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Landmark exhibit traces photography’s evolution in American culture
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BY: FRAN HELLER Contributing Writer
From daguerreotype to digital image, the medium of photography has captured the artist’s imagination and eye.
A landmark exhibition, “Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from The Cleveland Museum of Art” is at The Cleveland Museum of Art through Sept. 16. It includes 116 photographs by 60 major photographers, covering the period from 1850 to 1960.
This thoroughly satisfying show from the museum’s own collection, provides in curator of photography Tom Hinson’s words, “a visual record of America: who we were and whom we have become.” It also tracks how the genre’s technical developments impacted creative expression.
Each black-and-white photograph is a masterpiece of the genre by some of the greatest photographers of the age. A number of these important photographers are Jewish, including Aaron Siskind, Alfred Stieglitz, Weegee (born Arthur Felig), Helen Levitt, Andreas Feininger and Ben Shahn.
The exhibit begins with the daguerreotype and the earliest examples of portraiture, the first practical photographic process developed by Frenchman Louis-Jacques-Maude Daguerre in 1839.
A common subject of early portraiture was the postmortem portrait. In “Dead Child on a Sofa” (c.1855), a small child lies in repose, dressed in white with a bouquet of flowers on her chest.
Edward Steichen’s 1902 photograph, “Rodin-The Thinker” (“Rodin-Le Penseur”) captures the famed French sculptor in his Paris studio. Rodin, seen in silhouette, is facing a bronze of “The Thinker” with the newly carved white marble “Monument to Victor Hugo” in the background. The contrast between dark and light and the towering image of the Hugo sculpture suggests a god-like figure hovering over the artist.
The section titled “Human Subjects” includes Steichen’s imposing photograph of world-renowned actor Paul Robeson majestically garbed for the title role of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones.”
In a Paris fashion spread created for Harper’s Bazaar, famed fashion- and portrait-photographer Richard Avedon fabricated an encounter between a stylishly dressed model and a Parisian bus conductor to whom she offers her gloved hand. More than a fashion statement, notes the accompanying text, the portrait captures the essence of French culture in all its elegance and grace.
Between 1917 and 1937, Alfred Stieglitz took hundreds of photographs of his wife, artist Georgia O’ Keeffe. For Stieglitz, the essence of O’Keeffe was in her hands, the instruments of her creativity.
In “Georgia O’Keeffe n Hand and Wheel,” the artist’s hand is sensually draped over the cover of her car’s spare tire. In 1933, O’Keeffe was recovering from a nervous breakdown. She was overjoyed to be reunited with her Ford V8 convertible, a potent symbol of her personal freedom.
This romantic image is paired with a portrait of a despondent O’Keeffe, reflected in her lifeless eyes and brooding visage.
A democratic, inexpensive and popular medium, photography captured high society and commoner alike.
One of my all-time favorites is “Coney Island Bather” by Lisette Model. In this photograph, a large, buxom woman in a bathing suit stands in front of the ocean surf. With her hands on her knees and beaming face looking away from the camera, she appears as the antithesis of the beauty queen in American culture.
The exhibit also provides a window into the harsher elements of American history.
Alfred Rothstein’s “Dust Storm n Cimarron County” captures the devastation of the land and the economic struggles of Americans in the 1930s. In the photo, only the tops of the fence posts poke through the sand. As the father and his two sons struggle to get to their house, the younger boy covers his eyes from the dust.
Dorothea Lange’s depiction of grim-faced men in “San Francisco Waterfront n the General Strike” reflects the labor unrest and effects of unemployment in the Depression.
Ben Shahn learned photography from Walker Evans, with whom he shared a studio in New York in 1929. In the years 1935-38, both Evans and Shahn worked for the Farm Security Administration, documenting life in rural America during the Depression, as in Shahn’s 1938 “Street Scene in Columbus, Ohio.” Using a hand-held Leica camera, Shahn was able to capture his subjects unaware. The hand-held camera introduced the element of spontaneity into the art form.
Irony abounds in the image of a storefront window stocked with goods beckoning unseen onlookers who could not afford them in Evans’s “Window Display, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.”
African-American photographer James VanDerZee captures the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance in his elegant portraits of wealthy Harlem denizens as in “The Tall and Short of It” and “Portrait of a Young Woman.” Street photographer Helen Levitt pro-jects a different look of Harlem through her candid images of tenement children and urban street life. In her “1942 n New York,” three young boys in tattered clothing play with toy handguns on a graffiti-strewn urban stoop.
Weegee, noted for his violent street scenes, switches focus and mood in “Scrub Woman in 60 Wall Street Tower,” a touching glimpse of the urban life of a woman mopping the floor in the foyer of a large office building. The subject is lit in the corner, almost entirely enveloped in darkness.
Famed LIFE magazine photographer Gordon Parks (who died in 2006), was best known for his images dealing with the social fabric of African- Americans in the 20th century.
In an untitled photograph from Parks’s “Race of Poverty” series, a young boy lies in bed doing homework, his small frame draped in a heavy sweater in a cold, cheerless tenement. In “A Young Gang Leader, Harlem,” a black male aimlessly thumbs a newspaper.
With the development of the railroad and western expansion, many photographers were hired by the railroads or the government to accompany surveying expeditions. The railroads were big promoters of photographers whose pictures of pristine, unspoiled nature encouraged travelers and settlers to go west.
Ansel Adams, one of the world’s most renowned landscape photographers, was an avid spokesperson for both photography and nature preservation. His best-known work is “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico,” created in 1941. In the photograph, the setting sun illuminates a row of cemetery markers against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains, cotton candy clouds and inky sky. This magnificent image was spontaneously captured after an uneventful day of shooting.
Adams, who was trained as a pianist, thought of his negatives as musical scores and the darkroom as a performance in which the drama and emotional quality of the photograph remained uppermost. An exhibit of Ansel Adams’s photography is on view at The Cleveland Institute of Art’s Reinberger Galleries through Aug. 19.
From landscape to urbanscape, “The City” had a special allure for lens artists.
Margaret Bourke-White established her reputation during the late 1920s, when she was hired by the Van Sweringen brothers to photograph Cleveland’s most distinctive landmark, Terminal Tower. Completed in 1927, it was, at the time, the second tallest building in America. Bourke-White documented the tower from numerous vantage points at different times of day and under different atmospheric conditions. A murky shot of “Terminal Tower” symbolizes Cleveland’s industrial power at its zenith, like some ghostly image of a storied past.
The last section, “Modern Trends,” reflects the movement toward abstraction, in which an isolated detail, such as a piece of machinery, a section of barn siding, tall grasses or peeling paint is transformed into a startling aesthetic composition.
The undulating forms of giant sand hills in Edward Weston’s “Dunes, Oceano,” are cast in dark shadows with only their tops bathed in light, suggesting human shapes. To capture these sensual images, Weston had to lug 50 pounds of equipment over the sand, and some of these dunes would reach 100 feet at their peak.
Aaron Siskind’s “Chicago 22” is a close-up of peeling paint on a weathered wall, in which the abstract forms resemble a Rorschach test.
While this exhibit stops short of the explosion in digital photography, it points to the infinite possibilities of the ever-evolving genre.
“Icons of American Photography” is at The Cleveland Museum of Art through Sept. 16. 216-421-7340, 888-CMA-0033 or www.ClevelandArt.org.
“Ansel Adams A Legacy” is at The Cleveland Institute of Art through Aug. 19. 216-421-7407 or www.cia.edu.
A landmark exhibition, “Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from The Cleveland Museum of Art” is at The Cleveland Museum of Art through Sept. 16. It includes 116 photographs by 60 major photographers, covering the period from 1850 to 1960.
This thoroughly satisfying show from the museum’s own collection, provides in curator of photography Tom Hinson’s words, “a visual record of America: who we were and whom we have become.” It also tracks how the genre’s technical developments impacted creative expression.
Each black-and-white photograph is a masterpiece of the genre by some of the greatest photographers of the age. A number of these important photographers are Jewish, including Aaron Siskind, Alfred Stieglitz, Weegee (born Arthur Felig), Helen Levitt, Andreas Feininger and Ben Shahn.
The exhibit begins with the daguerreotype and the earliest examples of portraiture, the first practical photographic process developed by Frenchman Louis-Jacques-Maude Daguerre in 1839.
A common subject of early portraiture was the postmortem portrait. In “Dead Child on a Sofa” (c.1855), a small child lies in repose, dressed in white with a bouquet of flowers on her chest.
Edward Steichen’s 1902 photograph, “Rodin-The Thinker” (“Rodin-Le Penseur”) captures the famed French sculptor in his Paris studio. Rodin, seen in silhouette, is facing a bronze of “The Thinker” with the newly carved white marble “Monument to Victor Hugo” in the background. The contrast between dark and light and the towering image of the Hugo sculpture suggests a god-like figure hovering over the artist.
The section titled “Human Subjects” includes Steichen’s imposing photograph of world-renowned actor Paul Robeson majestically garbed for the title role of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones.”
In a Paris fashion spread created for Harper’s Bazaar, famed fashion- and portrait-photographer Richard Avedon fabricated an encounter between a stylishly dressed model and a Parisian bus conductor to whom she offers her gloved hand. More than a fashion statement, notes the accompanying text, the portrait captures the essence of French culture in all its elegance and grace.
Between 1917 and 1937, Alfred Stieglitz took hundreds of photographs of his wife, artist Georgia O’ Keeffe. For Stieglitz, the essence of O’Keeffe was in her hands, the instruments of her creativity.
In “Georgia O’Keeffe n Hand and Wheel,” the artist’s hand is sensually draped over the cover of her car’s spare tire. In 1933, O’Keeffe was recovering from a nervous breakdown. She was overjoyed to be reunited with her Ford V8 convertible, a potent symbol of her personal freedom.
This romantic image is paired with a portrait of a despondent O’Keeffe, reflected in her lifeless eyes and brooding visage.
A democratic, inexpensive and popular medium, photography captured high society and commoner alike.
One of my all-time favorites is “Coney Island Bather” by Lisette Model. In this photograph, a large, buxom woman in a bathing suit stands in front of the ocean surf. With her hands on her knees and beaming face looking away from the camera, she appears as the antithesis of the beauty queen in American culture.
The exhibit also provides a window into the harsher elements of American history.
Alfred Rothstein’s “Dust Storm n Cimarron County” captures the devastation of the land and the economic struggles of Americans in the 1930s. In the photo, only the tops of the fence posts poke through the sand. As the father and his two sons struggle to get to their house, the younger boy covers his eyes from the dust.
Dorothea Lange’s depiction of grim-faced men in “San Francisco Waterfront n the General Strike” reflects the labor unrest and effects of unemployment in the Depression.
Ben Shahn learned photography from Walker Evans, with whom he shared a studio in New York in 1929. In the years 1935-38, both Evans and Shahn worked for the Farm Security Administration, documenting life in rural America during the Depression, as in Shahn’s 1938 “Street Scene in Columbus, Ohio.” Using a hand-held Leica camera, Shahn was able to capture his subjects unaware. The hand-held camera introduced the element of spontaneity into the art form.
Irony abounds in the image of a storefront window stocked with goods beckoning unseen onlookers who could not afford them in Evans’s “Window Display, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.”
African-American photographer James VanDerZee captures the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance in his elegant portraits of wealthy Harlem denizens as in “The Tall and Short of It” and “Portrait of a Young Woman.” Street photographer Helen Levitt pro-jects a different look of Harlem through her candid images of tenement children and urban street life. In her “1942 n New York,” three young boys in tattered clothing play with toy handguns on a graffiti-strewn urban stoop.
Weegee, noted for his violent street scenes, switches focus and mood in “Scrub Woman in 60 Wall Street Tower,” a touching glimpse of the urban life of a woman mopping the floor in the foyer of a large office building. The subject is lit in the corner, almost entirely enveloped in darkness.
Famed LIFE magazine photographer Gordon Parks (who died in 2006), was best known for his images dealing with the social fabric of African- Americans in the 20th century.
In an untitled photograph from Parks’s “Race of Poverty” series, a young boy lies in bed doing homework, his small frame draped in a heavy sweater in a cold, cheerless tenement. In “A Young Gang Leader, Harlem,” a black male aimlessly thumbs a newspaper.
With the development of the railroad and western expansion, many photographers were hired by the railroads or the government to accompany surveying expeditions. The railroads were big promoters of photographers whose pictures of pristine, unspoiled nature encouraged travelers and settlers to go west.
Ansel Adams, one of the world’s most renowned landscape photographers, was an avid spokesperson for both photography and nature preservation. His best-known work is “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico,” created in 1941. In the photograph, the setting sun illuminates a row of cemetery markers against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains, cotton candy clouds and inky sky. This magnificent image was spontaneously captured after an uneventful day of shooting.
Adams, who was trained as a pianist, thought of his negatives as musical scores and the darkroom as a performance in which the drama and emotional quality of the photograph remained uppermost. An exhibit of Ansel Adams’s photography is on view at The Cleveland Institute of Art’s Reinberger Galleries through Aug. 19.
From landscape to urbanscape, “The City” had a special allure for lens artists.
Margaret Bourke-White established her reputation during the late 1920s, when she was hired by the Van Sweringen brothers to photograph Cleveland’s most distinctive landmark, Terminal Tower. Completed in 1927, it was, at the time, the second tallest building in America. Bourke-White documented the tower from numerous vantage points at different times of day and under different atmospheric conditions. A murky shot of “Terminal Tower” symbolizes Cleveland’s industrial power at its zenith, like some ghostly image of a storied past.
The last section, “Modern Trends,” reflects the movement toward abstraction, in which an isolated detail, such as a piece of machinery, a section of barn siding, tall grasses or peeling paint is transformed into a startling aesthetic composition.
The undulating forms of giant sand hills in Edward Weston’s “Dunes, Oceano,” are cast in dark shadows with only their tops bathed in light, suggesting human shapes. To capture these sensual images, Weston had to lug 50 pounds of equipment over the sand, and some of these dunes would reach 100 feet at their peak.
Aaron Siskind’s “Chicago 22” is a close-up of peeling paint on a weathered wall, in which the abstract forms resemble a Rorschach test.
While this exhibit stops short of the explosion in digital photography, it points to the infinite possibilities of the ever-evolving genre.
“Icons of American Photography” is at The Cleveland Museum of Art through Sept. 16. 216-421-7340, 888-CMA-0033 or www.ClevelandArt.org.
“Ansel Adams A Legacy” is at The Cleveland Institute of Art through Aug. 19. 216-421-7407 or www.cia.edu.
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