Exhibition dates: 13th November 2010 – 23rd January 2011
Many thankx to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Jessie #34 2004 Gelatin Silver enlargement print from 8 x 10 in. collodion wet-plate negative, with Soluvar matte varnish mixed with diatomaceous earth
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled (Still Life) 2006 Ambrotype (unique collodion wet-plate positive on black glass), with sandarac varnish (15 x 13 in)
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled 1983 Polaroid (8 x 10 in)
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled 2000-2001 Gelatin silver enlargement prints from 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm) collodion wet-plate negatives, with Soluvar matte varnish mixed with diatomaceous earth
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled #4, Antietam 2001 Gelatin silver enlargement print from 8 x 10 in. collodion wet-plate
One of the first major presentations in the United States of the bold work of contemporary photographer Sally Mann opened at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts website (VMFA) on November 13, 2010. Exclusive to Richmond, the exhibition will continue until January 23, 2011.
Focusing on the theme of the body, the exhibition will revolve around several entirely new series while also incorporating little-known early work. Mann is admired for her passionate use of photography to address issues of love and loss, expressed in images of her children and southern landscapes. Her recent work uses obsolete photographic methods and nearly abstract images to push the limits of her medium and to dig deeper into themes of mortality and vulnerability. The images include several powerful series of self-portraits – an entirely new subject in her work – and figure studies of her husband. Some of the works in the exhibition include nudity and other graphic material. Viewer and parental discretion is advised.
“Sally Mann is among the top tier of photographers today. Although she is widely exhibited, we are fortunate to be one of the first U.S. museums to produce a major exhibition of her work,” says John Ravenal, the exhibition curator and Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. “The fearlessness, power and deeply emotional themes of her art are both captivating and unforgettable. We are pleased to exhibit one of Virginia’s, and the nation’s, finest artists.”
Self-examination, ageing, death, and decay are some of the subjects of the exhibition, and these are balanced by themes of beauty, love, trust, and the hopefulness of youth. Among the works are portraits of Mann’s husband, who suffers from a degenerative muscle disease. These are juxtaposed with colourful images of her children, forming a poignant comparison between youthful evanescence and the expressive capacity of the mature adult body.
Other works offer additional perspectives on the themes of ageing and mortality. Made during a trip to the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, Mann’s “Body Farm” images explore her fascination with the thin line between animate and inanimate, form and matter. Multi-part self-portraits represent Mann’s first extended exploration of her own face as a subject. Two self-portrait pieces consist of multiple unique photographs printed on black glass – a format known as ambrotypes – arranged in monumental grids of Mann’s likeness.
“The focus on the body in the exhibition will offer a profound meditation on human experience,” continues Ravenal. “The sheer beauty, formal sophistication, and expressive power of the work is likely to appeal to art world and general audiences alike.”
For her landscapes, Mann developed the method she continues to use today, involving an antique large-format view camera and the laborious process of collodion wet-plate. This method, invented in the 1850s, uses sticky ether-based collodion poured on glass, which must be exposed and developed in a matter of minutes before it dries. Unlike her nineteenth-century predecessors, who strove for perfection, Mann embraces accident. Her approach produces spots, streaks, and scars, along with piercing focus in some areas and evaporation of the image in others. These distortions – “honest” artefacts of the process – add a profoundly emotional quality to Mann’s images.
Mann’s recent work continues to use this technique, but returns to the body as a principle subject after a decade of landscapes. Though the body has been an essential focus in Mann’s work from the beginning, this is the first time an exhibition and publication have explored it as a coherent theme.
Born in 1951, Sally Mann has played a leading role in contemporary photography for the past 25 years. Her career began in the 1970s and fully matured in the Culture Wars of the early 1990s, when photographs of her children became embroiled in national debates about family values. In the mid-1990s, Mann turned her attention to large-scale landscapes, specifically the evocative terrain of the South, where she was born, raised and continues to live. Her landscape work raised questions about history, memory and nostalgia, and also embraced a romantic beauty that proved as troubling to some critics as the sensual images of her children had to others. By the early 2000s, she had returned to figurative subjects, adding images of her husband and herself to her work.
Text from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts website
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled (Self Portraits) 2006-2007 Ambrotypes (unique collodion wet-plate positives on black glass) with sandarac varnish
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled (Self Portraits) (detail) 2006-2007 Ambrotypes (unique collodion wet-plate positives on black glass) with sandarac varnish
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled (Self Portraits) (detail) 2006-2007 Ambrotypes (unique collodion wet-plate positives on black glass) with sandarac varnish
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled (Self Portraits) (detail) 2006-2007 Ambrotypes (unique collodion wet-plate positives on black glass) with sandarac varnish
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled 2007-2008 Ambrotypes (unique collodion wet-plate positives on black glass), with sandarac varnish
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Ponder Heart 2009 Gelatin silver contact print from 15 x 13 1/2-in. collodion wet-plate negative
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Hephaestus 2008 Gelatin silver contact print from 15 x 13 1/2 –in. collodion wet-plate negative
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Was Ever Love 2009 Gelatin silver contact print from 15 x 13 1/2 –in. collodion wet-plate negative
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 200 N. Boulevard Richmond, Virginia USA 23220-4007
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Colorado Springs, Colorado 1968 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
What a pleasure it is to post these photographs from the outstanding photographer Robert Adams. The photograph Longmont, Colorado (1979, below) has become truly iconic and will be recognised instantly by many art aficionados around the world: the glowing neon lights, the empty gondolas, towering, brooding skies and solitary, isolated human. The creature in the photograph Sitka spruce, Cape Blanco State Park, Curry County, Oregon (1999-2000, below) impinges my consciousness like a Lernaean Hydra, an ancient, nameless, multi-headed serpent-like water beast. The eloquently understated series Listening to the River (1985-1987, several photographs below) completes the picture, a tour de force of apposition: each image positioned at rest in respect to another: quiet, still, but visually complex.
There is a crispness and cleanness to Adams work that belie the complexity of his subject matter. Tension and balance within the pictorial frame is the key: formal yet fecund, these intellectually productive images challenge us to imagine, and to name, our relationship with the earth and every place that we live.
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Frame for a Tract House, Colorado Springs, Colorado 1969 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Longmont, Colorado 1979 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Edge of San Timoteo Canyon, looking toward Los Angeles, Redlands, California 1978 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from the Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Santa Ana Wash, Redlands, California 1983, printed 1991 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from the Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Quarried Mesa Top, Pueblo County, Colorado 1978 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from the Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Ranch Northeast of Keota, Colorado 1969 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from the Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Southwest from the South Jetty, Clatsop County, Oregon 1992 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from the Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Over the past four decades photographer Robert Adams has come to be widely regarded as one of the most original and significant chroniclers of the western American landscape. The first large-scale exhibition of Adams’ work to be presented in Canada, The Place We Live traces his longstanding engagement with the degradation of the environment in the face of suburban development. The exhibition includes more than 300 photographs representing each of Adams’ major projects, from his austere photographs of the Colorado prairie that pay homage to earlier inhabitants, to his unflinching images of the land, workplaces, shopping centres and homes around Denver, as well as recent images of the remains of the great rainforest near his present home in the American Pacific Northwest.
Spare and dispassionate, yet rich with formal invention, Adams’ remarkable images resist simplification of subjects both ordinary and grand, balancing the complexities and contradictions found in modern life. Seen as a whole, the exhibition clearly reveals an approach to art-making that on the one hand seeks to bear witness to humanity’s tenuous relationship with the natural world and, on the other, to celebrate the unexpected sublimity that persists in the face of despoliation.
The reach of Adams’ work has been felt primarily through his publications, which include more than 30 monographs. Adams’ books are an integral component of the exhibition and provide the viewer with the opportunity to further consider the manner in which he has addressed the fear, curiosity and inspiration the American landscape has engendered throughout his career. The international tour of this exhibition is being launched at the Vancouver Art Gallery and is accompanied by a catalogue and a three-volume, hard cover book.
Text from the Vancouver Art Gallery website [Online] Cited 04/01/2022
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) In a New Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado 1969 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Sitka spruce, Cape Blanco State Park, Curry County, Oregon 1999-2000 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery. Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from the Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Kerstin, Next to an Old-Growth Stump, Coos County, Oregon 1999-2003 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from the Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Untitled from the series Listening to the River 1985-87 Gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery Purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from the Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Vancouver Art Gallery 750 Hornby Street, Vancouver BC V6Z 2H7 Info Line: 604.662.4719
Exhibition dates: 17th November 2010 – 15th January, 2011
Many thankx to Christophe Guye Galerie for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Will Steacy (American, b. 1980) Burned Car, Los Angeles 2009 from Down these Main Streets, 2009 Archival pigment prints 61 x 76.2cm (24 x 30 in)
Will Steacy (American, b. 1980) Home Delivery, Los Angeles 2009 from Down these Main Streets, 2009 Archival pigment prints 61 x 76.2cm (24 x 30 in)
Will Steacy (American, b. 1980) Lovers, New Branford 2007 from All my Life I have the same Dream, 2007 Archival pigment prints 61 x 76.2cm (24 x 30 in)
Will Steacy (American, b. 1980) Memorial, Philadelphia 2009 from Down these Main Streets, 2009 Archival pigment prints 61 x 76.2cm (24 x 30 in)
“The monstropolous beast had left his bed. Two hundred miles an hour wind had loosed his chains. He seized hold of his dikes and ran forward until he met the quarters; uprooted them like grass and rushed on after his supposed-to-be conquerors, rolling the dikes, rolling the houses, rolling the people in the houses along with other timbers. The sea was walking the earth with a heavy heel.”
From Zola Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
Christophe Guye Galerie is pleased to present The Monstropolous Beast, Will Steacy’s (American, b. 1980) first solo exhibition outside the United States.
For his first solo exhibition at the Christophe Guye Galerie, Will Steacy is showing a cross-section of his past years of creative working. Showing 28 new and recent photographs, The Monstropolous Beast is the first exhibition to comprehensively portray Steacy’s whole body of work to date. Once named “the lovechild of Charles Bukowski and Dorothea Lange” Steacy’s work is poetic and confrontational alike, at once evoking photojournalist documentation and romanticised realism.
Steacy’s imaginary stems from his experiences, encounters and the desire to awaken. His work quietly observes, holding on to moments of apparent silence that would pass unnoticed had he not been there to click the shutter. Breathtaking and touching, the emotional force of the artist’s work allows the viewer to intimately connect with the subject. Deeply philosophical, the camera permits him to ask questions, to truly see and think. It is for Steacy a tool with which to understand the world; an understanding he wants to convey to his viewers.
His method of inquiry is a large format film camera. Photographing the depleted city centres and rural suburbs of America, Steacy has spent the last years travelling his country to create a body of work that through its social connotations goes beyond simple photography. As a former Union Labourer, one can sense the humanistic approach to Steacy’s art. While deeply personal, Steacy works with the intention to create awareness, challenging people to look inward.
A key series in the exhibition is Down These Mean Streets, for which the artist examined fear and abandonment of America’s inner cities. The reality experienced at night on the streets is so haunting it becomes a hyper reality; laden with emotional and mental attachment, in works such as Memorial or HomeDelivery the energy and courage that spark the artist’s work is intensely apparent. Factories, deserted streets and inhabitants of neglected neighbourhoods are his subjects. By addressing the loss and despair that reign in US metropolitan communities, his aim is to reveal a modern day portrait of the reality in American urban centres.
Though still early in his career, the almost ordinary or unspectacular subject matters depicted in the works shown bring to mind the works of William Eggleston or Martin Parr. Demonstrating a distinctive ability to find beauty or fascination in commonplace scenes, and illustrating them with vivid displays of colour and luminosity, Steacy’s works take a critical look at modern society and human conditions, bring viewers uncomfortably close to an often sombre reality.
What at first glance appears like a simple capturing of ordinary people, everyday situations and mundane settings or situations, unravels into a multifaceted portrayal of society, its people, places, race, class, and boundaries. Through a life-changing experience, Steacy turned to art, devoting “everything I have to my art, this gift, this thing that is the reason I am alive… Coming that close to death will change a man. Life has had a new meaning since then, and I wake up every day happy to be alive, happy to chase this dream.” Frank and profound alike, unostentatious and similarly intense Steacy’s work is about life: life today in 21st century America, where layers of seeming simplicity unfolds before our eyes.”
Press release from the Christophe Guye Galerie website
Will Steacy (American, b. 1980) Motel Room 2007 from We are all in this Together, 2007 Archival pigment prints 61 x 76.2cm (24 x 30 in)
Will Steacy (American, b. 1980) Pawn Shop, Memphis 2007 from All my Life I have the same Dream, 2007 Archival pigment prints 61 x 76.2cm ( 24 x 30 in)
Will Steacy (American, b. 1980) Power Plant, Philadelphia 2008 from Down these Main Streets, 2009 Archival pigment prints 61 x 76.2cm (24 x 30 in)
Will Steacy (American, b. 1980) Satellite Dish, Detroit 2009 from Down these Main Streets, 2009 Archival pigment prints 61 x 76.2cm (24 x 30 in)
Will Steacy (American, b. 1980) Liz, Philadelphia 2007 from All my Life I have the same Dream, 2007 Archival pigment prints 61 x 76.2cm (24 x 30 in)
“Baltz’s compositions appear to have been arranged, almost as a Braque still-life is ‘arranged’. Many of these photographs have the sense of a precisely constructed occasion, as if Baltz had built his subject matter before photographing it. This unity of subject and author is a characteristic of many fine photographs, but Baltz brings to this problem a narrow, powerful eye which is blindingly frontal and meticulous about detail.”1
Anon. “Lewis Baltz,” on the American Suburb X website [Online] Cited 12/11/2010 no longer available online.
Many thankx to The Art Institute of Chicago for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation views of the exhibition Lewis Baltz: Prototypes/Ronde de Nuit at The Art Institute of Chicago
Lewis Baltz (b. 1945) is one of the most prominent representatives of the “New Topographics” movement, which changed the direction of American photography in the 1970s and has had a formative impact on every generation since. However, Baltz’s innovations began already in the 1960s. The Art Institute of Chicago has organised the first survey ever of Lewis Baltz’s inaugural body of work, the Prototypes (c. 1967-1973). The exhibition also puts on view for the first time in 12 years Ronde de Nuit, a monumental work of the early 1990s. Lewis Baltz: Prototypes / Ronde de Nuit – on view in the Modern Wing’s Bucksbaum Gallery (G188) from September 25, 2010 through January 9, 2011 – features 42 Prototype works, including several that have never before been published or exhibited. This is Baltz’s first solo exhibition in the United States in more than a decade.
Beginning in 1965, but especially from 1967 to 1973, Lewis Baltz made a body of work that concentrated on the dialectic between simple, regular geometric forms found in the postwar industrial landscape and the far from simple culture that generated such forms, or was conditioned by them. Stucco walls, parking lots, the sides of warehouse sheds, or disused billboards baked in the steady Californian sunlight – these and other “hyper-banal” subjects were printed in blacks and whites of a breathtaking tonal evenness. Baltz called his works “Prototypes,” by which he meant replicable social conventions as well as model structures of replicable manufacture. The fraught relation of neutral form to highly charged content plays itself out on the emphatically planar surface of these prints, objects that exude magnificence and severity simultaneously. Never before shown together as a group, the Prototypes are revealed in this exhibition as model creations for their time and ours. They are among the earliest artworks to show the fascinating, disturbing transformation of the American landscape into an unending terrain of anonymous commercial architecture as well among the first photographs to seek the starkly reductive forms of minimal and post-minimal art “out in the world.”
In 1971, upon seeing the Prototypes, gallery owner Leo Castelli immediately agreed to exhibit Baltz’s photographs, and he remained Baltz’s American representative until the artist relocated to Europe nearly 20 years later. Included in the presentation of Lewis Baltz: Prototypes / Ronde de Nuit is a monumental sculpture by Sol LeWitt from the Art Institute’s permanent collection and a nine-foot oilstick drawing by Richard Serra – two artists also featured at Castelli, and whose work the young Baltz greatly admired. Bringing together these three artists for the first time, the exhibition shows the affinities and analogies that developed across media around 1970, when photography first moved to the center of concerns in contemporary art.
During and directly after his student years, Lewis Baltz made what he called Prototypes, photographs of recent residential and commercial “subarchitecture” in his home state of California. They are among the earliest artworks to show the fascinating, disturbing transformation of the American landscape into an unending terrain of anonymous buildings; they are also among the first photographs to seek the starkly reductive forms of Minimalist and Post-Minimalist art “out in the world.” Corona del Mar is nearly devoid of shadows, making the image appear as shallow as the paper on which it is printed. Baltz emphasised this congruence by mounting the photograph onto board and rimming the perimeter with India ink. The Prototype Works isolate objects in the built environment and ask to be apprehended as image-objects in their own right.
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Canyon, Broadway and Exchange Place 1936 Gelatin silver print National Gallery of Art, Gift of Marvin Breckinridge Patterson
Berenice Abbott – what a photographer! You couldn’t have thought of a better person to save the archive of Eugene Atget for the world. It’s all there at the bread store.
Marcus
Many thankx to Tracy Greene for her help and The Amon Carter Museum of American Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) The El at Columbus and Broadway 1929 Gelatin silver print
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Hell Gate Bridge 1937 Gelatin silver print Collection of Norma B. Marin, Courtesy Meredith Ward Fine Art
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Squibb Building with Sherry Netherland in Background 1935 Gelatin silver print Collection of Norma B. Marin, Courtesy Meredith Ward Fine Art
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Manhattan Bridge Looking Up 1936 Gelatin silver print The Art Institute of Chicago, Works Progress Administration Allocation
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Bread Store, 259 Bleecker Street 1937 Gelatin silver print Museum of the City of New York
Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1906-1971) Boy with hound dog 1936 Gelatin silver print 13 1/4 x 17in (33.5 x 43.2cm)
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) Penny Picture Display, Savannah 1936 Gelatin silver print Amon Carter Museum
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art presents American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White. This special exhibition explores the work of three of the foremost photographers of the twentieth-century and the golden age of documentary photography in America. American Modern will be on view through January 2, 2011; admission is free.
Featuring more than 140 photographs by Berenice Abbott (1898-1991), Margaret Bourke-White (1906-1971) and Walker Evans (1903-1975), American Modern was co-organised by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine. The exhibition is the result of a unique partnership between three curators: Jessica May and Sharon Corwin of the Carter and Colby, respectively, and Terri Weissman, assistant professor of art history at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Together, the three curators present the works of these three artists as case studies of documentary photography during the Great Depression and demonstrate how three factors supported the development of documentary photography during this important period in American history: first, the expansion of mass media; second, a new attitude toward and acceptance of modern art in America; and third, government support for photography during the 1930s.
“This exhibition considers the work of three of the best-loved American photographers in a new light, which is very exciting,” says curator Jessica May. “Abbott, Evans, and Bourke-White are undisputed masters of the medium of photography, but they have never been shown in relation to one another. This exhibition offers viewers an opportunity to see works together that have not been shown as such since the 1930s.”
In addition to vintage photographs from over 20 public and private collections, the exhibition also features rare first-edition copies of select books and periodicals from the 1930s. American Modern, May says, “reminds us that documentary photography was very much a public genre – this was the first generation of photographers that truly anticipated that their work would be seen by a vast audience through magazines and books.”
Press release from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art website [Online] Cited 01/12/2010. No longer available online
Installation view of the exhibition American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas showing at second right, Walker Evans photograph Allie Mae Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama (1936, below)
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) Allie Mae Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama 1936 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas showing at second left, Margaret Bourke-White’s photograph The Towering Smokestacks of the Otis Steel Co., Cleveland (1927-1928, below); and at second right top, her photograph Delman Shoes (1933, below)
Installation views of the exhibition American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas showing in the bottom photograph at left, pages from Berenice Abbott’s Early New York Scrapbook (1929-1930)
African cane rats infested with maggots, African yams (dioscorea), Andean potatoes, Bangladeshi cucurbit plants, bush meat, cherimoya fruit, curry leaves (murraya), dried orange peels, fresh eggs, giant African snail, impala skull cap, jackfruit seeds, June plum, kola nuts, mango, okra, passion fruit, pig nose, pig mouths, pork, raw poultry (chicken), South American pig head, South American tree tomatoes, South Asian lime infected with citrus canker, sugar cane (poaceae), uncooked meats, unidentified sub tropical plant in soil. All items in the photograph were seized from baggage of passengers arriving in the U.S. at JFK Terminal 4 from abroad over a 48-hour period. All seized items are identified, dissected, and then either ground up or incinerated. JFK processes more international passengers than any other airport in the Unites States.
Prohibited agricultural items can harbor foreign animal and plant pests and diseases that could damage U.S. crops, livestock, pets, the environment and the economy. Before entering the country, passengers are required to declare fruits, vegetables, plants, seeds, meats, birds, or animal products that they may be carrying. The CBP agriculture specialists determine if items meet U.S. entry requirements. The U.S. requires permits for animals and plants in order to safeguard against highly infectious diseases, such as foot-and-mouth disease and avian influenza.
This is an exhibition of large format colour photographs by Taryn Simon which features a body of work titled An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2006). The work investigates the hidden spaces, places, artefacts and rituals of American cultural warfare (here I mean warfare in the sense of good vs bad, natural vs unnatural (or mutated), safety vs danger, death vs life for example). The photographs are very much like opening a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ where the photographer is attempting to challenge the categorical boundaries of environments and objects, things that are yet to be defined and fixed in place. Some of the photographs work very well in their attempts to categorise, to index; others are far less successful.
Dan Rule in The Age sees the photographs as “slick, high-definition visuals … photographs [that] defy their gritty, documentarian sensibilities. Capturing an ominous vision of Bush-era America, her expansive series … doesn’t merely unearth a sinister vantage of the nation’s underbelly, but renders it in shocking clarity and detail … it ‘s a fascinating and troubling portrait. However, it’s not so much the subject matter but the luminous, hyper-realistic orientation that gives these images such resonance.”1
I see things differently. Where Rule sees luminous photographs I see photographs that are very formal and dull, photographs that are rather lifeless and maudlin. Printed on grey pearlised paper (meaning that the base colour of the photographic paper is not white) and placed in pale grey frames, these A3 high definition, large depth of field photographs possess limited photographic insight into the condition of the spaces and objects being photographed. My friend rather cuttingly, but correctly, noted that they were very National Geographic drained of colour (note: the images in this online posting have far more life and colour than the actual prints!).
This is photography as documentation used to disseminate information, documentation that reinforces the indexical nature of photography (the link between referent and reality) as a form of ‘truth’ – hence the ‘Index’ in the title of the body of work, a taxonomic ordering of reality. Even then some of the photographs have to be validated by text for them to have any meaning. “The visual is processed aesthetically and then redefined by its text” trumpets the wall text. Yes sure, but here the photographs are formalistically visualised, some to very limited effect, and what the text is really doing is semiotically decoding an image that has little meaning (until we are told) through words, words that are about memory, reminders of what we call and know of a thing.
When the photograph tells us very little in the first place, when we do not have knowledge of a thing and cannot construct memories from the photograph but rely solely on words for meaning this can lead to photographs that are intrinsically and inherently poor. An example of a poor photograph in this series is the image of the captured Great white shark. Another example is the photograph of a decomposing body at the Forensic Anthropology Research Facility (see photograph above). Compare this to Sally Mann’s photograph of the same subject matter: the resonance of Mann’s photograph is powerful, confronting yet ambiguous with an amorphous aura surrounding the body, that of Simon’s almost as though the artist was afraid to really approach the subject; there seems to be an obsequiousness to the subject matter. Hidden is hidden and this photograph is definitely not “transforming the unknown into a seductive and intelligible form” (Wall text).
Simon’s photographs are not visual enigmas that approach Atget’s The Marvellous in the Everyday, where he experimented with “the variable play between nature and art through minute changes in the camera’s angle, or as functions of the effects of light and time of day.” Nor do they possess that quality that I noted in my review of the work of Carol Jerrems – spaces that make some room for you in front – some room that would allow you to look forward, and maybe even walk into that space. Despite their ‘hidden’ and ‘unfamiliar’ context these photographs are very dull spaces. Simon’s camera angles are by the book. So are most of the photographs. Of course, I understand the revealing of meaning in the photograph by the text and the surprise this entails but this simply does not dismiss the fact that some of these works are just poor. In fact I would say only about 50% of these photographs could stand alone without the validation of the text. Does this matter? Is this important? Yes I think it is, for some of these works are just deadpan photographs of entropic spaces that are only given meaning because the photographer says they are important things to photograph (see my paper Spaces That Matter: Awareness and Entropia in the Imaging of Place, 2002). Even with text some of the photographs still have no resonance.
When the photographs do work they are astounding. There is delicious irony in the depiction of a Recreational Basketball Court in Cheyenne Mountains Directorate, Chamber D, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2006) a dark, oppressive print of a nuclear bunker with basketball court or the incongruous nature of Death Row, Outdoor Recreational Facility “The Cage” (2006), a barred metal cage situated inside another building for the recreation of death row inmates. Shocking, disorientating. My personal favourite in this human built, human-less world of Simon’s was one of the simplest photographs in the exhibition, a photograph that cuts away the surroundings to picture a labelled flask sitting on a non-descript background. A concise visualisation of a labelled flask given extra meaning when you read the accompanying text: Live HIV, HIV Research Laboratory (2006). Pause for thought. The photographs when understood aesthetically are like snapshots of an alien culture, almost mundane but disturbing. I believe the best photographs in the series combine the presence of the space or object, an understanding of the condition of that space or object without having to read the text. The text then supplements the visual interpretation not overrides it.
Human beings are secretive, unstable, paranoid creatures that are exclusory and fearful of Others. Fear is palpable in these photographs. Here is evidence of the human need for control (through the surveillance of photography) over conduct – control of contamination, death, disease, threat and Other. We investigate and document something in order to control it, in order that science can control it (think Foucault’s disciplinary systems of the prison and the madhouse). These photographs excavate meaning by bringing the shadow into the light in order to index our existence, to make the hidden less frightening and more controllable.
Personally, I prefer my world to remain the mutation that is the catastrophe in the pattern / randomness dialectic. I like the chthonic darkness of difference and the rupture of pattern, the dislocation of identity and the challenge of mutation. Even though these photographs address the context of the hidden and unfamiliar there is nothing in the least unusual about them. Here is the paradox of these works: their (ab)normality vs their lack of humanity. The photographs in this exhibition all too easily confirm our prejudices and limit our understanding of difference through their need to document, label, order and exhibit the fear of (in)difference, all the better to control the mutations of disturbance.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Rule, Dan. “Taryn Simon:Â An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar” in The Age newspaper A2. Melbourne: Saturday, October 23rd 2010
The decomposing body of a young boy is studied by researchers who have re-created a crime scene.
The Forensic Anthropology Research Facility, popularly known as The Body Farm, is the world’s chief research center for the study of corpse decomposition. Its six-acre plot hosts approximately 75 cadavers in various stage of decomposition. The farm uses physical anthropology (skeletal analysis of human remains) to help solve criminal cases, especially murder cases. Forensic anthropologists work to establish profiles for deceased persons. These profiles can include sex, age, ethnic ancestry, stature, time elapsed since death, and sometimes, the nature of trauma on the bones.
In the United States, all living white tigers are the result of selective inbreeding to artificially create the genetic conditions that lead to white fur, ice-blue eyes and a pink nose. Kenny was born to a breeder in Bentonville, Arkansas, on February 3, 1999. As a result of inbreeding, Kenny is mentally retarded and has significant physical limitations. Due to this deep-set nose, he has difficulty breathing and closing his jaw, his teeth are severely malformed and he limps from abnormal bone structure in his forearms. The three other tigers in Kenny’s litter are not considered to be quality white tigers as they are yellow-coated, cross-eyed, and knock-kneed.
White tigers are extremely rare in their natural habitats in Asia. In the U.S., all living white tigers are the result of selective inbreeding in captivity to artificially create the genetic conditions that lead to white fur, ice-blue eyes and a pink nose. Currently, inbreeding such as father to daughter, brother to sister, mother to son has become commonplace. It produces a white cub less than 25% of the time, with only approximately 3% of those considered “quality.” The three other tigers in Kenny’s litter are not considered to be quality white tigers as they are yellow coated, cross-eyed, and knock-kneed.
Conservation experts challenge the perception that white tigers are a rare and endangered species. Instead, they state that zoos, breeders, and entertainment acts have over-bred white tigers for financial gain, citing instances where private breeders and zoos have sold “quality” white tigers for over $60,000. The grave health consequences of inbreeding and over-breeding have led to abortions, stillbirths and a high mortality rate among infants. The Species Survival Plan has condemned the practice. In recent years there has been a significant drop in their market value.
The patient in this photograph is 21 years old. She is of Palestinian descent and living in the United States. In order to adhere to cultural and familial expectations regarding her virginity and marriage, she underwent hymenoplasty. Without it she feared she would be rejected by her future husband and bring shame upon her family. She flew in secret to Florida where the operation was performed by Dr. Bernard Stern, a plastic surgeon she located on the internet. The purpose of hymenoplasty is to reconstruct a ruptured hymen, the membrane which partially covers the opening of the vagina. It is an outpatient procedure which takes approximately 30 minutes and can be done under local or intravenous anesthesia. Dr. Stern charges $3,500 for hymenoplasty. He also performs labiaplasty and vaginal rejuvenation.
The hymen has not been proven to serve any biological function. Some girls are born with an imperforate hymen. Rupture most often occurs during first intercourse, but some girls tear their hymen during sports activities or as a result of injuries. The majority of the time there is a correlation between an intact hymen and a woman’s virginity; many cultures view the tearing of the hymen as a critical symbol of that loss. While similar attempts to alter the hymen predate modern plastic surgery, hymenoplasty is now just one of several vaginal cosmetic surgeries that are growing in popularity worldwide. Dr. Stern charges $3,500 for hymenoplasty. He also performs labiaplasty and vaginal rejuvenation.
“Inspired by rumours of weapons of mass destruction and secret sites in Iraq, American photographic artist Taryn Simon focuses her lens on the hidden and inaccessible places in her own country.
An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2006) takes the viewer behind closed doors to uncover some extraordinary things inside places usually hidden from the public’s view. Ranging across the realms of science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature, security, and religion, Simon’s photographic subjects include glowing radioactive capsules in an underwater nuclear-waste storage facility, a Braille edition of Playboy, a deathrow prisoners’ exercise yard, an inbred tiger, corpses rotting in a Forensic Research Facility, and a Scientology screening room.
Shot over four years, mostly with a large-format view camera, the images in this fascinating exhibition are in turn ethereal, foreboding, deadpan and cinematic. In examining what is integral to America’s foundation, mythology and daily functioning, the Index provides a surprising map of the American mindset and creates a vivid portrayal of the contemporary United States.
Inspired by rumours of WMDs and secret sites in Iraq, Taryn Simon decided to address secret sites in her own country, photographing hidden places and things within America’s borders. Ranging across the realms of science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature, security and religion, her subjects include glowing radioactive capsules, a braille edition of Playboy, a death-row prisoners’ exercise yard, an inbred tiger, a teenage corpse rotting in a forensic research facility, and a Scientology screening room. An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar explores a dialectic of security and paranoia that is distinctly American. Offering a heart-of-darkness tour of Bush-period America, it also reflects on photography’s role in revealing and concealing.
In his foreword,1 Salman Rushdie writes ‘In a historical period in which so many people are making such great efforts to conceal the truth from the mass of the people, an artist like Taryn Simon is an invaluable counter-force. Democracy needs visibility, accountability, light. It is in the unseen darkness that unsavoury things huddle and grow. Somehow, Simon has persuaded a good few denizens of hidden worlds not to scurry for shelter when the light is switched on, as cockroaches do, and vampires, but to pose proudly for her invading lens, brandishing their tattoos and Confederate flags.
Simon’s is not the customary aesthetic of reportage – the shaky hand-held camera, the grainy monochrome film stock of the ‘real’. Her subjects… are suffused with light, captured with a bright, hyper-realist, high-definition clarity that gives a kind of star status to these hidden worlds, whose occupants might be thought to be the opposite of stars. In her vision of them, they are dark stars brought into the light. What is not known, rarely seen, possesses a form of occult glamour, and it is that black beauty which she so brightly, and brilliantly, reveals.’
1/ Salman Rushdie, ‘Foreword’ in Taryn Simon, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Steidl Gottingen, Germany, 2007, p. 7.
Text from the Melbourne International Art Festival and the Centre for Contemporary Photography websites
This cryopreservation unit holds the bodies of Rhea and Elaine Ettinger, the mother and fist wife of cryonics pioneer, Robert Ettinger. Robert, author of The Prospect of Immortality and Man into Superman is still alive. The Cryogenics Institute offers cryostasis (freezing) services for individuals and pets upon death. Cryostasis is practiced with the hope that lives will ultimately be extended through future developments in science, technology, and medicine. When, and if, these developments occur, Institute members hope to awake to an extended life in good health, free from disease or the ageing process. Cryostasis must begin immediately upon legal death. A person or pet is infused with ice-preventive substances and quickly cooled to a temperature where physical decay virtually stops.
At present, the Cryonics Institute cryopreserves 74 legally dead human patients and 44 legally dead pets. It charges $28,000 for the process if it is planned well in advance of legal death and $35,000 on shorter notice. The cost has not increased since 1976 when the Cryonics Institute was established. The Institute is licensed as a cemetery in the state of Michigan.
Submerged in a pool of water at Hanford Site are 1,936 stainless-steel nuclear-waste capsules containing cesium and strontium. Combined, they contain over 120 million curies of radioactivity. It is estimated to be the most curies under one roof in the United States. The blue glow is created by the Cherenkov Effect which describes the electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle, giving off energy, moves faster than light through a transparent medium. The temperatures of the capsules are as high as 330 degrees Fahrenheit. The pool of water serves as a shield against radiation; a human standing one foot from an unshielded capsule would receive a lethal dose of radiation in less than 10 seconds. Hanford is among the most contaminated sites in the United States.
Hanford is a 586 square mile former plutonium production complex. It was built for the Manhattan Project, the U.S.-led World War II defense effort that developed the first nuclear weapons. Hanford plutonium was used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. For decades afterwards Hanford manufactured nuclear materials for use in bombs. At Hanford there are more than 53 million gallons of radioactive and chemically hazardous liquid waste, 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel, nearly 18 metric tons of plutonium-bearing materials and about 80 square miles of contaminated groundwater. It is among the most contaminated sites in the United States.
Centre for Contemporary Photography Level 2, Perry St Building Collingwood Yards, Collingwood Victoria 3066
Many thankx to The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Just after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans in 2005, photographer Richard Misrach used a 4-megapixel pocket camera to capture messages left behind by evacuees. Some are warnings; some are cries for help or encouragement; some are tallies of loss.
Misrach composed a visual narrative that reveals the wrenching anguish of dealing with the aftermath of this horrific storm. Commemorating the hurricane’s fifth anniversary, the exhibition Richard Misrach: After Katrina presents 69 photographs that Misrach has generously given to the MFAH.
Misrach (born 1949) is best known for his Desert Cantos series, initiated in 1979 and still ongoing. Each canto within the series investigates specific aspects of the American West, from issues of water, to tourism, to the presence of the U.S. military. While developing the Cantos, Misrach has also produced series on the Golden Gate Bridge and Hawaiian beaches. The MFAH collects Misrach’s work in depth and in 1996 organised the artist’s mid-career retrospective, Crimes and Splendors: The Desert Cantos of Richard Misrach.
Although taken in the same city at around the same period as the work of Helen Levitt, these photographs by Leon Levinstein have less formality in their composition and definitely possess a more eclectic style evidenced by the dissection and placement of bodies within the image frame. This is not to denigrate either artist but merely to observe how two great photographers can see the same city in totally different ways. In both previsualisation was strong, the camera freezing what is placed before the lens in a balletic display that captured “just what you see.”
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.
Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) Untitled [Head of Man with Hat and Cigar] c. 1960 Gelatin silver print 27.8 x 33.3cm (10 15/16 x 13 1/8 in.) Stewart S. MacDermott Fund, 1986
A master of classic American street photography, Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) is best known for his candid and unsentimental black-and-white figure studies made in New York City neighborhoods from Times Square and the Lower East Side to Coney Island. From June 8 through October 17, 2010, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950-1980. This exhibition, drawn exclusively from the Metropolitan’s collection, features 44 photographs that reflect Levinstein’s fearless approach to the medium. Levinstein’s graphic virtuosity – seen in raw, expressive gestures and seemingly monumental bodies – is balanced by an unusual compassion for his off-beat subjects from the demimonde.
Born in West Virginia in 1910, Levinstein moved to New York in 1946 and spent the next 35 years obsessively photographing strangers on the streets of his adopted home. Early in his career, Levinstein was quoted in Photography Annual 1955: “In my photographs I want to look at life – at the commonplace things as if I just turned a corner and ran into them for the first time.” With daring and dedication to his subject, Levinstein captured the denizens of New York City at extremely close range. He used his superb sense of composition to frame the faces, flesh, poses, and movements of his fellow city dwellers in their myriad guises: sunbathers, young couples, children, businessmen, beggars, prostitutes, proselytisers, society ladies, and characters of all stripes.
Although he was a life-long loner, Levinstein was mentored and supported by Alexey Brodovitch, artistic director of Harper’s Bazaar, and Edward Steichen, the eminent photographer and curator at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, both of whom recognised his unique talent in the medium of photography. He was also greatly influenced by workshops led by the distinguished photographer and teacher Sid Grossman.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Levinstein’s work appeared frequently in photography magazines and books alongside that of his peers, such as Robert Frank, Richard Avedon, and Diane Arbus. Nonetheless, he rarely worked on assignment, as they often did; nor did he ever produce his own book of photographs. Instead, he worked as a graphic designer and devoted his evenings and weekends to photography. In 1975, Levinstein received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation to “photograph as wide a spectrum of the American scene as my experience and vision will allow… I want my photographs to be spontaneous rather than contrived.” Despite this recognition of his achievement, he never seemed able to fit into the commercial photography market that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, and consequently, his powerful body of work continues to be known mainly by other photographers and by specialists in the field.
Press release from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 28/09/2010 no longer available online
That idea of authenticity, ineffably captured as a decisive instance on a strip of light-sensitive celluloid, was ridden out of town a long time ago by postmodern theorists and certainly seems quaint today, but its power, as fixed in black and white by Levinstein, is undeniable. His mtier was a kind of reductivist monumentality, in which he captured his subjects – ordinary New Yorkers going about their business – in close-up, a technique commonly associated with cinema, to create images that were at once abstract and pregnant with narrative.
Like Weegee and Diane Arbus, Levinstein had a taste for the offbeat and grotesque (he often zeroed in on corpulent pedestrians; midsections and backsides, absent any trace of individuality, were a frequent motif). Also like them, he could be accused of engaging in a form of slumming. But he was less interested in abjection than he was in grandeur, and in this respect, the people in his photos are imbued with a sculptural nobility that simply doesn’t exist in the work of either Weegee or Arbus. More often than not, the “hipsters, hustlers and handball players” of the show’s title loom into the lens, crowding out background details. We get only fragments of the metropolis around them: a bit of stoop or curbstone, or a patch of sand out at Coney Island. Yet the pictures themselves express a sense of velocity, of lives hurtling toward some destiny that’s as heroic as it is bleak. What’s remarkable about Levinstein is that his framing – both epic and destabilising – stands in for the pitiless dynamic of New York itself.
Howard Halle. “Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950-1980,” on the Time Out New York website, Monday June 14, 2010 [Online] Cited 26/12/2019 no longer available online
I think Levinstein’s gift lay in his ability to capture the essence of New York’s rough, funky cool (particularly in the 1960s and 1970s), without getting overly sentimental or kitchy. Nearly all of his images were taken at close range, often cropping out unneeded heads and body parts, focusing on overlooked subjects and elemental gestures found on the city’s streets and sidewalks. His compositions are often angled and dark, and he was particularly adept at capturing the nuances of clothing and fashion as worn by New York’s imperfect and eclectic masses, finding the hidden joy in a bold pattern, a wide collar or a tight fitting pair of shorts. The pictures are tough, edgy, sometimes harsh, and always refreshingly real.
As you look more closely at these candid pictures, Levinstein’s talent for making the common look uncommon shines through. He finds earthy wonder in a foot perched on a wire trash can, a sweat stained tank top, 70s-era moustaches, a grey pinstripe suit, bulging stomachs and belts, a man fluffing his afro in a window, eating corn on the cob on the beach, tattoos, an overcoat with shiny buttons, kissing on a stoop, and a groovy floral blouse paired with tight leggings. He seems to have been fond of backs and sides, abstracting his subjects into fragments of movement or pose, paring them down into types and moments that were representative of something larger in society.
One of the most haunting photography books I have ever opened and inhaled is What Remains (2003) by Sally Mann.
People say the photographs are shocking – featuring as they do documentation of a deceased pet greyhound, photos of decaying bodies out in the open field of a forensics lab (see photograph below), “the almost invisible traces left by the death of a fugitive on Mann’s property”, the dark landscape of a civil war battlefield and close up photographs of her now grown up children – but there is a stillness and depth to these photographs that elevates them above such sentiments.
What Mann does so well is that she listens to the passing of time and then inscribes an ode to what remains. Her gift is the photography of mortality (and vice versa) with all the psychic weight that this entails. This is a revelatory book not for the faint hearted.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Sam Trenerry and the Photographers’ Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
This exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery is the American photographer Sally Mann’s first solo exhibition in the UK. Combining several series from her long photographic career, The Family and the Land: Sally Mann reflects Mann’s artistic impulse to draw on the world around her as subject matter.
The ‘family’ element of the title comprises Mann’s early series Immediate Family and the newer series Faces, both of which depict her children at various ages. The series Deep South represents the landscape, portraying images made across the south of the United States. The more recent body of work, What Remains brings together both strands of the exhibition, through its examination of how bodies, as they decompose, merge into the land itself.
Sally Mann (b. 1951, USA) first gained prominence for Immediate Family (1984-1994) a series of intimate and revealing portraits of her three young children, Emmett, Jessie and Virginia. Taken over a ten-year period, Mann depicts them playing, swimming and acting to the camera in and around their homestead in Lexington, Virginia. Born out of a collaborative process between mother and child, the work encapsulates their childhood in all its rawness and innocence.
Mann followed Immediate Family by focusing on the land itself in her series Deep South (1996-1998). Here she is drawn to locations steeped in historical significance from the American Civil War, which left both literal and metaphoric scars on the trees and the land itself. Using antique cameras and processes throughout, Mann accentuates the sense of age in the subject while embracing the imperfect effects created by her printing process.
What Remains (2000-2004) seeks to further connect human contact to the land and how the body eventually returns to and becomes a part of the land itself. This concept led Mann to photograph decomposing cadavers at the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, Knoxville, where human decomposition is studied in a variety of, mainly outdoor, settings. What Remains deals directly with the subject of death, still a social taboo. As with her other work, Mann’s subjects are sensitively handled and beautifully realised, encouraging us to reflect upon our own mortality and place within nature’s order.
In the most recent series Faces (2004), Mann turns the camera once more on her children. Closing in on their faces and using several minutes of exposure time, these works act as a commemoration of the living. Again Mann takes the accidental drips and marks created by the wet collodion process and makes them a key feature of her work.
Many thankx to Anabeth Guthrie and the National Gallery of Art, Washington for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Some of the most compelling photographs taken by renowned 20th-century American poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) of himself and his fellow Beat poets and writers – including William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac – are the subject of the first scholarly exhibition and catalogue of these works. Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg explores all facets of his photographs through 79 black-and-white portraits, on view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from May 2 through September 6, 2010.
The works are selected largely from a recent gift to the Gallery by Gary S. Davis as well as from private lenders. Davis acquired a master set of Ginsberg’s photographs from the poet’s estate, including one print of every photograph in Ginsberg’s possession at the time of his death. If more than one print existed, Ginsberg’s estate selected the one with the most compelling inscription. In 2008 and 2009 Davis donated more than 75 of these photographs to the National Gallery.
The same ideas that informed Ginsberg’s poetry – an intense observation of the world, a deep appreciation for the beauty of the vernacular, a faith in intuitive expression – also permeate his photographs.
When Ginsberg first began to take photographs in the 1950s, he – like countless other amateurs – had his film developed and printed at a local drugstore. The exhibition begins with a small selection of these “drugstore” prints.
The exhibition showcases examples of his now celebrated portraits of Beat writers such as Burroughs, Kerouac, and Ginsberg himself, starting just before they achieved fame with their publication, respectively, of Naked Lunch (1959), On the Road (1957), and Howl (1956), and continuing through the 1960s. In the photograph Bob Donlon (Rob Donnelly, Kerouac’s ‘Desolation Angels’), Neal Cassady, myself in black corduroy jacket… (1956), Ginsberg captures the tender, playful quality of his close-knit group of friends.
Photographs such as The first shopping cart street prophet I’d directly noticed… (1953) and Ginsberg’s apartment at 1010 Montgomery Street, San Francisco (1953), reveal his self-taught talents and careful attention to the world around him.
The second section of the exhibition presents Ginsberg’s later photographs, taken from the early 1980s until his death. These images were immediately embraced by the art world in the 1980s, and works such as Publisher-hero Barney Rosset whose Grove Press legal battles liberated U.S. literature & film… (1991) and Lita Hornick in her dining room… (1995) were exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. Prestigious institutions acquired Ginsberg’s photographs for their permanent collections, and two books were published on his photographic accomplishments. Ginsberg was not simply a happy bystander, witnessing these events from afar; he was one of the most active promoters of his photography. With their handwritten captions by Ginsberg himself, often reflecting on the passage of time, his photographs are both records and recollections of an era.
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
Allen Ginsberg began to take photographs in 1953 when he purchased a small, secondhand Kodak camera. From then until the early 1960s, he photographed himself and his friends in New York and San Francisco, or on his travels around the world. At the same time, he was formulating his poetic voice. Ginsberg first commanded public attention in 1955 when he read his provocative and now famous poem Howl to a wildly cheering audience at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. It was published the following year by City Lights Books with an introduction by William Carlos Williams.
Together with On the Road (1957), written by Kerouac, Howl was immediately hailed as a captivating, if challenging expression of both a new voice and a new vision for American literature. Celebrating personal freedom, sexual openness, and spontaneity, Ginsberg and Kerouac came to be seen as the embodiment of a younger generation – the Beats – who were unconcerned with middle-class American values and aspirations and decried its materialism and conformity. Ginsberg abandoned photography in 1963.
In 1983, with this rich, full life largely behind him, Ginsberg became increasingly interested in ensuring and perpetuating his legacy. Inspired by the discovery of his old negatives and encouraged by photographers Berenice Abbott and Robert Frank, he reprinted much of his early photographs and made new portraits of longtime friends and other acquaintances, such as the painter Francesco Clemente and musician Bob Dylan. With his poetic voice refined, Ginsberg, also added extensive inscriptions beneath each image, describing both his relationship with the subject and his memories of their times together.
Unlike many other members of the Beat Generation whose careers were cut short, Ginsberg wrote and published deeply moving and influential poetry for the rest of his life, including Kaddish (1961), his soulful lament for his mother, and The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965-1971 (1972), which was awarded a National Book Award in 1974. Using his fame to advance social causes, he also continued to capture public attention as an outspoken opponent to the Vietnam War and American militarism and as a champion of free speech, gay rights, and oppressed people around the world. In the midst of this popular acclaim, Ginsberg’s photographs have not received much critical attention, especially in the years since his death in 1997.
Although Ginsberg’s photographs form one of the most revealing records of the Beat and counterculture generation from the 1950s to the 1990s, tracing their journey from youthful characters to ageing, often spent figures, his pictures are far more than historical documents. Drawing on the most common form of photography – the snapshot – he created spontaneous, uninhibited pictures of ordinary events to celebrate and preserve what he called “the sacredness of the moment.
Press release from the National Gallery of Art website [Online] Cited 01/09/2010 no longer available online
![Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1906-1971) '[Iron Mountain, Tennessee]' 1937 from the exhibition 'American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White' at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/margaret-bourke-white-iron-mountain-tennessee-1937.jpg "Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1906-1971) '[Iron Mountain, Tennessee]' 1937 from the exhibition 'American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White' at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas")
![Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Lunchroom Window, New York City]' 1929 from the exhibition 'American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White' at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/walker-evans-lunchroom-window-new-york-city-1929.jpg "Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Lunchroom Window, New York City]' 1929 from the exhibition 'American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White' at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas")
![Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) 'Untitled [Head of Man with Hat and Cigar]' c. 1960 from the exhibition 'Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June - October, 2010](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/leon-levinstein-head-of-man-with-hat-and-cigar.jpg "Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) 'Untitled [Head of Man with Hat and Cigar]' c. 1960 from the exhibition 'Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June - October, 2010")
![Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) 'Untitled [Beach Scene: Woman Wearing Paper Bag Hat, Coney Island, New York]' 1950s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/leon-levinstein-beach-scene.jpg "Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988) 'Untitled [Beach Scene: Woman Wearing Paper Bag Hat, Coney Island, New York]' 1950s")
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