New to the Collection: Twentieth-Century Photographs

O’Shaughnessy Galleries
January 17 through March 13, 2016

This exhibition of over 60 photographs, acquired by the museum from 2013 to the present day, includes portraits, photojournalism, fashion and advertising photography, as well as intention works of fine art. The images reflect the evolution of artistic styles over the course of the century, and the influences of Pictorialism, Modernism and abstraction, Futurism and Cubism, Regionalism and the American Scene, even Conceptualism and Earth Art can be seen in the images. Moreover, this group of photographs reveals an unintentional survey of the changing technology of photography, from platinum and silver developed out prints to photogravure. A range of color photography processes are also represented, some of them now almost extinct, including carbro printing, dye imbibation, and silver dye bleach printings. These make a fascinating comparison to the contemporary digital inkjet printing techniques.

An interesting group among them document the Civil Rights movement, including photographs by Danny Lyon, Ernest C. Withers, and Moneta J. Sleet, Jr., and Dan Budnik. There are also several images representing the landscape of the American Midwest, including works by Wright Morris, John Szarkowski, George A. Tice, and Terry Evans. Several of the photographs in the exhibition are important additions to the Snite Museum, intentionally acquired in anticipation of the forthcoming survey publications of the photography collection.

Collection Catalogue

Selected works from the Snite Museum of Art | Photography (published 2005)
https://raclinmurphy.org/255830/