Virtually the entire history of photography is represented by the approximately seventy-five photographs on view. All works have been acquired by the gallery within the last year. The range of pictures includes an Irving Penn portrait of Marcel Duchamp; recent self-portraits by Lee Friedlander; and Carleton E. Watkins’s Islands in the Columbia, Upper Cascades, 1867.
One of the highlights of the exhibition will be the sensuous Edward Weston print, Nude (Miriam Lerner), 1925. In this picture of a carefully cropped woman’s torso, Weston deftly explores the subtle inflections of light over folds of skin. Also on view for the first time in the United States will be the work of South Korean photographer Byung-Hun Min whose photographs of markings left by weeds growing on walls and a foggy view of Seoul exude quiet humility. By contrast, the British artists Gilbert & George take a gleefully satiric look at Western values in their postcard sculpture, Gold World, 1989.
Among the more unusual photographs in the exhibition are several anonymous works, especially two related pictures, the first of several Namoa pirates lined up before their execution, and the second, taken immediately afterward, of their decapitated heads mounted on pikes.
Also featured are recent images by Adam Fuss, Nan Goldin, Richard Misrach, Nicholas Nixon, Jack Pierson, J. John Priola, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Catherine Wagner among others.
