Exhibition

In 2010, the Center for Creative Photography celebrated its thirty‐fifth anniversary which posed an opportunity to look back on past accomplishments and celebrate recent activities. Creative Continuum presents a variety of photographs and archival objects acquired by the Center for Creative Photography over the past 36 years, demonstrating the diversity of the collection and the range of materials it preserves.

Curated by River Bullock, the Center's 2011-2012 Ansel Adams Intern, and presented in conjunction with Speaking in Tongues, this group of works from the Center’s collection illustrates Los Angeles photography from 1890s-1990s, including photographs by William Henry Jackson, Margrethe Mather, Garry Winogrand, and Catherine Opie. Image Credit: Max Yavno, Self-Service, 1978. ©1998 Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation.

The name Ansel Adams (1902-1984) is nearly synonymous with Yosemite Valley, but the world renowned photographer also had a special connection to Arizona. Perhaps the most important Arizona link was Adams’s 1975 decision to co-found the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, and to place his entire photographic collection and archive in the care of this new institution.

From a photographic perspective, Adams had early excursions to the desert southwest, going first to New Mexico, and later to Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, Saguaro National Monument, and southern Arizona’s spectacular San Xavier Mission. Adams celebrated some of these places in the tourist magazine Arizona Highways, and the income from those publications allowed more extended visits to the state.

This group of nearly forty photographs shows the wide range of work Ansel Adams produced in Arizona and throughout the American West. From quiet studies of natural details to the awe inspiring grandeur of massive mountains under cloud filled skies, Adams chronicled the land with passion. The intensity he brought to his artwork was fueled by his own deep appreciation of the transformative power of the wilderness, which he also expressed in a lifetime of environmental activism.

W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978), a compassionate and intense photojournalist, was tremendously prolific from the Second World War through the midpoint of the 20th century. He produced a series of essays for Life magazine which made an impact on American culture then and have continued to be poignant testaments from this period of rich cultural transition. The power of the photographs and the success of his essays were a result of Smith’s intimate involvement with his subjects.

This exhibition will draw on the Center for Creative Photography’s W. Eugene Smith archive to illustrate some of these groundbreaking essays, including coverage of the WWII Pacific theater and post-war stories such as Country Doctor of 1948, and Spanish Village and Nurse Midwife of 1951. In addition to fine prints, copies of vintage Life magazines will be on view, along with Smith’s own contact sheets, hand-written notes, correspondence and other personal documents.

"Each individual photograph is part of a process, the result of experimentation, persistence, research, accident, and luck. The Center hopes that this special exhibition of popular images together with archive pieces helps viewers think about masterpieces and how they came to be,” said Britt Salvesen, Center curator and interim director. Making a Photograph: Iconic Images and Their Origins presents evidence of this process—negatives, field notes, contact sheets, source material—casting iconic images in a new light and expanding our sense of photography’s expressive potential.