American group photographyArt Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘Among Others: Photography and the Group’ at The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Exhibition dates: 31st May – 18th August, 2019

Curator: Joel Smith, the Morgan’s Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head

Bob Adelman (American, 1930-2016) 'People Wall, World's Fair, New York' 1965 from the exhibition 'Among Others: Photography and the Group' at The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, May - August, 2019

Bob Adelman (American, 1930-2016)
People Wall, World’s Fair, New York
1965
Gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased as the gift of Nancy and Burton Staniar
© Bob Adelman Estate

Love Mike Mandel’s classic Baseball-Photographer Trading Cards (1975, below)

Some of my favourite group photographs:

Nicholas Nixon’s The Brown Sisters

Edward J. Kelty’s Circus photographs

Crowds at Weegee’s crime scene photographs and his Coney Island (c. 1939)

Cindy Shermans’s early Film stills

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Photographer Unidentified. 'Untitled (women in aprons pose among trees)' 1913 from the exhibition 'Among Others: Photography and the Group' at The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, May - August, 2019

Photographer Unidentified
Untitled (women in aprons pose among trees)
1913
Commercially processed gelatin silver print; postcard
The Morgan Library & Museum
Gift of Peter J. Cohen

Photographer Unidentified. 'Untitled (women in aprons pose among trees)' 1913 (detail)

Photographer Unidentified
Untitled (women in aprons pose among trees) (detail)
1913
Commercially processed gelatin silver print; postcard
The Morgan Library & Museum
Gift of Peter J. Cohen

Myers Cope Co. Atlantic City
Photo-multigraph of unidentified girl (Woman in trick photo-booth)
c. 1920s
Gelatin silver print with postcard back
The Morgan Library & Museum
Gift of Peter J. Cohen

Studio Retrato-Escultura Victor
Fotoescultura with eight subjects
c. 1940s
Carved, painted, and assembled wood with hand-coloured gelatin silver prints
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased as the gift of Richard and Ronay Menschel

Photographer Unidentified
Group at the Main Building, Moscow State University
after 1953
Gelatin silver print and mixed media
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased as the gift of Peter J. Cohen

Photographer Unidentified (American)
Untitled (seventeen women in swimsuits hold magazines up on a low stage on a lawn)
20th century (c. 1950s)
Commercially processed gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum
Gift of Peter J. Cohen

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
Trolley – New Orleans
1955
Gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum

Harry M. Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Collage, Chicago
1957
Gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum
Gift of Richard and Ronay Menschel
© The Estate of Harry Callahan; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Art Kane (American, 1925-1995)
Harlem
1958
In “The Golden Age of Jazz,” Esquire, January 1959
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased on funds given by Peter J. Cohen, Ronald R. Kass, and Elaine Goldman
Photograph by Art Kane for Esquire, a publication of the Hearst Communications, Inc.,
Art Kane Courtesy © The Art Kane Archive

Jean-Pierre Ducatez (French, b. 1941) 'Beatle Lips: George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr' 1965

Jean-Pierre Ducatez (French, b. 1941)
Beatle Lips: George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr
1965
Gelatin silver prints
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased as the gift of Allen Adler
© Jean-Pierre Ducatez

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'The dressing room, Fryeburg, Maine, USA, 1975' 1975

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
The dressing room, Fryeburg, Maine, USA, 1975 (Before the show)
1975
From the series Carnival Strippers
Gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

Amy Arbus (American, b. 1954)
The Clash, NYC
1981
Gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum
Gift of Amy Arbus
© Amy Arbus

Danny Lyon (American, b. 1942)
Haitian women praying in the market, HAITI, March 1986
1986
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased as the gift of Ronald R. Kass
© Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos

The Morgan Library & Museum presents a new exhibition about photography’s unique capacity to represent the bonds that unite people. From posed group portraits and candid street scenes to collages, constructions, and serial imagery, photographers have used many methods to place people in a shared frame of reference. Opening May 31, 2019, Among Others: Photography and the Group brings together more than sixty exceptional works spanning the 1860s to the present to explore the complexity of a type of image that is often taken for granted. Drawn primarily from the Morgan’s collection, the works in the exhibition include images by Amy Arbus, Eve Arnold, Robert Frank, Peter Hujar, and August Sander.

Among Others presents the seemingly endless possibilities of the group photograph, placing historically important portraits alongside records of significant cultural moments and experiments that helped reinvent the genre. In representations of the group, artist, subjects, and circumstances come together to create an image that might call to mind a loving family, a chance encounter among strangers, an embodiment of the democratic spirit, or a photographer’s ability to read and respond to a crowd. The photographs in the exhibition come in many formats: not just exhibition prints, snapshots, and posters, but also photo books, painted wooden sculpture, collages, baseball cards, and even a wastepaper basket featuring Richard M. Nixon. In their range and ingenuity, the works pose questions about family, diversity, democracy, representation, and the varieties of visual delight.

One section of the exhibition features candid scenes from public life, such as Robert Frank’s Trolley, New Orleans (1955), seen in a large-scale print the artist made around the time it graced the cover of his landmark book, The Americans (1959). Also on view are photographs of collective actions that came to define significant cultural moments, such as Eve Arnold’s 1960 photograph of a training school for Black sit-ins and Danny Lyon’s image of Haitian women praying in the month after the collapse of the corrupt regime of Jean-Claude Duvalier.

Photographers took a wide range of approaches to representing the group beyond the arranged sittings of families or civic organisations. Bob Adelman’s People Wall, World’s Fair, New York exploits the way IBM’s 1965 attraction cast a spotlight on the social and ethnic diversity of fair attendees. For a 1970 recruitment poster for the Gay Liberation Front, Peter Hujar asked the group’s members to run exuberantly toward him on the street, enacting their slogan, “Come Out!!” Camera artists have often embedded themselves in the action they portray, as Susan Meiselas did when mingling with carnival strippers, first to capture them behind the scenes and then to photograph their audience from a performer’s perspective.

When the subjects are beloved celebrities, the portrait seals a relationship of shared admiration between maker and viewer. In 1965, press photographer Jean-Pierre Ducatez made four images that zeroed in on the lips of each of the Beatles, creating likenesses that appealed directly to dedicated fans. In 1981, Amy Arbus happened to snap a photo of a photogenic group hanging out near Times Square, and only later learned they were members of the Clash and their entourage.

The exhibition features items of “pop photographica” that play radically with the conventions of camera representation. In these pieces, individual portraits are mixed and matched to suit the purposes of board games, collectibles such as cigarette cards, and even psychological tests.

“The Morgan’s photography collection has grown and evolved in many directions since its founding in 2012, always with a dual emphasis on the camera’s creative possibilities and its role in shaping modern sensibilities,” said Colin B. Bailey, Director. “We are excited to present this wide-ranging selection of works, most of which are recent acquisitions and have never been exhibited before at the Morgan.”

Joel Smith, the Morgan’s Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head, said, “The group is a subject we’re so accustomed to seeing in photographs, it’s easy to forget that the conventions around it had to be invented, and that they shape our picture of reality. This exhibition invites viewers to explore the many ways images have defined – since long before the selfie – how it looks to belong to a group and what it means to be represented.”

Press release from The Morgan Library & Museum [Online] Cited 21/07/2019

Powell & Co.
Anti-Slavery Constitutional Amendment Picture
1865
Albumen print
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund

Powell & Co. 'Anti-Slavery Constitutional Amendment Picture' 1865 (detail)

Powell & Co.
Anti-Slavery Constitutional Amendment Picture (detail)
1865
Albumen print
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund

Eugene Omar Goldbeck (American, 1892-1986)
Indoctrination Division, Air Training Command, Lackland Air Base, San Antonio, Texas, July 19, 1947
1947
Gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased on funds given by members of the Photography Collectors Committee

Eugene Omar Goldbeck (American, 1892-1986) 'Indoctrination Division, Air Training Command, Lackland Air Base, San Antonio, Texas, July 19, 1947' 1947 (detail)

Eugene Omar Goldbeck (American, 1892-1986)
Indoctrination Division, Air Training Command, Lackland Air Base, San Antonio, Texas, July 19, 1947 (detail)
1947
Gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased on funds given by members of the Photography Collectors Committee

Photographer Unidentified (American)
Untitled (human pyramid: fifty-six boys in white uniforms arranged in eight levels in a gymnasium)
20th century
Commercially processed gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum
Gift of Peter J. Cohen

Photographer Unidentified (American)
Untitled (human pyramid: fifty-six boys in white uniforms arranged in eight levels in a gymnasium) (detail)
20th century
Commercially processed gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum
Gift of Peter J. Cohen

Eve Arnold (American, 1912-2012)
A training school for Black sit-ins. They are harassed but taught not to hit back when harassed by Whites, Virginia, USA
1960
From the series Non-Violence
Gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased on the Photography Collectors Committee Fund
© Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Contact sheet: Gay Liberation Front poster image shoot
1969 or 1970
Gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection
Purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund
© Peter Hujar Archive, LLC
Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Contact sheet: Gay Liberation Front poster image shoot (detail)
1969 or 1970
Gelatin silver print
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection
Purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund
© Peter Hujar Archive, LLC
Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Mike Mandel (American, b. 1950)
Baseball-Photographer Trading Cards (front and verso)
1975
Photo-offset lithography on cards
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased as the gift of Jane P. Watkins
© Mike Mandel
Courtesy the artist and Robert Mann Gallery, New York

Mike Mandel (American, b. 1950)
Imogen Cunningham Baseball-Photographer Trading Card
1975
Photo-offset lithography on card
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased as the gift of Jane P. Watkins
© Mike Mandel
Courtesy the artist and Robert Mann Gallery, New York

Mike Mandel (American, b. 1950)
Duane Michals Baseball-Photographer Trading Card
1975
Photo-offset lithography on card
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased as the gift of Jane P. Watkins
© Mike Mandel
Courtesy the artist and Robert Mann Gallery, New York

The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY
Phone: (212) 685-0008

Opening hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday 10.30am – 5pm
Friday from 10.30am – 7pm

The Morgan Library & Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Nicholas Nixon: Family Album’ at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Exhibition dates: 28th July, 2010 – 1st May, 2011

Nicholas Nixon (American, born in 1947). 'Bebe, Cambridge' 1980

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
Bebe, Cambridge
1980
Gelatin silver contact print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Museum purchase with funds donated by the National Endowment for the Arts and Richard L. Menschel, Bela T. Kalman, Judge and Mrs. Matthew Brown, Mildred S. Lee, and Barbara M. Marshall
© Nicholas Nixon, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In the history of group photography Nixon’s ongoing series of family portraits The Brown Sisters (1975- ) is the best in the world. Beautifully structured and composed the photographs are nuanced and sensitive to the people portrayed and the passage of time. The subjects project and recede within the image frame, exposing vulnerability, intimacy and strength. Simply breathtaking!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Amelia Kantrovitz for her help and 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.

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
Chestnut Street, Louisville, Kentucky
1982
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the photographer
© Nicholas Nixon, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, born in 1947). 'Clementine and Bebe, Cambridge' 1985

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
Clementine and Bebe, Cambridge
1985
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Nicholas Nixon
© Nicholas Nixon, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
Cambridge
1986
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the photographer
© Nicholas Nixon, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
Clementine and Bebe, Cambridge
1986
Gelatin silver print
20.3 × 25.4cm
Gift of the photographer
© Nicholas Nixon, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
Clementine and Sam
1990
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the photographer
© Nicholas Nixon, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Themes such as the passage of time and the enduring nature of close family relationships are brought into focus in the exhibition Nicholas Nixon: Family Album at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). The show, on view from July 28, 2010, through May 1, 2011, in the MFA’s Herb Ritts Gallery, features more than 70 black and white portrait photographs by Nicholas Nixon, one of the most celebrated American photographers of this generation. Among them are pictures of Nixon’s wife, Beverly (Bebe) Brown Nixon, and their two children, Clementine and Sam. Nicholas Nixon also includes The Brown Sisters, the ongoing annual series of portraits of Bebe and her sisters taken each summer for the past 35 years. Nixon will take another photograph of the sisters this summer, which will be hung in the gallery during the course of the exhibition.

The promised gift to the MFA of The Brown Sisters series is the impetus for Nicholas Nixon. The group of photographs has been lent to the Museum for the exhibition from the collection of James Krebs, a Distinguished Benefactor of the MFA, and his late wife, Margie. Also included are works by Nixon purchased by the Museum, and a number that were given and lent to the MFA by the artist. Nicholas Nixon is presented with support from the Shelly and Michael Kassen Fund.

“Nicholas Nixon rose to prominence in the mid 1970s for his large-format black-and-white views of Boston and New York. Since then, he has turned almost exclusively to portraiture, and has produced many celebrated series of pictures – of the elderly, people with AIDS, and couples – but his portrayals of his family are particularly evocative and beloved. Nick has been a friend of the MFA for a long time and has generously given the Museum many of his photographs,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA.

Nicholas Nixon’s photographs of family are both personal in nature and have a universality with which observers can connect. These pictures, a number of which have never been publicly displayed, celebrate the bonds of close family relationships, especially as they grow over time. Included in the exhibition is the luminous image that Nixon took of his wife in the bathtub, Bebe, Cambridge (MFA, Boston, 1980). The beautiful glowing light on her face suggests her interior state, as well as the depth of their long relationship. There are also many photographs in the show that highlight the richness and warmth of daily life with children. In an image from 1985, a cropped view of Bebe pictures her gazing downward, as Clementine’s fist emerges from the bottom of the frame, evoking the power of a new life. A close-up of Clementine’s face made the following year, with her wide eyes gazing upward, captures the toddler’s impression of wonder. The latest photograph of Clementine in the exhibition dates to 2003 and depicts her as a young woman, embracing her mother. Images of Nixon’s son, Sam, are also included, showing him in different stages over the years and in portraits with his sister.

The most recognised images in the exhibition are those that Nixon has taken of the Brown sisters each summer since 1975. The four women – Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie – always appear in the same order in the portraits, from left to right. These compelling photographs reveal the evolving nature of the sisters’ relationship over time. The serial portraits begin with The Brown Sisters, 1975 (James and Margie Krebs Collection, 1975), which captures them as young women, ranging in age from 15 to 25. With each passing year, observers can note changes in appearance, stance, and demeanour. In several of the portraits, the presence of the photographer is suggested through the shadow of himself and his camera projected across the figures, which makes reference to his role in the family dynamic. The series unfolds in a grid display on the central wall of the Ritts Gallery.

“In his serial pictures of family, Nicholas Nixon explores a classic conundrum in photography: how to suggest the passage of time by means of an instrument that records the instantaneous image. His effort is related to that of several predecessors – Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Harry Callahan, to name the most important – who, like him, used their wives as subject matter, photographing them over a period of years. What Nixon has added to the discussion – beyond recording facets of appearance, personality, or emphasising formal concerns – is his emphasis on the meaning of family,” said Anne Havinga, the MFA’s Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs, who curated the show with Emily Voelker, the MFA’s Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Assistant Curator of Photographs.

Born in Detroit in 1947, Nixon graduated from the University of Michigan in 1969 with a bachelor’s degree in English, and from the University of New Mexico in 1974 with a Masters of Fine Arts degree. Later that year, he moved to Boston, where he teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Nixon is known for his documentary photography, especially city views and portraits rooted in the snapshot tradition. He works primarily in black and white, creating gelatin silver prints with a 8 x 10-inch view camera as did many of the great photographers who influenced him, including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Walker Evans. Working in large format and making contact prints enables him to create images of crisp detail and subtle tone. In recent years, Nixon has also begun to experiment with colour, although the photographs in the exhibition are all black-and-white, for which he is best known. He is the recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and two Guggenheim Fellowships, and, in addition to the MFA, his work is included in numerous museum collections, among them, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Press release from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website [Online] Cited 26/04/2011 no longer available online

Nicholas Nixon (American, born in 1947). 'The Brown Sisters' 1976

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1976
Gelatin silver print
Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, born in 1947). 'The Brown Sisters' 1978

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1978
Gelatin silver print
Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, born in 1947). 'The Brown Sisters' 1980

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1980
Gelatin silver print
Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, born in 1947). 'The Brown Sisters' 1996

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1996
Gelatin silver print
Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nicholas Nixon (American, born in 1947). 'The Brown Sisters' 1999

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1999
Gelatin silver print
Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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465 Huntington Avenue
Avenue of the Arts
Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5523
617-267-9300

Opening hours:
Thursday and Friday 10am – 10pm
Saturday – Monday 10am – 5pm
Closed Tuesday and Wednesday

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website

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