Exhibition

Flowers, Fruit, Books, Bones: Still Life from the Center forCreative Photography features over sixty still life photographs from the Center’s collection. While many of the works were conceived for a range of purposes outside of fine art, from advertising images to teaching aids, all make full use ofphotography’s ability to render rich detail. Visitors to the exhibition are encouraged to slow down and relish the pleasure of close looking.  To deepen the experience of visual contemplation, the photographs are paired with short pieces of text – both poetry and prose – that invite visitors into a space of rumination.

The Center will continue its popular presentation of materials from our archive and fine print vaults for our summer visitors.  A selection of rarely seen archival materials and artworks chosen by the Center’s staff will be housed in flat-file drawers in the Center’s gallery. This presentation of items from the vault will be complemented by a selection of artworks acquired by the Center in the last 18 months, demonstrating the variety and impact of the newest photographs to enrich the Center’s valuable research collection.

This exhibition commemorates the CCP's fortieth year with a selection of distinctive objects from its collection. Featuring a wide range of works, including some of the CCP's most treasured objects, the exhibition will bring together photographs and their related stories, including those told by curators, archivists, and other key figures from the Center's past and present. 

This exhibition, whose title derives from a 1923 poem by William Carlos Williams, assumes the form of a running dialogue between photographic images—past and present—that take as their subject the accumulated byproducts of an American way of life.

Featuring the work of Lucas Blalock, Owen Kydd, and John Lehr, with:
Ansel Adams
Harry Callahan
Walker Evans
Lee Friedlander
Jan Groover
Paul Outerbridge, Jr.
Charles Sheeler
Aaron Siskind
Frederick Sommer
Ralph Steiner
Brett Weston
Edward Weston

In photography, platinum prints (and their close cousins, palladium prints) are valued for their velvet matte surface, subtle range of tones, delicate rendering of the image, and colors which vary from cool greys to warm, rich browns. Patented in 1873, the platinum process has been used nearly consistently to the present. Along with other historic processes, platinum printing is one of many options available to today’s photographers. Yet even as digital photography becomes predominant, some photographers have gravitated to the platinum process for its analogue appeal, despite its expense and the labor it requires. 

Although many photographers experiment with the platinum process, few have explored the medium as extensively as Lois Conner, Scott Davis, Kenro Izu and Andrea Modica. Each of these four photographers have produced extensive bodies of work in platinum, exploiting the particular characteristics of the materials to produce innovative and compelling prints.

PLATINUM: Contemporary Photography is presented in conjunction with the exhibition All That Glitters is Not Gold: Platinum Photography from the Center for Creative Photography, on view in the Phoenix Art Museum’s Norton Gallery from November 1, 2014 to March 1, 2015. All That Glitters is a chronological exploration of how the medium has been used by a wide range of photographers from the 19th century to the present. PLATINUM presents the work of four masters of the process, to show just how far platinum can expand.

The evolution of photography has been inextricably bound up with the field of astronomy. Since photography’s earliest days, it has been used as a tool to advance astronomical observation and thought, yielding some of the most curious and compelling images in the medium’s history. Featuring works by a diversity of makers ranging from pioneering scientists to artists and amateurs, this exhibition surveys mankind’s ongoing efforts to chart and understand an expanding universe.

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 26, 6:30 - 7:30 PM

Gold – one of the most precious metals – is often considered the standard by which other valuables are compared. In photography however, many consider the platinum process to be the most exquisite and luxurious. Expensive to produce platinum prints are coveted for the luscious matte surface texture, subtle range of tones, delicate rendering of the image, and beautiful colors (from a cool, slate grey to rich, warm browns).

Patented in 1873, platinum prints (and their close cousin, palladium prints) have been produced nearly constantly, right to the present. At different stages in the medium’s history, the platinum process has been used to achieve different artistic goals. All that Glitters is Not Gold: Platinum Photography from the Center for Creative Photography presents platinum photographs from the collection of the Center for Creative Photography, including works by Edward Weston, Margrethe Mather, William E. Macnaughtan, Peter Henry Emerson, Dick Arentz and more. They are organized chronologically to illustrate the distinct phases of use and how photographers worked with this beautiful printing process.

More information

The purpose of the INFOCUS Juried Exhibition of Self-Published Photobooks is to explore the range of ways that artists are using newly available commercial technologies to self-publish photobooks in order to express themselves.

Photography’s history is inextricably linked to the book, starting with examples from the dawn of photographic technology, such as Anna Atkins’ handmade Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843) or William Henry Fox Talbot’s serial Pencil of Nature (1844). Throughout much of the twentieth century, photographers who wanted to present their work in book form worked with established publishers who often provided editing, design, and distribution, and who oversaw the printing and binding process.  Now, in the early years of the twenty-first century, photographers are using new printing technologies and internet-based services to self-publish high quality photobooks, with a new degree of involvement and control. The photographic book is experiencing a renaissance.

Earlier this year, Phoenix Art Museum called on photographers to send examples of their self-published photobooks. The jury, made up of seven industry professionals, reviewed the hundreds of submissions that came in.  This exhibition represents the books they chose as the best examples of the wide range of photobooks being produced today. The books are presented in the gallery on tables for easy viewing. We encourage you to handle them gently and leave them in good condition for other visitors.

For more information visit the INFOCUS website. Share your experience with the hashtag #phxphotobooks.

Exhibition Sponsors

This exhibition was organized by the Phoenix Art Museum; INFOCUS, the Photography Support Organization of Phoenix Art Museum; and the Center for Creative Photography, and was inspired by the Cleveland Museum of Art’s show DIY: Photographers & Books exhibited August 11-December 30, 2012.

This exhibition gathers more than 100 works from the private collection of Douglas Nielsen, choreographer and professor at the University of Arizona School of Dance. Featuring photographs and photo-based prints by artists as diverse and provocative as Diane Arbus, John Baldessari, Jo Ann Callis, Nan Goldin, Bruce Nauman, Richard Renaldi, and Cindy Sherman, the exhibition’s unique installation draws out the dramatic and physical tension that can result between photographer and subject, the observer and the observed. Among the exhibition’s highlights are focused displays of images by Nancy Burson and Jimmy DeSana, as well as compelling works by lesser-known artists such as Todd Gray and Noah Kalina, all of which are presented in ways that are by turns whimsical, meditative, and revealing about a fundamental aspect of the art and nature of photography. 

About Douglas Nielsen

Douglas Nielsen, Professor, University of Arizona School of Dance, has been collecting photography since the 1970s, while simultaneously living an itinerate life-style as a performer, choreographer, and teacher of contemporary dance. He originally joined the UA Dance faculty in 1987, until the Berlin Wall fell, wherein he took a 15-year hiatus to teach contemporary dance in post-communist countries including Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic, and Mongolia. A former member of the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel and the Gus Solomons, Pearl Lang, and Paul Sanasardo dance companies in New York, he established Douglas Nielsen Dances in 1981, and performed solo works by Viola Farber, Beverly Blossom, Anna Sokolow, Murray Louis, and Charles Weidman. Professor Nielsen has been granted four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Performing arts fellowship with the Arizona Commission on the Arts.

In the 20th century, American photographer Ansel Adams adopted the book form as a way to organize, disseminate, and promote his artwork.  Adams took a keen interest in every aspect of the books’ production and design from sequence and typestyle to reproduction quality and pricing. Process and The Page presents working materials from the Center for Creative Photography’s archives to demonstrate how Ansel Adams, and nine other photographers including Richard Avedon, Paul Strand and W. Eugene Smith, explored this essential means of preserving and presenting their body of work. The exhibition is organized by the Center for Creative Photography and Phoenix Art Museum. On view at the Phoenix Art Museum March 29 to August 17, 2014.