Photography Is Art – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition dates: 18th April – 8th August 2021

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
Entrance to Black Cañon, Colorado River, from Above
1871
Albumen silver print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

A quick posting as I am not feeling that well.

This exhibition drags up that perennial favourite, is photography art? by addressing it in the affirmative ‘Photography Is Art’.

While historically the statement has had to be fought for, even having to make that statement today in the title of exhibition implies – through its very existence – that there still exists an opposite, that photography is not art. Surely a more apposite title could have been found, especially as over half the media images are from a period when photography was collected by major galleries and museums around the world.

Highlights for me are the O’Sullivan, Stieglitz, Clarence H. White and the Gordon Parks.

Let the photographs speak for themselves (now there’s a good title: ‘Speaking for themselves’).
They need no justification.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Has photography always been considered art? Though widely accepted today as a medium in its own right, art museums have not always embraced photography. In fact, it wasn’t until the late 1970s and early 1980s that many museums began actively collecting and displaying photographs. Photography Is Art tells the story of American photographers’ efforts, from the late 19th century on, to explore and proclaim photography’s artfulness. Drawn from the Carter’s expansive and renowned photography collection, this exhibition reveals how artists shaped their medium’s artistic language.

Text from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art website

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
A Wet Day on the Boulevard, Paris
1894
Photogravure
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Gift of Doris Bry

Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925)
Nude
c. 1900
Platinum print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art; Fort Worth, Texas
Bequest of the Artist

Carlotta Corpron (American, 1901-1988)
A Walk in Fair Park, Dallas
c. 1943
Gelatin silver print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Gift of the artist
© 1988 Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Carlotta Corpron was born in Blue Earth, Minnesota, but spent fifteen years of her youth in India. She returned to the United States in 1920 to earn degrees in art education at Michigan State Normal College and Columbia University, and was first introduced to photography in 1933. Her interest grew out of her desire to create close-up images of natural forms for use in art and design courses, and her vision was influenced by László Moholy-Nagy, and further shaped by her friendship with Gyorgy Kepes, who included her in his book The Language of Vision (1944). Of particular note are Corpron’s early light drawings, made by tracking moving light at amusement parks – radiant images of wild edges and rhythmic lines – and her “space compositions,” which employed eggs and shells, although their real subject is the constructed space in which they exist. This space, achieved by the use of light-reflecting surfaces, often seems to reproduce the perceptual distortions of underwater realms. Corpron also made “fluid light designs” examining reflections on plastic materials; “light follows form” studies of sculpture; abstractions of light flowing through glass; and solarisations of flowers and portraits. She retired from teaching in 1968 but continued printing her earlier work. Corpron’s photographs were shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, and were included in the 1979 ICP exhibition Recollections: Ten Women in Photography.

Corpron’s experiments with light are among the most intriguing abstract photographic works from her day, sharing as they do the concerns of her predecessors Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, and Alvin Langdon Coburn. Her work is significant for its inventive and resolutely independent exploration of the aesthetic possibilities of light and space. Wrought from simple materials and the free play of imagination, Corpron’s light abstractions are increasingly admired.
Cynthia Fredette

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. 212 on the International Centre of Photography website [Online] Cited 18/04/2021.

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
Leonard “Red” Jackson (standing, right) supervises painting of bicycles belonging to members of his Harlem gang. In foreground is “Brother” Price, Red’s cousin and assistant gang leader 1948
Oct. 8, 1948
Gelatin silver print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Barbara Crane (American, b. 1928)
NS-015-1969
1969
Gelatin silver print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Gift of Elizabeth, Jennifer, and Bruce Crane

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Clyde Corley, Rancher, Belgrade, Montana, 8/26/79
1979
Gelatin silver print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Ellen Carey (American, b. 1952)
Self-portrait
1984
Dye diffusion transfer print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
© 1984 Ellen Carey

Justine Kurland (American, b. 1969)
The Wall
2000
Inkjet print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
© Justine Kurland / Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York

Sharon Core (American, b. 1965)
Peaches and Blackberries
2008
Dye coupler print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Purchase with funds provided by Nenetta C. Tatum and Stephen L. Tatum