not just amusing images: they are mirrors of the human condition, ironic and melancholic at the same time, sometimes proud and surprising. His children, portrayed with the most authentic spontaneity, convey the wonder of discovery and freedom, still intact, expressing already defined personalities, still unconstrained. His self-portraits, where he pokes fun at himself, remind us that art – like life – should never take itself too seriously.

Elliott Erwitt was all of this: a master of photography, an interpreter of the human comedy, an artist who left an indelible mark on the history of the image. This exhibition is our homage to his vision of the world: a journey through irony, tenderness, depth, and lightness, just as his art has always been able to convey.

Welcome to the world of this great artist. My master.

Biba Giacchetti
Exhibition curator

Text translated from the Italian by Google Translate

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, 1971 (Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier)

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, USA, Los Angeles, 1960; and at second left, USA, Arlington, Virginia, Jacqueline Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, November 25, 1963; at third right, USSR, Moscow, 1959 (below); and at second right, Cuba, Havana, 1964 (below)

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph USSR, Moscow, 1959 (below)

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USSR, Moscow, 1959 (Nikita Khruschchev and Richard Nixon)
1959
Gelatin silver print
40 x 50cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph Cuba, Havana, 1964 (Che Guevara)

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, England, Birmingham, 1991 (top); at third right, USA, New York City, 1946 (below); at second right, France, Paris, 1989 (below); and at right, USA, New York City, 2000 (below)

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 1946
1946
Gelatin silver print
40 x 50cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
France, Paris, 1989
1989
Gelatin silver print
50 x 60cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 2000
2000
Gelatin silver print
50 x 60cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, 1974 (below)

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 1974
1974
Gelatin silver print
50 x 60cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, 1955 (below)

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 1955
1955
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

Palazzo Bonaparte
Piazza Venezia 5, Roma

Palazzo Bonaparte website

Palazzo Bonaparte exhibitions website

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Exhibition: ‘Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter’ at Gallerie d’Italia, Turin

Exhibition dates: 17th April – 7th September, 2025

Curator: Sarah Meister

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953) 'Welcome Home' 1978-1984 From the series 'Family Pictures and Stories' from the exhibition 'Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter' at Gallerie d'Italia, Turin, April - Sept, 2025

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
Welcome Home
1978-1984
From the series Family Pictures and Stories 1978-1984
© Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

I love artist’s that challenge your point of view, knowledge of the world, prejudices and biases – which we all have.

I love artist’s who make you think about the stories they tell, and how you relate to their intimate, constructed and memorable worlds.

Carrie Mae Weems is one such generational artist.

Weems blends the poetic and conceptual in photographs and bodies of work which investigate history, identity, racism, executive and patriarchal power from the perspectives of female / Black American.

What a fabulous artist, a guide into circumstances seldom seen, now revealed.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Gallerie d’Italia, Turin for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“I discovered that I was the reference point, and the point of view, pointing the viewer toward the likes of me in history. Later, I understood this photographic self to be a muse and a guide into the unknown.”

Carrie Mae Weems

“My work endlessly explodes the limits of tradition.”

“Weems was trained as both a dancer and a photographer before enrolling in the folklore studies program at the University of California, Berkeley, in the mid-1980s, where she became interested in the observation methods used in the social sciences. In the early 1990s, she began placing herself in her photographic compositions in an “attempt to create in the work the simultaneous feeling of being in it and of it.”2 She has since called this recurring figure an “alter-ego,” “muse,” and “witness to history” who can stand in for both the artist and audience. “I think it’s very important that as a Black woman she’s engaged with the world around her,” Weems has said, “she’s engaged with history, she’s engaged with looking, with being. She’s a guide into circumstances seldom seen.”3

Caitlin Ryan. “My work endlessly explodes the limits of tradition,” 2021 on the MoMA website [Online] Cited 06/09/2025

Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter at Gallerie d’Italia, Turin

Installation walk through of the exhibition 17th April – 7th September, 2025

Installation views of the exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter at Gallerie d’Italia, Turin showing work from the series Roaming, 2006

Transcending medium, chronology, and geography, Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter puts the artist – as well as her spiritual and philosophical journeys – at the center of the discourse. Weems is a touchstone artist, renowned for her work investigating history, identity, and power. A comprehensive survey, The Heart of the Matter features generous presentations of landmark bodies of work, from Family Pictures and Stories (1978-1984) to her most recent series on the Black church. Throughout the exhibition and accompanying book, the artist’s spiritual musings provide critical insight into the iconic artist’s mind and eye. Newly commissioned essays and additional contributions from esteemed thinkers and scholars across generations underscore the singular value of Weems’s vision in grappling with the complexities and injustices of the world around us.

Text from the Aperture website

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
The Edge of Time – Ancient Rome
2006
From the series Roaming

Carrie Mae Weems’s “Rome Series,” titled ” Roaming” (2006), features photographs taken during her residency at the American Academy in Rome where she performed “photographic actions” contrasting her presence with grand architecture and monumental surroundings. In these works, Weems, often in her signature long black dress with her back to the camera, challenges viewers to confront power structures and historical contexts associated with the sites of Rome. The series explores themes of history, power, and the individual’s relationship to imposing edifices of authority.

AI generated text from Google

Installation views of the exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter at Gallerie d’Italia, Turin showing work from the series Museums, 2006-ongoing

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Moderna
2006-ongoing
© Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

Installation view of the exhibition 'Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter' at Gallerie d'Italia, Turin, April - September, 2025

Installation views of the exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter at Gallerie d’Italia, Turin

Gallerie d’Italia – Torino presents the exhibition by American artist Carrie Mae Weems, open to the public from April 17 to September 7, 2025. The exhibition is organised in collaboration with Aperture and curated by Sarah Meister, former curator of the photography department at MoMA in New York. It is part of the main program of the second edition of EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival, titled Beneath The Surface, curated by Menno Liauw and Salvatore Vitale.

A major new exhibition dedicated to the internationally renowned artist Carrie Mae Weems, known for her photographic explorations of cultural identity, sexism, and class belonging.

The exhibition will feature a world premiere of a project commissioned by Intesa Sanpaolo specifically for this occasion, integrated into a powerful retrospective showcasing works from Weems’ most famous photographic series. Visitors will be guided through the artist’s entire career, following a deeply personal and spiritual journey.

The selected works highlight Carrie Mae Weems’ unique ability to address the complexities and injustices of the world around us. Her photography is rooted in spaces often excluded from mainstream narratives: artists’ studios, Southern U.S. plantations, domestic interiors, and the “invisible institutions” that emerged as places of worship for Black communities during times of oppression, juxtaposed with images of monuments and museums that have historically been sites of exclusion.

At the heart of the exhibition is Preach, a new project created specifically for this event as an original commission. This ambitious and intense installation explores religion and spirituality among African American communities across generations. The series celebrates the profound, passionate, and joyful forms of worship that define Weems’ Black Church experience while simultaneously confronting the violence and oppression that are inseparable from this history. In the new poetic text accompanying the installation, Weems writes: “Through flames and bombs, pray wherever and whenever you can, in ports and cabins, in palaces and basements, in theaters and clubs. From your secret hiding place, you have discovered new forms of worship…”. Using herself as both muse and guide, Weems invites us to join in this spiritual awakening and to condemn the persecution that has turned these sacred spaces into sites of refuge and activism. Preach intertwines early images from Harlem, San Diego, and Sea Island, Georgia, with a vast collection of new works that evoke the transcendental and secular realities of Black religious expression today.

The retrospective also includes many of Weems’ early works, such as the historic Kitchen Table Series (1990) and Museums (2006-ongoing); a selection of more recent projects, such as Scenes and Takes (2016) and Painting the Town (2021); as well as significant video installations, including The Shape of Things (2021) and Leave Now! (2022). Together, these works take visitors on a journey spanning Weems’ entire career, showcasing the depth and diversity of her artistic language.

The exhibition also benefits from the collaboration of Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, which has developed activities inspired by the values of inclusion and the appreciation of diversity as a source of enrichment, themes that resonate with the exhibition’s content and align with the foundation’s strategic challenges. Photography serves as a tool for storytelling, documentation, and identity-building, contributing to inclusion and community formation. Through widespread urban communication campaigns and collaboration with the public program #Inside, the foundation’s initiatives aim to promote participation and extend the exhibition’s themes to increasingly diverse audiences, particularly in light of the simultaneous presence of the EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival 2025 in the city.

The exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter will be accompanied by a catalogue co-published by Società Editrice Allemandi / Aperture. In addition to numerous images of the American artist’s works, the catalog will feature contributions from scholars of different generations, underscoring the unique value of Weems’ vision in addressing these themes.

Aperture

Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From its base in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through the acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs,” Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society.

Carrie Mae Weems. Biography

Carrie Mae Weems, a conceptual artist, examines and challenges perceptions of race and femininity in search of new models of life. Rooted in the specificity of her experience as a Black woman yet universal in its exploration of family relationships, cultural identity, power structures, and social hierarchy, her artistic practice is primarily photographic but also incorporates text, textiles, audio, installations, and video.

Informed by storytelling, folklore traditions, and the observational methodologies of social sciences, her approach to image-making ranges from staged and serialised narratives to the appropriation and adaptation of archival and ethnographic imagery. Weems critically addresses photography’s complicity in perpetuating dehumanising representations and the historical omission of Black women from institutions and art canons.

Weems lives in Syracuse, New York, with her husband, Jeffrey Hoone. She is currently an Artist in Residence at Syracuse University.

Text from the Gallerie d’Italia website

Installation view of the exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter at Gallerie d’Italia, Turin showing the work North Star, 2022

In 1936 Carrie Mae Weems’s grandfather Frank Weems traveled 550 miles to Chicago on foot from Earle, Arkansas, partly with the aid of the North Star, which appears in these seven oval photographs as a cold and abstract promise. Frank Weems had been beaten after organising a labour strike to protest abysmal wages and working conditions in the cotton fields. For the artist, the abstracted world holds a tremendous yet distant possibility that her grandfather seized step by step.

Text from the Art Institute of Chicago website

Installation view of the exhibition 'Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter' at Gallerie d'Italia, Turin, April - September, 2025 showing at left, work from the series 'Family Pictures and Stories' 1978-1984

Installation view of the exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter at Gallerie d’Italia, Turin showing at left, work from the series Family Pictures and Stories 1978-1984

Installation view of the exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter at Gallerie d’Italia, Turin showing the installation Preach, 2025

At the heart of the exhibition is Preach… this ambitious and intense installation explores religion and spirituality among African American communities across generations. The series celebrates the profound, passionate, and joyful forms of worship that define Weems’ Black Church experience while simultaneously confronting the violence and oppression that are inseparable from this history.

In the new poetic text accompanying the installation, Weems writes: “Through flames and bombs, pray wherever and whenever you can, in ports and cabins, in palaces and basements, in theaters and clubs. From your secret hiding place, you have discovered new forms of worship…”. Using herself as both muse and guide, Weems invites us to join in this spiritual awakening and to condemn the persecution that has turned these sacred spaces into sites of refuge and activism.

Preach intertwines early images from Harlem, San Diego, and Sea Island, Georgia, with a vast collection of new works that evoke the transcendental and secular realities of Black religious expression today.

Text from the Gallerie d’Italia Instagram web page

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Preach' 2025

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
Untitled
Nd
From the series Preach
© Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
Road Sign
1991-1992
From the series Preach
© Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

Installation view of the exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter at Gallerie d’Italia, Turin showing work from the Kitchen Table Series, 1990

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953) 'Untitled (Man and mirror)' 1990 From the series 'Kitchen Table'

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
Untitled (Man and mirror)
1990
From the Kitchen Table Series
© Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953) 'Untitled (Woman and daughter with children)' 1990 From the series 'Kitchen Table'

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
Untitled (Woman and daughter with children)
1990
From the Kitchen Table Series
© Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953) 'Untitled (Woman standing alone)' 1990 from the series 'Kitchen Table'

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
Untitled (Woman standing alone)
1990
From the Kitchen Table Series
© Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
Untitled
1988
From the series Four Women
© Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
Wilfredo, Laura and Me, I
2002
From the series Dreaming in Cuba
© Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

Gallerie d’Italia – Torino
Piazza San Carlo, 156
10121 Turin
Phone number: 800 167 619

Opening hours:
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday: 9.30 – 19.30
Wednesday: 9.30 – 20.30

Gallerie d’Italia – Torino website

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Exhibition: ‘Edward Weston. La matèria de les formes’ at Centro de Fotografía KBr Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona

Exhibition dates: 12th June – 31st August, 2025

Curator: Sérgio Mah

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Surf, Bodega
1937
19 x 24cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

Three week’s to the day since my hip replacement operation and I’m still in pain. I know, slowly slowly but it’s very frustrating…

Thus, I just have two words for you about this exhibition –

GREAT WESTERN!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Fundación MAPFRE for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far, It is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know,
Perhaps it is every where on water and land.”

Walt Whitman. Part of Song of Myself from Leaves of Grass. 1855

“I never try to limit myself by theories, I do not question right or wrong approach when I am interested or amazed – impelled to work. I do not fear logic, I dare to be irrational, or really never consider whether I am or not. This keeps me fluid, open to fresh impulse, free from formulae; and precisely because I have no formulae – the public who know my work is often surprised, the critics, who all, or most of them, have their pet formulae are disturbed. And my friends distressed.

I would say to any artist – don’t be repressed in your work – dare to experiment – Consider any urge – if in a new direction all the better – as a gift from the Gods not to be lightly denied by convention or a priori concept. Our time is becoming more and more bound by logic, absolute rationalism; this is a straitjacket I – it is the boredom and narrowness which rises directly from mediocre mass thinking.

The great scientist dares to differ from accepted ‘facts’ -think irrationally – let the artist do likewise.”

Edward Weston 28 January, 1932 from The Daybooks of Edward Weston. Vol. ll Horizon Press, New York 1966

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Guadalupe Marín de Rivera
1924
20.8 x 17.9cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Gift of Ansel and Virginia Adams

Strongly linked to the landscape and to North American cultural history, Edward Weston’s work, in its extreme simplicity and originality, allows us to appreciate a unique perspective on the process of consolidation of photography as an artistic medium and its relevant role in the context of modernity in the visual arts. The exhibition Edward Weston. La matèria de les formes (Edward Weston. The Matter of Forms) is conceived as an anthology that covers the different phases of the artist’s photographic production.

A pioneer in the use of a modern photographic style, his use of the large-format camera gives rise to richly detailed black and white images of extraordinary clarity. His technical expertise and his affection for nature and form led to the development of a body of work in which iconic images of still lifes, nudes, landscapes and portraits stand out. His images are essential for understanding the new aesthetic and new American lifestyle that emerged in the United States between the wars.

The exhibition, curated by Sergio Mah, consists of around two hundred photographs grouped into seven sections. The exhibition tour is completed with numerous documentary material and is conceived from a European perspective on the legacy of modern American photography. An aesthetic and conceptual counterpoint to the photographic modernism in Europe that emerged with the first avant-garde of the 20th century.

The emancipation of photography

Edward Weston was one of the pioneers, along with Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, in defending the emancipation of photography from other artistic disciplines. In this sense, his work contributed decisively to demonstrating, in this early period of photography, the aesthetic and perceptual dimension of the medium, the capacity to express aesthetic qualities in the same way as painting or sculpture.

Figuration and abstraction

The technical mastery of the photographic medium leads Weston to a formalism in which framing becomes one of the most relevant elements of his work. Weston eliminates any anecdotal aspect and focuses on the motif that interests him, and does so with such realism and exaltation of the two-dimensional nature of photography, which often results in an abstract image. In this way, the artist shows that figuration and abstraction do not exempt one from the other, but are perfectly compatible.

Exhibition organised with the support of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE website translated from the Spanish by Google Translate

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Two Shells
1927, print about 1933
24.1 x 18.4cm
Gelatin silver print
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Pepper No. 30
1930
22.8 x 17.7cm
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy by Trockmorton Fine Art

Highlights

Fundación MAPFRE presents the exhibition Edward Weston. The Matter of Forms, dedicated to the five decades of the career of this North American artist, one of the most important figures in modern photography. In addition, through the work of the artist himself, the exhibition aims to offer a pedagogical reflection on the history of the medium and its relevance as an aesthetic and perceptive discipline, apart from the more traditional plastic arts; specifically, painting.

Key points

The emancipation of photography

Edward Weston was one of the pioneers, along with Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, in defending the emancipation of photography from other artistic disciplines. In this sense, his work is essential to understanding the aesthetic and perceptive capacity of the medium in its beginnings. This capacity allows photography to express aesthetic qualities such as beauty, pain or ugliness at the same level as painting or sculpture.

Figuration and abstraction

The technical mastery of the photographic medium leads Weston to a formalism where framing becomes one of the most relevant elements of his work. In this sense, he eliminates any anecdotal aspect and focuses on the motif that interests him, and he does so with such realism and with such exaltation of the two-dimensional character of photography that he ends up obtaining an abstract image as a result. In this way, the artist shows that figuration and abstraction do not exclude each other, but are perfectly compatible.

Pepper No. 30

Edward Weston took this photograph, one of the most representative of his entire career, at the beginning of August 1930. It was not the first time he had photographed a vegetable, nor a pepper. The artist himself spoke about this image: “It is a fully satisfactory classic: a pepper, but more than a pepper. It is abstract, in the sense that it exists completely outside the subject. It has no psychological attributes, it does not awaken human emotions: this new pepper takes us beyond the world we know in the conscious mind.” In the light of this photograph and the artist’s words, the innovative character of his work can be distinguished, which transcended not only modern American photography, but also European photography.

The exhibition

Weston’s work, strongly linked to the landscape and to North American cultural history, in its extreme simplicity and originality, reveals a unique perspective on the process of consolidation of photography as an artistic medium and its relevant role in the context of modernity in the visual arts. The exhibition Edward Weston. The Matter of Forms is conceived as an anthology that covers the different phases of the artist’s photographic production. From his initial interest in Pictorialist approaches to his consolidation as one of the central figures in the affirmation of the poetic and speculative value of direct photography. A pioneer in the use of a modern photographic style, his work is characterised by the use of a large-format camera, which allows him to offer richly detailed black and white images of extraordinary clarity. His mastery of technique, together with his love of nature and form, led him to develop a photographic production in which iconic images of still lifes, nudes, landscapes and portraits stand out. As a co-founder of the photography collective Group f/64, his images are key to understanding the new North American aesthetic and lifestyle that emerged in the United States between the wars.

The exhibition, grouped into seven sections and curated by Sérgio Mah, consists of around 200 photographs and a large amount of documentary material. The exhibition is conceived as a European look at the legacy of modern North American photography. An aesthetic and conceptual counterpoint to the modern photography that emerged in Europe with the first avant-garde of the 20th century.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Prologue to a Sad Spring
1920
23.8 x 18.7cm
Platinum print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Johan Hagemeyer Collection/Purchase

1 /

Edward Weston began photography very early, thanks to a Kodak Bulls-Eye No. 2 camera that his father gave him when he was just sixteen. Although he was practically self-taught, in 1911 he opened his first photographic establishment in a suburb of Los Angeles. His early works reveal the influence of the Pictorialist atmosphere of the time: impressionistic views and pastoral subjects with soft or slightly blurred focus, scenography and expressive poses.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Janitzio, Mexico
1926
20.4 x 25.2cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive/Gift of the Heirs of Edward Weston

2 /

Weston’s dissatisfaction with this artistic approach to photography, which sought to assimilate itself to painting, coincided with the appearance of other photographers with similar ideas, such as Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, whom he met in New York in 1922. In 1923 he set sail for Mexico accompanied by one of his sons and the photographer Tina Modotti. There he found a true renaissance of the arts and culture, and he came into contact with artists such as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Rafael Sala. He expanded his visual horizon and tackled new themes, photographing objects, figures and motifs far from their original context, turning them into suggestive and extraordinary elements. It was then that he realised that true photographic art is intuitive and immediate, that the elimination of everything that is accessory constitutes the essence of his creative talent.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Excusado, Mexico
October 1925
24.1 x 19.1cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

3 /

From 1927, influenced by the humanism of Walt Whitman and his work Leaves of Grass, he felt attracted, in the words of Sérgio Mah, by “the extraordinariness of banality”. Fruits, shells and vegetables became the protagonists of his works, and he made one of his most famous photographs: a toilet, an unusual object as an artistic subject, with the title Excused. In these images, Weston accentuated the two-dimensionality of the motifs, since it was one of the characteristics of photography that interested him. He looked for details as a way of fragmenting, isolating and approximating the photographed object, eliminating the sense of depth, a technique particularly notable in still lifes with dark backgrounds, as is the case with his photographs of peppers.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Floating Nude
1939
19.3 x 24.2cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

4 /

From 1926, after leaving Mexico, Weston photographed several sets of nudes. In these nudes, the photographer’s gaze varies depending on the model. In some cases, the frame is wide and even shows the face, while in others the gaze is more segmented and focuses on parts of the body as a way of cutting out and accentuating the shapes within the frame. It must be recognized that eroticism is a quality present in some of these photographs. However, it is incorrect to conclude that this type of gaze prevails in most of the nudes he photographed. Above all, Weston observes the body as a formal reality. The beauty and sensuality that these bodies suggest is reflected in the play of lines, shadows and contours they offer.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Clouds, Death Valley
1939
20.4 x 25.2cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

5 /

From the late 1920s and into the following decades, landscape became a central element in Weston’s work. The artist photographed in the desert near Palm Springs, California, as well as in New Mexico, Arizona, and other Californian areas near his home in Carmel. In these works, the horizon and the depth of the background become a structural part of his works: the panoramic shots highlight the sublime character of the landscape. It was also during this period that Weston began to be interested in meteorological phenomena such as rain, the configuration of clouds, and the aridity of the territory.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Crescent Beach, North Coast
1939
24.3 x 19.2cm
Silver print mounted on board
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

6 /

Over the years, Weston’s work increasingly acquired a “dense and melancholic” patina, an aspect that is accentuated by the tones that the images acquire. This characteristic is particularly evident in the photographs he took in 1941 to illustrate Leaves of Grass, a project for which he traveled throughout much of the United States for nearly two years. The images he captured in cemeteries in Louisiana and Georgia stand out, as well as those of abandoned, destroyed and burned buildings where the interest in formal aspects predominates and in which a critical and disillusioned commentary on reality and American society can already be seen.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Drift Stump, Crescent Beach
1937
20.3 x 25.2cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

7 /

In the vicinity of Point Lobos, California, was the log cabin built by his son Neil on Wildcat Hill, where Weston moved in 1938. In this area of California, the artist found the wild nature that he had sought in distant places. His images from this period denote less compositional and formal rigidity and show the cycles of nature in the territory, the wild beauty, the trees, stones and rocky landscapes that seem to arise and remain in a time that is stopped. These images express a certain melancholy and solitude, while allowing the viewer to rediscover nature in all its splendour.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Dunes, Death Valley
1938
20.4 x 25.1cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

Catalogue

The catalogue accompanying this exhibition reproduces all the photographs on display. In addition, it includes essays by Sérgio Mah, its curator, by Rebecca Senf, who discusses the artist’s relationship with Mexico, and by Jason Weems, who focuses on Weston’s landscapes and vegetable photographs. It also includes a series of reflections by the artist himself on photography taken from his diaries.

The publication of the catalogue, published in Spanish and Catalan by Fundación MAPFRE, also has a co-edition in Italian published by Dario Cimorelli Editore.

Text from Fundación MAPFRE translated from the Spanish by Google Translate

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Nude
1936
23.4 x 19.1cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Gift of the Estate of A.Richard Diebold, Jr.

Author of a vast and diverse body of work spanning five and a half decades, Edward Weston (1886-1958) is one of the great figures in the history of modern photography, partly because his work allows us to reflect on the distinctive qualities of photography as a technical, aesthetic and perceptual category.

His first creative experiments reveal a momentary adherence to the pictorialist tendencies of the time, but he would later stand out as one of the protagonists of a new generation of American photographers who sought to refocus the artistic axis of photography based on its exceptional capacity to represent the most diverse subjects in the world with rigor, clarity and sobriety.

With their extreme simplicity and originality, the exceptional quality of Weston’s images also lies in the way in which he was able to rethink and articulate the extraordinary realistic and objective capacity of photography with its aesthetic, poetic and phenomenological potential, contributing to expanding the horizon of the subjective experience of the image. In this way, Weston enunciated the unique role of photography in the panorama of the visual arts of his time.

Weston was an immensely prolific photographer and his work brings together a whole series of photographic themes, types and genres: portraits, nudes, still lifes, natural and urban landscapes, object photography, architecture… This anthological exhibition aims to cover the entirety of Weston’s photographic career, which began at the beginning of the 20th century and was uninterrupted until the end of the 1940s. The selection of works aims to go well beyond the period in which Weston took most of the images that gave him wide critical and institutional recognition. The truth is that a more complete and heterogeneous approach to his work allows us to summon other layers of aesthetic appreciation, broadening the understanding of the depth and articulations that Weston developed in the various fields he explored. Furthermore, it offers the opportunity to point out the aspects and affinities (in the gaze, in the construction of the image or in its peculiar relationship with certain themes) present throughout his career, emphasizing the coherence of his imagery, as well as the nuances and moments of transition that occurred in it.

Sérgio Mah
Curator

Text from Fundación MAPFRE translated from the Spanish by Google Translate

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Dunes, Oceano
1936
24.1 x 18.9cm
Silver print mounted on board
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

From an early age, Edward Weston showed an interest in developing a creative side of photography apart from his commercial work. His early experiments show the influence of painting and reveal his attention and attachment to the pictorialist atmosphere of the time. These photographs include impressionistic views, pastoral subjects with soft or slightly blurred focus, numerous staged portraits that explore expressive poses and combinations with shadows and graphic elements of the environment.

The two periods he spent in Mexico, between 1923 and 1924 and then between 1925 and 1926, were decisive in Edward Weston’s creative career. There he began to explore new themes and genres and his visual horizon expanded significantly. He covered a wide variety of subjects, types of places, figures and things, parts of things, appropriate objects, motifs taken from their original context and repositioned in another interpretative framework. At the same time, his visual style completely sheds any reminiscence of the Pictorialist phase. A photography of great technical, formal and compositional rigour was consolidated. Weston realised that he had the capacity to transform trivial things into suggestive and extraordinary. He was clear that the art of photography lies fundamentally in the moment of making the image, in the way in which the photographer contemplates the subject and makes decisions according to the variables inherent in the photographic device. For him, the process is instinctive. This way of seeing – intuitive, intense and immediate – which seeks to isolate the subject, eliminating the accessory, the unnecessary, anything that could divert or attenuate the intensity of the photographic vision, constitutes the essence of Weston’s creative talent.

From 1927, Weston began a series of still life photographs. In these images he fully reveals the principles and characteristics of his work: the desire to represent the timeless essence of a natural object and, correlatively, to emphasise the duplicative and perceptive capacities of the photographic medium.

The compositions are carefully conceived. In the space of the image, there is a calculated conformity between the dimension of the forms and the format of the image. Here it is important to reiterate the focus on detail as a defining aspect of Weston’s imagery, evident in these still lifes and also in other aspects of his work. Weston understands the vision of detail as a way of fragmenting, isolating and bringing our gaze closer to certain things, accentuating the two-dimensional character of the image, its closed and opaque nature, without depth or horizon, evident above all in still lifes with dark backgrounds, such as photographs of peppers, but also in the various images of plants, trees, rocks and stones that he has been making since the early 1930s.

Weston left Mexico in 1926. In the following years, he made several series of nudes. This is not a new subject. He had already made some important ones before, including one of Anita Brenner’s back and another of her son Neil, whose torso is cut out in an image that evokes ancient Greek statues. In the nudes, the photographer’s gaze varies depending on the model. In some cases, the framing is wide and even shows the face, while in others the gaze is more segmented and focuses on parts of the body as a way of cutting out and accentuating the shapes within the frame. We can recognise that eroticism is a quality present in some of these photographs. It is incorrect, however, to conclude that this gaze prevails in most of his nudes. Weston observes the body mainly as a formal reality. The beauty and sensuality that these bodies suggest are based above all on the play of lines, shadows and contours that they provide.

From the late 1920s, and with greater intensity in the following decades, the landscape genre occupies a central place in Weston’s photographic production. In 1927, the artist takes photos in the Californian desert near Palm Springs. In the following years, he travels through New Mexico, Arizona and other areas of California, such as Oceano, Death Valley, Yosemite, the Mojave Desert and Point Lobos, near his home in Carmel. In these various places, he captures wide views of inhospitable territories in which there are no signs of human presence or intervention. The horizon line and the breadth of the territory become structuring motifs in his work. The impetus for these images is a feeling of admiration for the epic and immeasurable nature of these natural landscapes. Beyond his choice of panoramic shots, the images reveal other aspects and elements of nature, such as meteorological phenomena, rain, cloud formations and variations in sunlight, often in conjunction with their visual effect on the arid land or the vegetation and unique morphology of these territories. It is a vision sensitive to the transformative nature of the landscape, subject to environmental and geological changes.

Gradually, and with greater intensity from the 1940s onwards, Edward Weston’s imagery became denser and more melancholic, not only in terms of the selection of subjects, but also in the tonalities of the images. This tendency is particularly evident in the photographs he takes for an edition of Leaves of Grass, the masterpiece of the poet Walt Whitman. He travels throughout the United States for two years. He revisits many of the recurring themes in his work, but the large number of images he takes of cemeteries in Louisiana and Georgia stand out. These are photographs in which his interest in formal aspects, texture and light predominates. All the subjects are seen as an integral part of a geography that is at once physical, social and mental. On the other hand, there are a lot of images of abandoned, destroyed and burnt buildings, of rubbish and things destined to disappear. We can identify that the themes of finitude and death contribute to an imagery increasingly characterised by loneliness, melancholy, and decadence. For the first time in his work, the images suggest a disillusioned and critical commentary on American reality, on the relationship between nature and culture, continuity and change, alienation and social tension.

In 1938, Weston moved with Charis Wilson to the wooden house built by his son Neil on Wildcat Hill, near Point Lobos, California. The artist spent long periods taking photos in this coastal region. He wandered through areas that he knew well. The images show a nature permeated with cycles, rhythms and forces, a macrocosm where Weston found the material to continue his work. At Point Lobos, Weston encountered a wild, dazzling and ineffable beauty that he had always sought in distant places. In the trees, forests, stones and rocky landscapes, the photographer found a vital energy that led perception towards a diffuse time, contrary to the linearity of history, alien to modernity. Nature then emerged as a theme and setting that allowed him to think and experience a renewed gaze (spontaneous, intuitive, aesthetic), a gaze that was both concrete and metaphysical that allowed him to rediscover nature.

Text from Fundación MAPFRE translated from the Spanish by Google Translate

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Charis, Lake Ediza
1937
19.1 x 24.1cm
Silver print mounted on board
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