MoMA first opened its doors in 1929 under the directorship of Alfred Barr. From the beginning, Barr imagined that photography would be integral to the museum’s collections. In 1937, Curator and Scholar Beaumont Newhall mounted Photography 1839-1937, the first major photo retrospective in the United States. Newhall championed the art and fine craft of photography. By 1940 Newhall became MoMA’s first photography curator. In 1947, Edward Steichen replaced Newhall; Steichen promoted a populist view of photography. In 1962, Steichen hand picked John Szarkowski to proceed him as MoMA’s photography director. Szarkoski promoted a new kind of fine art photography, which he coined "The New Document". In 1967, Szarkowski mounted "New Documents", a show that featured works by Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Gary Winogrand.
Family of Man
The "Family of Man," an exhibition curated by Edward Steichen, opened at the MoMA in 1955. The exhibition incorporated works by over 200 photographers. The installation of the photographs mimicked a picture magazine page lay-out. Photographs were mounted ceiling to floor and clustered by topic (Love, Marriage, Birth, Childhood...) The exhibition was "conceived, in Steichen's words, `as a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world'".
"Although the 273 photographers represented included distinguished foreigners... most were American,s and/or were members of American agencies or, especially, contributors to Life Magazine. Some critics, particularly in Europe, viewed the exhibition as Cold War propaganda and a projection of American values in a thinly universalistic disguise... (Oxford Companion to the Photograph)
The exhibition was a significant event in cultural history of the 1950s, and in American cultural diplomacy. It also marked a further stage in the museumization of photography, though paradoxically just as television was replacing still photography as the world's most pervasive visual meduim." (Oxford Companion to the Photograph)
Exhibition Views, Family of Man, MoMA, 1955
John Szarkowski &New Documents
John Szarkowski, the predecessor to Edward Steichen, was born in 1925 in Wisconsin. At twenty-two he was the staff photographer for the Walker Art Center. By 1962 , when he became the Director of Photography at the MoMA, he had already published several books on photography and his still images were included in many major collections. Szarkowski's exhibition program at the MoMA promoted a Modernist Cannon of photography and highlighted young talent, such as Arbus, Friedlander, and Winogrand, whose work combined real-life documentation with modernist sensibilities. Szarkowski's influence upon photography was tremendous. In his book "The Photographer's Eye," he called for a new form of photography that drew meaning from five major photographic characteristics: The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time, and Vantage Point.
Please click the link below to read Szarkowski's introduction to the Photographer's Eye:
Photographer's Eye
Child with a Toy Hand Grenade, Diane Arbus, 1962
Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, 1969
New Mexico, Gary Winogrand, 1957
"New Documents exhibition was conceived by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967. It featured the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Gary Winogrand. Szarkowski said of the photographers: `their aim has been not to transform life, but to understand'. The artists overall objective of candidly documenting people going about their everyday lives, however, may have been overwhelmed at the time by viewers perception of the images-- particularly those of Arbus-- as essentially bizarre". (Oxford Companion to the Photograph). Still Arbus, Friedlander, and Winnogrand all made tremendous images that spoke about the American condition and personality.
No comments:
Post a Comment