Photography: Vintage to Contemporary
THE MASLOW STUDY GALLERY FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
Oct 01, 2008 - Oct 21, 2008
Both Marywood University and the University of Scranton are offering courses in the history of photography this semester and the professors teaching these courses requested an exhibition of photographic works from The Maslow Collection that would provide a relevant historical overview for their students. Students will be required to complete research projects related to the artists and works in the exhibition.
This exhibition of photographic works covers a period from the 1930s to the 1980s. Vintage prints from the 1930s to the 1960s include iconic works by Bernice Abbott, Wendell MacRae Wright Morris, and Evelyn Hofer. The gelatin silver prints by Lee Friedlander, Mark Cohen, Hilla and Bernd Becher, and Kenneth Snelson represent a changing attitude to subject matter in the 1970s. The 1980s color photographs, mostly done in the studio, are by Barbara Kasten, Sandy Skoglund, Robert Cumming, William Wegman, David Haxton, and Herwig Kempinger. The later works are more experimental in terms of process, materials and subject matter. One black and white image from this period by Hamish Fulton also opens up a dialogue on the relationship of the photographic image as "record" (or documentation) to the action of the artist, in this case a walk, which is the subject of his work.
Two additional works presented in the cases are from the Curator's collection. Eleanor Antin's "100 Boots" addresses the possible use of photography in a narrative project using mailed postcards over a period of nearly three years. The image by Alfredo Jaar from his Rwanda Project is contained in a black box and is not to be seen by the viewer (only the descriptive text on the box indicates the content of the image). In this manner of presentation Jaar questions the ability of the documentary image to confront us with an adequate representation of the genocide and death, such as in Rwanda.