Tina Barney (American, b. 1945), The Young Lady, from The Europeans, 2001, Chromogenic print, 48 x 60", Courtesy Tina Barney/Janet Borden Inc., NY.
Tina Barney (American, b. 1945), The Orange Room, from The Europeans, 2001, Chromogenic print, 48 x 60", Courtesy Tina Barney/Janet Borden Inc., NY.
August Sander (German, 1876-1964), Straßenarbeiter. Ruhrgebeit from Menschen des 20er Jahrhunderts (Road workers. Ruhrgebeit. from The People of the Twentieth Century), ca. 1928-1929, printed by Gerd Sander in 1990, Gelatin silver print, Museum purchase, Wachenheim Family Fund, M2006.10.4. |
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Williams College
Museum of Art
15 Lawrence Hall Drive
413-597-2429
Williamstown
Beyond the Familiar:
Photography
and the Construction
of Community
September 20, 2008-
March 8, 2009
This exhibition draws together the work of 10 artists from throughout the history of photography who have endeavored to reveal the character of an entire population through images of representative individuals. Included is work from the 19th century by Felice Beato and Peter Henry Emerson; from the 20th century by Edward Curtis, Robert Frank, David Goldblatt, Barbara Norfleet, August Sander, and Aaron Siskind; and recent work by Tina Barney and Zwelethu Mthethwa.
Beyond the Familiar: Photography and the Construction of Community provokes dialogue about the role of photography in the construction of cultural identity. The exhibition brings together 10 photography projects from around the world that span the history of the medium. These projects portray individuals from distinct cultural, economic, and professional groups. For example, Tina Barney’s project “The Europeans” features the social elite and the intimacies of their relationships. In contrast, Peter Henry Emerson shows country people from East Anglia in their rural settings using a simple, direct manner. Most of these photography projects were initially distributed in the form of albums, portfolios, or publications as a visual archive. The earliest projects tend to assert a belief in photography’s ability to faithfully represent a social group. Later projects point to the impossibility of that idea, calling into question the idea that photography can reveal “truth.”
Fiona Tan’s ambitious video installation, Countenance, takes as its inspiration August Sander’s lifelong project, Citizens of the Twentieth Century. While Sander photographed people living and working in Germany with the goal of creating an archive that represented all types of people, Tan updates Sander’s project in video, both echoing and investigating his ideas. Composed of multiple screens, each showing vignettes of Berliners posing for a video portrait, Countenance is an archive of representative types and a critical reflection on the role of an archive. Can Tan’s portrayal of a baker standing by his mixing machine really tell us about the class of “all bakers”? Can he even typify male bakers, or bakers in Berlin, or young bakers? Tan creates a carefully calibrated tension between the purported objectivity of Sander’s project and a more subjective approach.
Zwelethu Mthethwa (South African, b. 1960), Untitled from Sugar Cane series, 2007, Chromogenic print, 76-1/2 x 59", Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.
Fiona Tan, Countenance (Video still), Video installation, 2002, Edition of 4, Photo: Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London, Countenance (2002), Produced with support from SK Stiftung Kultur köln/Cologne and
Berliner Künstlerprogramm/DAAD. |
