Exhibition dates: 8th March – 12th November 2023

Curator: Rebecca A. Senf, chief curator at CCP and curator of Fashioning Self

Roger Minick (American, b. 1944)
Young Woman in Black with Pendant, Estrada Courts, Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, 1978
1978
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
© Roger Minick 1978

Freedom of the self

This is a strange group of photographs with which to investigate the “long-intertwined relationship between fashion as a tool for self-expression and photography’s role in chronicling it,” for while the many historical portrait photographs depict a link between fashion and photography of the self (through the need to fit into a regimented cultural norm), many of the vernacular images are not about fashion, are a kind of non-fashion, where the people who “pose” for the photographs are just wearing whatever they are in at the time… thereby undermining the premise of the exhibition, that the performance of self becomes a visual language through the picturing of fashion.

Indeed, despite the assertion that historical genres such as street photography “inform contemporary evolutions, such as selfies and carefully crafted social-media platforms”, most selfies taken today through the ubiquity of the phone camera are not carefully crafted, are the very antithesis of the old purpose of a portrait: that is, to picture how we choose to dress, adorn, and re/present ourselves at a particular moment in time.

In today’s contemporary age self is more about the style and context of the individual (as pictured in a photograph) rather than about the fashion (the latest style; the manner of doing something) of the individual or the collective.

Today, style is casual, informal, ephemeral, temporary… which leads us to pose the questions, are historical photographs evidence of a self-expression of more substance, compared to the rapid self, the throw away self, the narcissistic self of today? Are selfies today just a shallow expression of self or are they intended to be more, can they be more?

Today, there is less a consciousness of fashionability than there is the ability to enact the self without resort to fashion. As Yves Saint Laurent once said, “Fashion fades, style is eternal.”

While visual representations of identity continue to shape our understandings of self and each other “with intimate details that alert viewers to who we are, as filtered through the photographic medium” this is no longer achieved through the definition of self as “fashionable” (as defined on a hierarchical scale of who is fashionable and who isn’t, who is beautiful and who isn’t) – rather, it is through the equivalence of a nonhierarchical expression of self where everything becomes valuable, every selfie and portrait of equal awareness and importance in a collective and individual consciousness of self.

The very non-fashion of contemporary self expression is a non-performance, an anti-ritual if you like (which destroys the ritual of production of consumable fashion), which negates fashion as defining the self, much as photography of the self does not define who we are but is only a very small facet of a multi-layered identity.

All of which makes the premise of this exhibition (that the performance of self becomes a visual language through the picturing of fashion) and the first part of its title – Fashioning Self – highly problematic.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. Many thankx to my friend and artist Elizabeth Gertsakis for her help in providing thoughts and inspiration for this text.

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

Louis Carlos Bernal (American, 1941-1993)
Albert and Lynn Morales, Silver City, New Mexico
1978
Chromogenic print. Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
© Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Berna

Louis Carlos Bernal (1941-1993) was born in Douglas, Arizona, and grew up in Phoenix. After completing his M.F.A. at Arizona State University in 1972, he joined the faculty of Pima Community College in Tucson, where he remained for the duration of his career, developing and heading its photography program. In 1979, Bernal, along with four other photographers – Morrie Camhi, Abigail Heyman, Roger Minick, and Neal Slavin – received funding from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund to photograph Chicano culture in the Southwest for an exhibition and a book project entitled ESPEJO: Reflections of the Mexican American. The commission brought him closer to his ethnic roots and fueled a passionate direction for his work that gained him international recognition for championing regional diversity while symbolizing his exploration of identity as a Mexican American.

Following a tradition of Latin American documentary street photography, Bernal photographed in the barrio – a young girl and her grandfather in a corner barber shop, a girl taking her quinceañera, or locals posing in front of colourful wall murals – images that captured the unique character of Chicano life. He wrote, “My images speak of the religious and family ties I have experienced as a Chicano. I have concerned myself with the mysticism of the Southwest and the strength of the spiritual and cultural values of the barrio.”

Bernal also centered on the family and the home, believing these two elements combined to form the most significant structure within the Mexican-American community. As he wandered streets from Texas to Los Angeles, and met people who were soon drawn to charismatic personality, he was often invited into their homes. He asked permission to photograph them surrounded by their treasured possessions, their family portraits and mementos, and their shrines decorated with saints, candles, and flowers. His subjects appear at ease and confident in front of his camera, a product of Bernal’s deep respect for them. Bernal’s interest in what people chose to surround themselves with led him to photograph the interiors of homes without people. These sensitive portraits of both prized and everyday items in living rooms, bedrooms and gardens were perhaps his most significant innovation.

Bernal’s interest in strong compositional design and technical expertise are evident in both his skilfully printed black-and-white images and his colour work that luminously captures the bright pinks, blues, and greens of interior painted adobe walls, window curtains, and religious icons. He felt a particular urgency to document the streets, people, homes, and artefacts in historic neighbourhoods, as many were undergoing rapid changes or being bulldozed to make way for urban renewal. In recording the Mexican- American experience of Southwest towns and barrios, Bernal created a visual document that preserves the specific iconography and reveals many aspects of this distinct culture.

The Louis Carlos Bernal Collection contains 98 fine prints, both black-and-white and colour, and research materials that include project records, correspondence, clippings, writings and publications.

Anonymous. “Louis Carlos Bernal,” on the Centre for Creative Photography website Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023

Kozo Miyoshi (Japanese, b. 1947)
Tucson, Arizona
1992
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of the artist, DEP’T CO.,LTD., Tokyo, Nippon Polaroid, Tsudani Oil Co. Ltd.
© Kozo Miyosh

Kozo Miyoshi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1947. He graduated from the Department of Photography at Nihon University College of Art in 1971. He began his photographic career in the 1970s and started shooting an 8 × 10-inch large format camera in 1981. In 2009 he upgraded to an ultra large format 16 × 20-inch camera which he continues to use on his travels. Miyoshi’s photographs have received international acclaim for their unique and sincere approach to his fleeting subjects.

Dennis Feldman (American, b. 1946)
Man with Reflective Glasses
1969-1972
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of the artist
© Dennis Feldman

Dennis Feldman (American, b. 1946)
White Girl 1970
1970
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of the artist
© Dennis Feldman

From the seedy streets of Los Angeles to empty living rooms and apartments across the United States, the photographs of Dennis Feldman (b. 1946) explore the ways popular entertainment seeps into American consciousness. Pictures from his most acclaimed series, Hollywood Boulevard, 1969-1972, invite subjects from social parade of Los Angeles’s famed sidewalk to animate their self-styled identities. His American Images series, published in 1977, pursues other disclosures, revealing tensions that have come to define the underside of the American dream. In some pictures, people relish the escape and freedom symbolised by cars and movieland, while others seem to search for more elusive horizons. Like Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Frederick Sommer – pioneering photographers whom he considers mentors – Feldman carefully crafts compositions that do not judge their subjects. Instead, they pry apart the world of appearances to reflect on fantasy and desire as they intertwine with paths of everyday life.

Anonymous. “Dennis Feldman: Photographs,” on the BAMPFA website 2019 [Online] Cited 28/09/2023

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled [Liberace with his mother]
New York, 1954
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Garry Winogrand Archive
Gift of the artist
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression examines the role of photography in shaping, sharing, and shifting identity.

About the exhibition

Whether for a selfie or formal portrait, we all craft our appearance and identity for a public audience. We consider cultural and social norms, the emotions we wish to express or hide away, where we’re going and with whom, and the purpose of the photograph when choosing how we dress, adorn, and present ourselves. The resulting images serve as a window into a particular moment of our life, with intimate details that alert viewers to who we are, as filtered through the photographic medium.

Organised by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography (CCP), Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression features 54 works of street, documentary, and self-portrait photography from 1912 to 2015 that explore this long-intertwined relationship between fashion as a tool for self-expression and photography’s role in chronicling it. Iconic views by Dennis Feldman, Laura Volkerding, Linda Rich, John Simmons, David Hume Kennerly, Teenie Harris, and more illuminate the dialogue that occurs between photographer and subject – the give-and-take between self-performance and art making.

Alongside these works drawn from CCP’s outstanding collection, Fashioning Self also features a rotating display of social media images reflecting community members and individuals from across the United States. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the Museum and CCP will invite visitors, Arizona residents, and our collective social media followings to take their own selfies and portraits in the galleries or in their environments and share them via the hashtag #FashioningSelf for display in Norton Gallery. By placing these contemporary, real-time images in conversation with works by renowned photographers of the Americas, the exhibition interrogates what it means to be an artist or maker in a world where cameras are commonplace and everyone curates a feed.

Text from the Phoenix Art Museum website

Max Yavno (American, 1911-1985)
Muscle Beach, Los Angeles
1949
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Purchase
© Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation

Max Yavno (American, 1911-1985)
Kuniyoshi Portrait
c. 1941
Gelatin silver
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Max Yavno Archive
© Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation

Yasuo Kuniyoshi (国吉 康雄, Kuniyoshi Yasuo, September 1, 1889 – May 14, 1953) was an eminent 20th-century Japanese-American painter, photographer and printmaker.

Max Yavno (American, 1911-1985)
Untitled [Opening Night at the San Francisco Opera]
1947
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Max Yavno Archive
© Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation

Social documentary photographer Max Yavno (1911-1985) identified the odd charm that constitutes the identity of a place and people. Born in New York, Yavno was a social worker from 1932-1936; this background clearly informed his photographic career. His humanistic sensibility is revealed in his work, which includes street photographs made in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Yavno is best known for his depictions of these great American cities and the cultural and social detail of their inhabitants, many of which distinctively reflect their era.

In 1936, Yavno began photographing New York street life for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Theater Project. As his interest in photography burgeoned, Yavno joined the Photo League and served as its President in the late 1930s. Through this organisation he met Aaron Siskind who became his roommate and lifelong friend. During World War II, Yavno served in the United States Army Air Force as a film and photography instructor. Following the war, he relocated to San Francisco and continued teaching. There, Yavno began a freelance career with clients including Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. During this time Yavno achieved success both as a fine art and a commercial photographer.

Yavno was included in “Seventeen American Photographers,” a 1947 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This placed him alongside established photographers Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Man Ray, and Edward Weston. Following this pivotal exhibition, Yavno published The San Francisco Book in 1948 and The Los Angeles Book in 1950, both of which chronicled the urban landscape and its population. By 1952, Edward Steichen had purchased Yavno’s prints for The Museum of Modern Art, New York. With recommendations by Edward Weston and Steichen, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1953. From 1954-75, Yavno owned and operated a thriving commercial photography studio in Los Angeles.

In 1975, the sixty four year old photographer closed his studio to allow for more personal pursuits. Yavno continued to photograph California, but also worked in Mexico, Morocco, Israel, and Egypt, securing funds for the later trips from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Photography of Max Yavno was published by University of California press in 1981, to accompany a retrospective at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Yavno continued to make and exhibit photographic works until his death in 1985.

The Max Yavno Archive contains papers, records of commercial assignments, correspondence, information regarding the Photo League, memorabilia, photographic materials and over 800 fine photographs.

Anonymous. “Max Yavno,” on the Centre for Creative Photography website Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023

Max Yavno (American, 1911-1985)
Air Force Pilot
1975-1980
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Max Yavno Archive
© Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, b. 1928)
Pennsylvania Dutch & Adidas, Santa Cruz, U.S.A.
1975
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of Al Cohen
© Elliott Erwitt

Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990)
Jitterbugging in a night club. Memphis, Tennessee, 1939
1939-11
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of John H. Wolcott
© Courtesy of Linda Wolcott Moore for the Estate of Marion Post Wolcott

Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990)
Spectators at the Paddock Fence, Warrenton, West Virginia
1941
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of Robin Moore
© Courtesy of Linda Wolcott Moore for the Estate of Marion Post Wolcott

Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990)
Board of Directors of the Two Rivers Non-stock Cooperative at a Demonstration of Farmall “M” Tractor, Waterloo, Nebraska
1941
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of Robin Lee Moore
© Courtesy of Linda Wolcott Moore for the Estate of Marion Post Wolcott

Marion Post Wolcott was born in Montclair, New Jersey, and educated at the New School for Social Research, New York University, and at the University of Vienna. Upon graduation in 1932, she returned to New York to pursue a career in photography and attended workshops with Ralph Steiner. By 1936, she was a freelance photographer for Life, Fortune, and other magazines. She became a staff photographer for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in 1937 and remained there until Paul Strand recommended her to Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration, where she worked from 1938 to 1942. Wolcott suspended her photographic career thereafter in order to raise her family, but continued to photograph periodically as she traveled and taught, in Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, and New Mexico. In 1968 she returned to freelance photography in California and concentrated on colour work, which she had been producing in the early 1940s. Wolcott’s photographs have been included in group and solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1962, ICP, and elsewhere. Among other honours she has received are the Dorothea Lange Award, and the 1991 Society of Photographic Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The several books on her life and career include Paul Henrickson’s Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life of Marion Post Wolcott (1992).

Wolcott’s documentary photographs for the FSA are notable for their variation in subject matter. Because she joined the organisation late in its existence, Stryker often gave her assignments intended to complete projects already begun by others. Wolcott’s photographs show wealthy and middle-class subjects in addition to the poor people and migrant workers who appeared in most FSA photographs. Her body of work provides a view into another side of the 1930s in America, among that small percentage of people who could afford to escape the damaging effects of the Depression.

Lisa Hostetler

Handy et al. Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection, New York: Bulfinch Press in association with the International Center of Photography, 1999, p. 232 “Marion Post Wolcott,” on the International Center of Photography website Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023

Francis J. Bruguière (American, 1879-1945)
Self-portrait with Friend
c. 1912
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of James Enyeart

This spring, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) presents Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression, a new major photography exhibition organised by PhxArt and the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in Tucson. It will be on view from March 8 through November 12 in the Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography at Phoenix Art Museum.

Spanning the 1910s through the present, Fashioning Self explores the long-intertwined relationship between self-expression, fashion, and the photographic medium, with more than 50 works by Dennis Feldman, Laura Volkerding, Louis Carlos Bernal, Tseng Kwong Chi, David Hume Kennerly, Helen Levitt, Teenie Harris and others drawn from the CCP collection. These fine-art photographs are displayed alongside a social-media feed of community photos and selfies to spark reflection on the dynamic between photographer and subject, particularly as new technologies, self-styling, and the photographic medium continue to shape visual culture and personal and collective identities around the globe.

“Since the mid-1800s, photographers have captured our world and the captivating cast of characters who inhabit it, documenting all the varied and nuanced presentations of style and expression,” said the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum, Jeremy Mikolajczak. “Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression sparks fascinating conversations around historical photography genres, including street photography, and how they inform contemporary evolutions, such as selfies and carefully crafted social-media platforms, while also exploring the give-and-take between self-performance and art making.”

Fashioning Self showcases 54 works of street, documentary and self-portrait photography that present slices of everyday public life in the United States from 1912 through 2015. Featured works include those by Garry Winogrand, Marion Post Wolcott, Kozo Miyoshi, Laura Volkerding, Tseng Kwong Chi, Joan Liftin and Rosalind Solomon.

The exhibition’s fine-art images are complemented by a rotating display of social-media photos reflecting community members and individuals from across the United States. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the museum and CCP will invite visitors, Arizona residents and the institutions’ collective social-media followings to snap their own selfies and portraits in the galleries or other environments and share them via the hashtag #FashioningSelf for display in Norton Gallery. By placing these contemporary, real-time images in conversation with works by renowned photographers of the Americas, the exhibition interrogates what it means to be an artist or maker when cameras are commonplace and everyone curates a feed.

“I am excited for visitors to contribute their own photos to Fashioning Self and engage with works from CCP’s collection in a fun and unique way,” said Rebecca A. Senf, chief curator at CCP and curator of Fashioning Self. “By participating in the gallery’s regularly updated social-media feed, they will be included in a century-long history of photographers who have fashioned, captured and distributed visual representations of identity, while considering how technology, digital platforms, and the ubiquity of the camera continue to shape our understandings of self and each other.”

Press release from the Phoenix Art Museum

Laura Volkerding (American, 1939-1996)
Mrs. Mary Hatchett, Chicago
1979
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Laura Volkerding Archive
© Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation

Educator and photographer Laura Volkerding (1939-1996) began her artistic career making prints and drawings, and discovered her passion for photography in 1972, at age thirty-three. Volkerding studied fine arts at the University of Louisville and the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology where she received a Master’s degree in graphic design. She taught at University of Chicago from 1970 to 1980, and then served as a senior lecturer in photography at Stanford University until her death in 1996.

Citing photographs by Walker Evans and Art Sinsabaugh, as well as Chicago’s modernist architecture as visual influences, Volkerding’s early photographic work depicts quirky vernacular architecture, campgrounds and suggestive landscapes. In the late 1970s, Laura Volkerding, Nicholas Nixon, Stephen Shore, Frank Gohlke, and Lewis Baltz were among twenty-four photographers chosen to participate in an intensive project entitled Court House that documented historic court house architecture across America. Published in 1979, the monograph Court House: A Photographic Document exhibits a diverse and inclusive examination of America’s architectural heritage. In 1980, Volkerding moved to California and embarked on a project documenting the development of the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay waterfronts creating panoramic images by joining continuous frames of 5 x 7 inch negatives into a more expansive view.

Volkerding experimented with multiple photographic formats before settling, in 1984, on the rich clarity of prints produced with a Deardorff 8 x 10 inch view camera. This same year, Volkerding discovered the subject that would drive her work for over a decade: Les Compagnons du Devoir, a French sculpture apprentice community founded in medieval times. Their history of sculptural practice and reverence for craftsmanship resonated for Volkerding. She was attracted to the figurative and architectural forms that populated their work space. Volkerding photographed classrooms and apprentice projects, foundries and workshops, and cathedral restoration projects. The images suggest the presence of the craftsmen, but are devoid of the actual artisans, thus alluding to the longer craft tradition rather than the contemporary individuals. In addition to making many photographs of Les Compagnons in France, Volkerding photographed other sculpture workshops in Quebec, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Italy, and the United States. This body of work was exhibited at Stanford in 1986; in 1988 she was awarded her second Guggenheim fellowship. The Center for Creative Photography published a related monograph, Solomon’s Temple: the European Building-Crafts Legacy, shortly before Volkerding’s death.

The Laura Volkerding Endowment and the naming of the Laura Volkerding Reading Room at the Center for Creative Photography serve to perpetuate her important role in photography. The Laura Volkerding Archive contains photographic work prints, negatives, personal papers, and a substantial collection of multi-colour intaglio prints and one-colour lithographs, as well as 968 fine prints.

Anonymous. “Laura Volkerding,” on the Centre for Creative Photography Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023

Laura Volkerding (American, 1939-1996)
Easter, Chicago
1979
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Laura Volkerding Archive
© Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation

“Our choices about clothing, makeup, hairstyles and accessories are a component of the way we communicate who we are, what we value, and what is important to us,” says Rebecca A. Senf, Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography …

“These prints are not just evidence of the photographer’s process; they are also evidence of the self presentation process of the people who appear in the pictures,” says Senf. “When you have your portrait made, there’s a process that goes behind thinking about what you’ll wear, how you’ll do your hair and what kind of sense of yourself are you trying to convey through the picture.”

Featuring works by Helen Levitt, Tseng Wong Chi, Charles “Teenie” Harris and Dennis Feldman, among others, Fashioning Self considers both the formal and informal ways in which people employ visual signifiers to transit their identities to the world. Whether donning ball gowns and fur wraps, cowboy hats and boots, bandana and chest tattoos, or unironic trucker hats, each subject conveys an intuitive sense of ease and authenticity that comes from being true to who they are.

Senf brings this integrity to the curation of the show, offering a broad array of images sparkling with individual expressions of character and poise that can resonate with the widest possible audience. “One of the most exciting things about photography is that it’s functioning as a visual language and people are using it to communicate ideas,” she says.

Miss Rosen. “Symbiotic relationship between art and identity,” on the Huck website Monday 14 August 2023 [Online] Cited 28/09/2023

John Gutmann (American born Germany, 1905-1998)
Helene Mayer, Two Time Olympic Fencing Champion
1935
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
John Gutmann Archive
© Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents

John Gutmann received his bachelor’s degree from the State Academy of Arts and Crafts in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) and studied with master painter Otto Mueller, one of the founding members of the New Realist movement in Germany. Gutmann moved to Berlin in 1927 where he earned his master’s degree at the State Institute for Higher Education. The arts were flourishing in Berlin, and the city’s vibrant social scene provided inspiration for subject matter and aesthetic. Gutmann’s paintings were done in the vein of well-known German painter Otto Dix, who represented Berlin nightlife as both dizzily exciting and darkly isolating. In 1933, due to the rise of the Nazi regime, Gutmann was no longer able to exhibit his paintings or teach and began to experiment with photography as a means of supporting himself. He bought a Rolleiflex camera, shot three rolls of film, and immediately secured a contract with a German agency, Presse-Foto, to photograph in America and send pictures back for German publications. That same year he arrived in San Francisco and started to document America from the detached eye of an anthropologist. By 1936 he had secured a teaching position at San Francisco State College, where a decade later he founded its creative photography program, one of the first in the country. By the end of the thirties, Gutmann switched agencies to Pix, Inc., a New York-based agency, which promoted his work for publication in magazines such as Time, The Saturday Evening Post, Life, and Look. During World War II, he studied at the Signal Corps Motion Picture School in Queens and made still and motion pictures for the United States Army Signal Corps. He focused much of his work during this time on China, Burma, and India. Gutmann retired from teaching in 1973 and began to print and edit his earlier work for exhibition and publication. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held a two-man exhibition in 1976 of John Gutmann and Walker Evan’s work focusing on images of the Great Depression and the American culture that emerged from it. Two years later he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. In 1984 his first publication titled The Restless Decade was published by Harry N. Abrams, showcasing his work from the 1930s. Beginning in 1989 a major retrospective, Beyond the Document, traveled from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and then to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gutmann died on June 12, 1998 in San Francisco.

Gutmann brings a strong modernist sensibility to his black-and-white documentary photographs. Using a Rolleiflex camera and shooting from the waist, he combines unusual angles, close cropping, and careful – almost classical – framing to create works that are as poetic as they are impactful. Like Walker Evans, he finds beauty in ordinary and everyday subjects such as advertisements, street scenes, and automobiles–subjects he would return to throughout his career. His straight-style depictions of Depression-era America often include an element of humour, capturing quiet moments of human drama, charged with anxiety, but also hope.

Anonymous. “John Gutmann,” on the International Center of Photography website Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023

Joan Liftin (American, 1933-2023)
Drive-in Owners, North Carolina
1987
Chromogenic print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of Helen Levitt
© Joan Liftin

Joan Liftin (American, 1933-2023)
Marseille
2008
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of Andrea Stern
© Joan Liftin

Joan Liftin (American, 1933-2023)
70-40, Clairsville, Ohio
1978
Dye coupler print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of artist
© Joan Liftin

Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Untitled
1973
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. John Knaus
© The Rogovin Collection

Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Untitled
1985
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. John Knaus
© The Rogovin Collection

Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Untitled
1992
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. John Knaus
© The Rogovin Collection

Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Untitled
1963
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of Dr. J. Patrick Kennedy
© The Rogovin Collection

Rollie McKenna (American, 1918-2003)
David Jackson and James Merrill, Stonington, Connecticut
1961
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Rosalie Thorne McKenna Archive
© Rosalie Thorne McKenna Foundation

David Noyes Jackson (September 16, 1922 – July 13, 2001) was the life partner of poet James Merrill (1926-1995).

A writer and artist, Jackson is remembered today primarily for his literary collaboration with Merrill. The two men met in May 1953 in New York City, after a performance of Merrill’s play, “The Bait.” They shared homes in Stonington, Connecticut, Key West, Florida, and Athens, Greece. “It was, I often thought, the happiest marriage I knew,” wrote Alison Lurie, who got to know both men in the 1950s and thought enough of the relationship to write a memoir about it more than forty years later, Familiar Spirits (2001).

Over the course of decades conducting séances with a Ouija board, Merrill and Jackson took down supernatural transcriptions and messages from otherworldly entities. Merrill’s and Jackson’s ouija transcriptions were first published in verse form in The Book of Ephraim (printed for the first time in Divine Comedies, 1976, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1977).

Jackson collaborated with James Merrill on much of his most significant poetic output. The Book of Ephraim (1976), Mirabell: Books of Number (1978), and Scripts for the Pageant (1980) were all written with Jackson’s assistance. Together, they constitute the epic trilogy The Changing Light at Sandover, a 560-page apocalyptic poem published in its entirety in 1982.

He and James Merrill are buried side by side at Evergreen Cemetery, Stonington. Jackson’s former wife and Merrill’s friend, Doris Sewell Jackson is buried behind them.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Rollie McKenna (American, 1918-2003)
Georgia O’Keeffe with René d’Harnoncourt, Director of MoMA, at the Georges Seurat Opening, NYC
1958
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Rosalie Thorne McKenna Archive
© Rosalie Thorne McKenna Foundation

Rosalie Thorne “Rollie” McKenna (November 15, 1918 – June 14, 2003) was an American photographer. Writers photographed by McKenna include Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, and Truman Capote. McKenna had a long-term friendship with John Malcolm Brinnin, who helped her come in contact with many of the people she photographed. In addition to portraiture, McKenna also had an interest in architecture, particularly the architecture of Stonington, Connecticut.

John Yang (American, 1933-2009)
Untitled
1948
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
John Yang Archive
© Naomi Yang

John Yang (1933-2009) was an American architect and photographer. Born in China, he settled in the United States with his family in 1939. His interest in photography began as a child and was later developed when he was a student at The Putney School in Vermont where he was classmates with other future photographers such as Tim Asch. In the summer of 1951, he studied with Minor White at The California School of the Fine Arts. He graduated from Harvard College majoring in Philosophy, and in 1957 he earned a MA in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania studying under Louis Kahn. Before becoming a photographer full-time, Yang worked as an architect and continued in that practice until 1978.

Yang photographed the architecture and streets of New York as well as the surrounding landscape and gardens. Using traditional equipment and alternative darkroom techniques, he produced exquisite large format contact prints, often toned rich magentas: 11″ x 14″, 8″ x 10″, 5″ x 7″ and 10″ x 78″ panoramas. All work was printed by Yang himself.

Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023)
Ronis Wedding II, Easton Pennslyvania
January 1989
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Purchase
© Larry Fink

Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023)
Melzer Family Picnic, Eastport, Long Island, New York
June 2002
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Purchase
© Larry Fink

Harold Jones (American, b. 1940)
John and Sandy’s Wedding
1980
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of Harold Jones
© Harold Jones

Harold Jones (born 1940) has contributed to photography as an artist, educator, curator and arts administrator. Born in Morristown, New Jersey in 1940, he graduated from the Maryland Institute with a BFA in Painting and Photography, and from the University of New Mexico with an MFA in Art History and Photography. After graduation Jones worked as an assistant curator at the George Eastman House and in 1971 became the first director of LIGHT Gallery in New York City, the first gallery to exclusively represent contemporary photographers, such as Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer. In 1975 Jones became the founding director of the Center for Creative Photography and then went on to start the photography program at the University of Arizona where he taught for the next 30 years. Presently he is professor emeritus and volunteer coordinator of the Voices of Photography oral history project at the Center. Jones continues to be a constant student and practitioner of photography.

Harold Jones’s photography is difficult to categorise, and there are no generalisations that satisfactorily describe his varied body of work. His original training in painting and photography led to a practice that Jones referred to as “photodrawings” – gelatin silver prints worked with a variety of hand-coloured surfaces. Over the years, Jones used ink, food colouring, and oil paints as well as a variety of chemical toners to produce effects that range from subtle to direct. The resulting images are unique and cannot be duplicated. Initially he was ambivalent about altering the surfaces of his prints, feeling that it was an impure practice, but ultimately concluded that creating the photograph was the first phase of drawing, and surface treatments and colouring constituted the second phase. Jones’ approach has varied even within his unaltered prints. He has worked with both multiple and long-duration exposures to capture motion. Jones’s subjects are everyday objects arranged in compositions that require viewing and re-viewing. The photographer has described his delight in the process in which a person moves beyond a superficial reading of his work for closer inspection. His images reinforce the idea that a world continues beyond the picture plane; that one is seeing a fragment of a larger whole. Although he often photographs mundane objects, such as a water tower or laundry hanging, his unusual vantage points or unexpected cropping, produce a range of effects from humour to mystery.

The Harold Jones Archive contains over 150 prints, including a number of unique photodrawings, correspondence, biographical materials, teaching and exhibition files, records of the Society for Photographic Education, publications and clippings, and ephemera covering his career. Correspondents include Robert Heinecken, Jim Alinder, Robert Fichter, Beaumont Newhall, Jerry Uelsmann, and many others. An archive highlight is: University: A Photographic Inquiry, 1984-85: a 2-volume maquette from a project titled Universe City, containing 44 gelatin silver prints and 3 colour prints. Jones’s career can also be studied at the Center for Creative Photography through the LIGHT Gallery archive.

Anonymous. “Harold Jones,” on the International Center of Photography website Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023

John Simmons (American, b. 1950)
The Cotillion
2015
Inkjet print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of the artist
© John Simmons

Miguel A. Gandert (American, b. 1956)
Juanito with Jesus Tattoo, Albuerquerque, NM
1986
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Gift of Alan Manley
© Miguel Gandert

David Hume Kennerly (American, b. 1947)
President Barack Obama And First Lady Michelle Obama Attend The Inaugural Balls
2009
Chromogenic print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
David Hume Kennerly Archive
© Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents

David Hume Kennerly (born March 9, 1947) is an American photographer. He won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his portfolio of photographs of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden. He has photographed every American president since Lyndon B Johnson. He is the first presidential scholar at the University of Arizona.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Rosalind Solomon (American, b. 1930)
On the Ranch, Wyoming, USA
1977
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Rosalind Solomon Archive
© Rosalind Solomon, all rights reserved

The photographer Rosalind Fox Solomon turned her camera on Washington, D.C., between 1977 and 1979. With access to spaces ranging from artist studios to the White House, Solomon made probing portraits, such as this one of First Lady Rosalynn Carter aboard Air Force 2. During her years as first lady, Carter (born in Plains, Georgia, in 1927) expanded the role of the presidential spouse, regularly attending cabinet meetings and representing her husband, Jimmy Carter, in an official capacity at home and abroad.

Carter continues to devote her life to public service. For more than four decades, she has championed the needs of people with mental illness while also advocating on behalf of numerous other causes, including the Equal Rights Amendment, early childhood immunisation, the Cambodian refugee crisis, and homelessness. In 1982, she and her husband co-founded the Carter Center to promote peace and human rights worldwide. They jointly received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999.

Text from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery website

Rosalind Solomon (American, b. 1930)
First Lady Rosalyn Carter, Airforce 2 en route Orlando, USA
1978
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Rosalind Solomon Archive
© Rosalind Solomon, all rights reserved

Phoenix Art Museum
McDowell Road & Central Avenue
1625 N. Central Avenue
Phoenix, AZ 85004

Opening hours:
Monday and Tuesday Museum closed
Wednesday: 10am – 7pm
Thursday – Sunday: 10am – 5pm

Phoenix Art Museum website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top