Photo Friday

The Civil Rights Movement

September 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of a bomb explosion outside Sunday services at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that wounded over 20 and killed four young black girls during the height of America’s Civil Rights Movement. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered their eulogy.  Perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan and meant to slow the growing civil rights movement in the South, the racist killings instead fueled protests that helped speed passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which banned discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin” in employment practices and public accommodations.

This Photo Friday will feature Marion Palfi’s photographs of segregation and victims of racism in the South, a selection of portraits of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Benedict Fernandez, and Danny Lyon’s poignant images of grief-stricken funeral mourners in Birmingham as well as non-violent protests and violent arrests.

Illusion

In the pre-digital age of photography, practitioners explored the concept of illusion by staging scenes and darkroom manipulation as well as by careful positioning of their subjects and their cameras. This selection of images includes work by Richard Avedon, Lotte Beese, Karl Blossfeldt, André Kertész, Arthur Tress, Ruth Hollos, Erich Consemüller, Minor White, Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Emmanuel Rudnitsky. 

Faith
The belief in gods or religious doctrines and their presence in our lives has been fertile ground for photographers who have interpreted people, objects, rituals and places of devotion and worship. This viewing includes work by Graciela Iturbide, Aaron Siskind, Nubar Alexanian, Kozo Miyoshi, Henri Cartier- Bresson, Felix Bonfils, Mark Klett, Yoshiyasu Suzuka and Gail Skoff.

This investigation of enclosed spaces, objects, people, light and shadow offers a range of images from the intimate to the psychologically charged.  It includes work by Jeff Wall, Sonya Noskowiak, Minor White, Max Yavno, Lee Friedlander, Jack Welpott, James Welling, Imogen Cunningham, Danny Lyon, and Jo Ann Callis.

Suburbia: to some a utopia of homogeneity and manicured lawns; to others a nightmare of boring uniformity and residential sprawl.

January's Photo Friday presents works by eight photographers of suburbia and suburban living.  The photographs of Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, William Larson, Bill Owens, Mickey Pallas, Andrew Phelps, Arthur Taussig, and Garry Winogrand document various aspects of suburbia from the marketing and building of suburban developments to the realities of living in these communities.

December’s Photo Friday presents work by three master photographers who have created extraordinary images of places that inspired them:

• Paul Caponigro’s spiritually moving photographs of Stonehenge explore individual standing stones and their position within the mysterious prehistoric monument as well as the site’s relationship to its surrounding landscape.
• Hiroshi Sugimoto’s luminous images of water and air offer an ultimate distilling of the form of photographic landscape. They include an intriguing range of interpretations from the realistic to the sublime.
• Near the end of his career, Paul Strand created poignantly beautiful images of his garden in Orgeval, France.  While these images offer the directness and precise vision that is quintessentially Strand, they also take a metaphorical turn, reflecting on issues such as aging.

Photo Friday offers an exclusive themed selection from the Center’s renowned collection of photographs—unframed for close inspection in the second floor viewing room—every month.

Death…whether encountered suddenly or after long anticipation, all humanity interprets and responds to the inevitable in very diverse ways.  In honor of our local Día de los Muertos, this Photo Friday theme, and the images featured, capture the shock of sudden departures, the grieving of those left behind, the celebration of passage and the memorializing of those gone.  This viewing presents these very personal moments as interpreted/captured through the lens of artists W. Eugene Smith, Weegee, Rosalind Solomon, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Edward Weston, Danny Lyon, Flor Garduño, William Mortensen, Joel-Peter Wilkin, Graciela Iturbide, Ansel Adams, Cy Lehrer, Jerome Liebling, and Gail Scoff.

Photo Fridays offer an exclusive themed selection from the Center’s renowned collection of photographs—unframed for close inspection in the second floor viewing room—every month. The theme for October 5 will be Signs and Symbols.  Signs and symbols inhabit our daily lives as well as our memories. They are images, marks, and representations that evoke emotional responses while informing and recalling our existence. This viewing presents work by Lee Friedlander, Robert Frank, Carrie Mae Weems, Charles Harbutt, Ann Parker, Kozo Miyoshi, Ralph Gibson, Marion Palfi, W. Eugene Smith, Aaron Siskind and Jeffrey Wolin.

Photo Fridays offer an exclusive themed selection from the Center’s renowned collection of photographs – unframed for close inspection in the second floor viewing room – every month. The theme for September 7 will be Family, and will include work by Shelby Lee Adams, Joan Barker, Harry Callahan, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Graciela Iturbide, Mickey Pallas, Paul Strand, and Rosalind Solomon.