FEATURED ARTISTS Manuel Alvarez Bravo Mexican, 1902–2002 As a student of the habits and customs of the Mexican people, Alvarez Bravo sought out the visual evidence of indigenous cultural traditions. His photographs are marked by divergence and discontinuity, techniques he learned from the theories of the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and the French poet André Breton, who in 1938 organized an exhibition of Surrealists in Mexico City. Alvarez Bravo elevated anthropology to the level of art by framing the disparity between urban and rural realities into a poetic vision of modern Mexico, its cultural differences and social contradictions. Diane Arbus American, 1923–1971 In 1957, after a decade of working almost exclusively in the fashion world—where her subjects were models selected chiefly for their beauty and graceful behavior—Arbus embarked on an independent career as a documentary photographer. Free to explore the world around her, she created a body of work inspired by commonplace family snapshots. Some of her most compelling images focus on the head of a person she met on the street whose awkward expression and unusual adornment become her subject. Eugène Atget French, 1857–1927 Atget was concerned with traditional aspects of Parisian life that were becoming obsolete and with buildings of historical significance. Informed by his knowledge of French political and cultural history, Atget examined the textures of overlooked neighborhoods. Shunning the new handheld cameras, Atget used old-style equipment designed to make negatives on 6-by-8-inch sheets of glass. He mounted his camera on a tripod at eye level, parallel to the horizon. Atget’s body of work is so consistent and full of visual delight that it established the model for how a documentary viewpoint in the 20th century can become art. Anna Atkins English, 1799–1871 Atkins was attracted to the study of botany and natural history at an early age. She was introduced to the art of photography by her father, George Children, a member of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Beginning in 1842, Atkins employed the cyanotype process to create an inventory of plant specimens. She was the first person to use light-sensitive materials to catalogue objects and gather that information into books. Atkins was also the first woman to create an extensive body of photographs. -more- Page 2 Hippolyte Bayard French, 1801–1887 Bayard was one of the first photographers to explore the medium to express self-understanding, resulting in a number of engaging self-portraits. He was among the first photographers to observe and record the commonplace details of everyday life. Later photographers, such as Eugène Atget, who is also represented in this exhibition, shared Bayard’s fascination with the topography and iconography of the city of Paris. Henry P. Bosse American, 1844–1903 Bosse’s chief subject was the interaction between humans and nature, specifically in regard to the Mississippi River. Through photographs, Bosse illuminated the physical beauty of the great river and its surrounding landscape. He showed human attempts to control nature and how nature resists being controlled. Bosse was one of the first to create photographs that could be used as tools for natural resource planning. He took up the challenge of giving visual identity to the Mississippi River, a landscape with significant man-made alterations extending along 850 miles and across six states. Brassaï (Gyula Halász) French, born Hungary, 1899–1984 In photography, the name Brassaï is synonymous with Paris after dark. He established a pattern of “going to bed at sunrise, getting up at sunset,” according to his friend, the writer Henry Miller, who made Brassaï a character in his novel Tropic of Cancer. Photography allowed Brassaï to describe and interpret contemporary life with a unique combination of excitement and empathy. His role was that of perceptive witness to cultural life and the forces that shape it. Julia Margaret Cameron British, born India, 1815–1879 Cameron, who was the mother of five children and the guardian of several others she adopted, took up photography at the age of 48. She was the first photographer to make the subjects of women and children central to her art. Her unconventional approach to process and materials inspired later photographers, who sought to emulate the painterly effects in her work. Despite their beauty and daring experimental quality, Cameron’s photographs were not actively collected outside her circle of family and friends until almost a century after her death. Henri Cartier-Bresson French, born 1908 Cartier-Bresson is the only living photographer represented in this exhibition. Self-taught in photography, he began making pictures in accordance with his fervent belief that firsthand experience is essential for knowledge about life. His passion for new experiences led him to travel widely. Cartier- Bresson coined the phrase “the decisive moment” to describe his journalistic approach to photography, which depended on the speed and flexibility of the miniature Leica 35mm camera. His goal was to capture a single image—one instant in time—that can stand for the entirety of a place or situation. -more- Page 3 Thomas Eakins American, 1844–1916 Eakins trained to be a painter at the École des Beaux-Arts (school of fine arts) in Paris, where drawing was emphasized as the basis for art. Later he learned to use a camera and began to employ photographs as sketches for paintings. In 1879, he was named professor of drawing and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and he became the first professor of art at a public teaching institution to make photography part of an artist's education. Walker Evans American, 1903–1975 In the summer of 1936, Fortune magazine commissioned Evans and the writer James Agee (American, 1909–1955) to document the living conditions of Depression-era sharecroppers in Hale County, Alabama. Their collaboration resulted in a body of work that was noted for its consistently objective viewpoint. Although Fortune rejected the essay, the work was published as a book in 1941, under the title Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Evans collaborated with Agee again in 1966, with the publication of his subway photographs in the book Many Are Called. Roger Fenton English, 1819–1869 Fenton was unique among the pioneers of photography in the extent to which he pursued a wide range of photographic genres: portraiture, architecture, landscape, and still life. The majority of his photographs were made outdoors, including several hundred portraits and landscape photographs behind the scenes of the Crimean War (1853–1856). However, his most original contribution to photography was a series of photographs made indoors under difficult lighting conditions. Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey French, 1804–1892 Girault de Prangey learned the daguerreotype process in 1841, perhaps from its inventor Louis- Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. He was one of the first graduates of Paris' École des Beaux-Arts (school of fine arts) to employ photography as a creative tool. From 1842–1843, he traveled through Greece, Asia Minor, and North Africa to make daguerreotypes of ancient monuments. Many of his images are the earliest surviving photographs of sites such as the Acropolis and the cities of Cairo and Jerusalem. Girault de Prangey's body of work is the first to demonstrate a mastery of formal choices—light and shadow, viewpoint, and subject matter. David Octavius Hill Scottish, 1802–1870 Robert Adamson Scottish, 1821–1848 Hill and Adamson were the first photographers to systematically use the camera as a tool for social documentation. Their studies of the fishing community of Newhaven, near Edinburgh, anticipated the use of photography to depict and catalogue types of people for ethnographic, cultural, and social purposes. -more- Page 4 Lewis Hine American, 1874–1940 Hine was employed for a decade as a staff photographer, field researcher, and writer by the National Child Labor Committee. He used pictures to show that employers exploited children. As a teacher at the Ethical Culture School in New York, he instilled the principles of social documentary photography in subsequent generations of American photographers, such as Paul Strand. A social reformer above all, Hine nevertheless considered himself an artist. Gertrude Käsebier American, 1852–1934 Käsebier was the first American woman photographer to have earned an international reputation by 1900. Like Julia Margaret Cameron before her, Käsebier made women and children the focus of her attention. She was the first woman to be invited to join the exclusive Photo-Secession circle of photographers, which was founded by Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen in 1902 and espoused the fine art qualities of the medium. Preferring unusual materials, such as gum bichromate on Japanese tissue or watercolor paper, Käsebier created work that took on painterly effects, a style referred to as Pictorialist. André Kertész American, born Hungary, 1894–1985 Kertész began as a self-taught amateur, pursuing photography when he was not clerking at the Budapest stock exchange. In 1925, he moved to Paris and decided to pursue photography full time. There, he associated with painters, poets, designers, and filmmakers. Kertész gave a psychological twist to many of his photographs and called himself a “naturalist Surrealist.” Driven from Paris by the advancing Nazi Army, he moved to New York in 1936 and became a master of using photographs to tell stories without words. Dorothea Lange American, 1895–1965 Born in New Jersey and educated in New York City, Lange became interested in photography as a teenager. An assistant in the New York studio of fashion photographer Arnold Genthe, she learned the trade secrets of upscale portrait photography before establishing her own studio in San Francisco in 1918. Her genius, however, was not in the repetition of formulas but in the harnessing of an instinct for unexpected pictures.