Jack Shear started collecting photographs at age 16, in 1969. That might explain the astounding breadth and depth of the collection of photographs, spanning the entire history of photography, which he recently gave to the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College.
Shear, a photographer and curator himself, has a history with the Tang, having co-curated with Ian Berry a two-part exhibition called "Twice Drawn" in 2006. The pair have teamed up again to curate "Borrowed Light: Selections from the Jack Shear Collection," which is on view at the museum until Aug. 14.
The show is organized in two parts, with a chronological installation of photos, including a case filled with daguerreotypes dating back to 1840, just a year after the medium first became commercially available. The second part is installed in a back room and hung salon-style, blending an array of styles, eras and subject matter. One wall in this room will change in May, when students will be allowed to rearrange it, using the current mix of images plus a few hundred more from the collection.
In the first section, not everything is chronological — the exhibit begins with a sample of portraiture, ranging from Berenice Abbott's 1927 "Portrait of Eugene Atget" to Robert Mapplethorpe's 1987 "Portrait of Jack Shear" and Richard Avedon's group portrait of Andy Warhol and members of The Factory from 1969. From there, the exhibit jumps back in history, though among the 170-year-old daguerreotypes, a single contemporary image sits. Buffalo-based photographer Rob McElroy's "Ordered Rocks" (2006) stands out as the only still-life in the case.
Among the older works around the walls are some of the most notable images of early photography. Roger Fenton's "Valley of the Shadow of Death" (1855) is one of the earliest war photographs and also one of the most discussed. The image of a Crimean road strewn with cannonballs appears to have been staged and was the topic of, among other things, a three-part article by filmmaker Errol Morris, in The New York Times. The practice was not unknown among early war photographers and certainly doesn't detract from the impact the image had on photography; it simply reminds us that the common association of photography with truth is a naive one.
Even more influential to photography as an artform is the iconic image by Alfred Stieglitz, "The Steerage," from 1907. The image is considered an early turning point for photography, as artists began to realize that the nascent medium did not have to be content with mimicking painting. With "The Steerage," Stieglitz combined photography's ability to capture a moment — such as the moment when this first-class passenger caught a glimpse of life in the lower class — with the compositional elements that jumped out at him, such as the bright, white gangway bridge that diagonally cuts the image in two.
There are many more recognizable images here: Kertész's 1926 "Satiric Dancer," with its surrealist humor, or Harry Callahan's "Eleanor" (1949). The exhibit mixes these kinds of groundbreaking images with images that seem more personal to Shear himself, indicating his particular taste as a collector.
In the salon-style room, 112 images are hung high and low on four walls. A large abstract photo like Aaron's Siskind's "Chicago 9" (1948) hangs near Elliott Erwitt's wry documentary photo from 1963 of women waiting at a fair for people from whom they've been separated under a sign that reads "Lost Persons Area."
On one wall are two very different examples of the work of Duane Michals, who made a name for himself with staged narrative images, some shown in sequence, often with handwritten texts directly on the margins of the prints. The 83-year-old Michals will be the 2016 Malloy Visiting Artist next week. He has a third image included in the exhibit — an earlier work altogether different from the others.
That range of styles and periods is played out throughout the exhibit. Shear has amassed a collection that exemplifies the radical history of a medium that continues to change how we see. It's a gift not just to the Tang but to us all.
Resource: http://www.timesunion.com
No comments:
Post a Comment