Three Valley institutions show works that question reality in 'New Visions: Black and White Photography in Contemporary Art'
by Steve Siegel, Special to The Morning Call
Photography's battle for legitimacy, waged first as chemical warfare in silver halide and gelatin, then onto the digital front with image-editing software launching battalions of pixels, is still being waged.
Is a photograph merely a crisp record of reality at an instant in time, or is it a blurred vision of that reality, distorted by lens and mind? Whose vision is it, and what exactly is reality?
The wonderful thing about the triple exhibit of black and white photography opening this week at the Allentown Art Museum, Lehigh University and Lafayette College is that it leaves the answers to the viewer.
Questioning reality is, after all, what ''New Visions: Black and White Photography in Contemporary Art'' is all about.
Is James Caserbere's ''Kitchen Table'' gelatin silver print really a still-life of a breakfast nook replete with muffins, a pie pan and chair, or is the entire set fabricated from cardboard? Can Richard Avedon's photograph of Andy Warhol's headless torso really be considered a portrait of the artist?
The exhibition, a first-time collaboration of the three Valley institutions, includes more than 100 works, with many by the most important names in contemporary photography -- Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Lee Friedlander and even Warhol himself. Works span from the 1960s into the present day, and include both traditional and digital images.
The photographs are from the collection of Arthur and Anne Goldstein of Bergen County, N.J., who have collected art since the 1970s and began focusing on photography 15 years ago. The works were first mounted in a 1987 show called ''The New Reality'' by the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University.
''We realized at the time we were amassing artists for the collection that were not household names, but were artists of historical importance whose work was affordable at the time,'' Arthur Goldstein says. ''We focused on images that were challenging, sometimes difficult, and that would stay with you long after the art was no longer in front of you.''
Many of the works in the collection indeed have impact -- some, like Lesley Dill's ''He Felt,'' of oil, thread and wax on a photograph, hit you like a punch in the face.
Others, like conceptual artist Sophie Calle's graffiti-riddled prints, are more than static images -- they are jarring examples of performance art.
Outgoing Allentown Art Museum Executive Director Gregory Perry, who served as the Zimmerli's director from 2002 to 2008, suggested the show as a companion to the upcoming African-American art exhibit ''A Force for Change.''
''The problem was, it was too big a collection for us to show alone,'' says Allentown Art Museum Chief Curator Jacqueline Atkins. ''It's such a great look at contemporary photography from the last quarter of the 20th century into the 21st that we didn't want to just show a small portion, we wanted to show the entire range of the collection.''
It was Bob Mattison, the show's curator-at-large, and professor of art history at Lafayette College, who came up with the idea of spreading the show among the three institutions. Michiko Okaya, director of the Lafayette art galleries and arts collection curator at Lafayette College, was delighted to mount part of the exhibit at Lafayette. Ricardo Viera, director/curator of the Lehigh University Art Galleries, had long nurtured a passion for contemporary photography -- in fact, many of these artists are represented in Lehigh's permanent collection.
Mattison, Okaya and Viera divided the show into sections, with each institution exploring a major theme of the collection. ''Imagination'' is the theme of the Allentown Art Museum's show, and is the largest, with nearly 50 works. Lehigh University is exploring the idea of ''Identity,'' and Lafayette College is taking on the concept of ''Memory.'' Those two shows have about 30 photographs each.
''It's a great opportunity for a collaboration,'' Mattison says. ''These themes are huge cultural keywords that tie into some of today's biggest conceptual issues."
The meaning of subject, and the concept of abstraction versus reality, are of course issues that have challenged artists in all media for generations.
Photography's earliest struggle for legitimacy in the 19th century gave us the pictorialists, who strove to make their images look like paintings. They were followed by realists such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Walker Evans. The Goldstein collection points to where photography is going next, a place where the image is its own reality.
In a way, a collection of exclusively black and white photographs is itself an artistic statement.
''The Goldsteins deliberately avoided color images not only to pay homage to the origins of photography, but to make it clear this is not reality -- it is a construct, an interpretation,'' Mattison says. ''These are intentionally challenging images. You are in the world of the artist.''
Jerry Uelsmann's print of a rowboat magically suspended above a frightening waterfall exemplifies the Allentown Art Museum collection's lean to the more abstract pieces. Gary Schneider's gelatin silver print ''Genetic Self Portrait'' is not a hazy moon glowing behind barren branches, but actually the blood vessels in the artist's retina. Lauerent Millet's ''Vers Saint Fort Le'' could be either a da Vinci drawing of a fantastic flying machine, or a man hauling a giant kite.
''Especially with the newer works, it's amazing how you can make people see in different ways. Even with traditional techniques, we question what we are seeing,'' Atkins says. ''It's the vision of the photographer that comes through so clearly, not just the technology. These photographs go far beyond what we think of as traditional imagery.''
Lehigh University's exhibit tends to focus on faces and portraits and there are a number of nude images. Some are intentionally disturbing, such as Hannah Wilke's ''So Help Me Hannah,'' a cowering nude self-portrait with a revolver. Others, such as Laura Aguilar's ''Clothed/Unclothed No. 16,'' a diptych showing a couple both clothed and confident and then nude and self-conscious, are incredibly insightful.
''Our exhibit's theme of 'Identity' fits in really well with Lehigh's permanent collection of contemporary photography, which often brushes up against the political, so it's a good fit for us,'' says Mark Wonsidler, Lehigh University's coordinator of exhibitions and collections.
Two photographs from Lafayette College's ''Memory'' exhibit are proof that not all the images take themselves too seriously. Norma Holt's ''Nude with Teacup,'' of a portly unclothed matron with a teacup to her lips, has a bittersweet charm. And Les Krims' bizarre ''Twin Titties'' speaks for it's no-holds-barred self.
Steve Siegel is a freelance writer.
Jodi Duckett, editor
jodi.duckett@mcall.com
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