PICTURes by women:
a review of the Moma exhibit
by Harold Hull-Ambers
The wall text greeting viewers at the entrance to the exhibit “Pictures by Woman: A History of Modern Photography” says that the collection on view “demonstrates the medium’s accessibility to woman from its inception.” This statement naturally makes the audience ask, “Why have women excelled at photography when so many other mediums, especially in decades past, have been dominated by men?” The answer to this question is revealed in the photographs that span all six rooms of the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) Edward Steichen galleries.
The collection, organized by curators Roxana Marcoci, Sarah Meister and Eva Respini, is “a comprehensive history of photography through pieces made exclusively by woman artists, from the dawn of modernism in the 1890s to the present.” MoMA has been a patron of modern photography since its earliest days, and as such is able to present “Women in Photography” entirely from its own permanent collection.
The curators organized the exhibit primarily chronologically, but other factors also determine the placement of photographs: multiple works by a single photographer that span decades of time are presented together; and unique photographic techniques, such as combining type with image, are presented together. The scale of the photographs is also a factor in organizing the galleries. The curators often break up rooms with fake walls that house large photos, such as Laurie Simmon’s Walking House.
The first gallery features work from the turn of the Twentieth Century when photography as an art form was just beginning. The artists given the most wall space in the initial gallery are Frances Benjamin Johnson and Gertrude Kasebier. Both artists use platinum prints and gelatin silver prints (these seems to be the most popular techniques used until contemporary times). Johnson’s photographs, such as Stairway of the Treasurer's Residence: Students at Work, are clearly staged shots of industrious students in class. The museum’s audio guide reveals that that the students pictured attend the Hampton Institute, which was a school made up of African and Native American students. One expert believes that Johnson wanted to use these photographs to promote the interests of the Institute, but this activist goal does not take away from the artistic achievement of the photographs. Their soft light and careful composition is clearly influenced by the pictorial style popular at the time.
The photographs of Gertrude Kasebier are the first representation we see of women – a theme that continues throughout the exhibit. Kasebier’s photographs are often of mother and daughter, such as Blessed Art Thou Among Women and The Manger. As with the photographs of Johnson these are gentle images, with traditional compositions, that project a dreamy, relaxing feeling. The curators make sure this sense of comfort doesn’t last long.
The next gallery reveals photographs from the 1920s that are crisper than the turn of the century work and that focus on more ambitious subject matter. One wall contains a set of Margaret Bourke-White’s portraits of industrial scenes (factories, smoke stacks). The people that fuel industry were the focus of Tina Madotti. Her photograph Worker’s Parade is the most unique portrait at the exhibition: a sea of faceless people in hats fills the print and activates the edges of the entire composition. Madotti had social goals (sympathy for workers rights) like Frances Johnson, but she is able to mix them with an artistic sensibility more successfully. The museum audio guide tells us Worker’s Parade is a “classic example of what Modotti has done so well over and over again in her work—combine a modernist aesthetic that is clean lines, and a kind of modernist remove, with her political motivations and her beliefs.”
As the curators planned out the next room, focusing on the 1930s, there is a clear effort to show female curiosity with two bastions of American poverty: the immigrant-filled cities of the East and the drought-stricken farmland of Middle-America. A large area is devoted to Helen Levitt’s scenes of ghettos and tenements in lower Manhattan. Dorothea Lange is able to capture faces of rural settings with staged photographs made to look candid. This technique may have been influenced by Walker Evans – her photograph Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California looks just like Evans’ iconic Tenant Farmer’s Wife, Alabama.
The next set of rooms includes photographs from multiple decades in the mid-Twentieth Century. During this era women really gained confidence and transformed their photography into modern art. MoMA's curators let us know that previously women had been “learning on the job,” – by this time they were trained professionals practicing their craft with skill.
The primary goal of these middle galleries is to question’s women’s image, or role, in society. Diane Arbus challenges female ideas of beauty with powerful shots of real women: one wears curlers and is smoking a cigarette; another photograph is a close-up portrait of a Puerto Rican woman with a large beauty mark. Arbus is the first female photographer in the exhibit to artfully parody the female nude by showing non-Madonna like unclothed females. In contrast to the romantic photographs at the start of the modern era Arbus’ work is stark and unflattering to the subjects, even to the point of being disturbing.
A related theme, feminism, is also explored by women photographers throughout the exhibition. The human scale photograph, Laurie Simmons Walking House, (1989) asks the question “are women just housewives with legs?” Mary Beth Edelson satirizes da Vinci’s Last Supper with her 1971 Some Living American Working Artists. The faces of the disciples are replaced with photographs of actual working women artists. Finally the eerie Mannequin with Tongue, Northgate Mall, Hixson, Tennessee by Rolsalind Solomon shows just how creepy objectifying women can be.
The exhibition finishes with contemporary photography from the 1980s to the present. The grand-scale work Sunday New York Times by Tina Barney is one of the most striking photographs in the exhibit: the detail is perfect, the diagonal composition creates energy, and the chaos of breakfast in an upper-class setting is one that seems worth exploring. On the audio guide Barney recalls "… I really didn't know what I was searching for. But it had to do with the fact that I thought the American family was disintegrating. That I didn't think family members were close enough, didn't show enough affection.” The photograph is an example of how Women photographers like Barney have mastered the ability to combine a social message inside an incredibly artful image.
In the final gallery the curators placed a glass case in which important editorial photography was placed. This includes Esquire covers and magazine layouts by Barabara Kruger and a particularly provocative Artforum advertisement by Lynda Benglis. Also on display are the clever feminist protest posters by the Guerilla Girls.
After leaving the Steichen galleries the reasons why woman have excelled at the medium of photography are clear: Women occupy a space in society and family that has historically been visualized by an art world dominated by males. With photography women have been able to present an authentic representation of the female point-of-view for the first time. They have embraced this opportunity, and presented the audience with a unique and fascinating point-of-view; a point-of-view that is subversive and political just by being imagined by a female.
It would be easy and more profitable to include a gallery of fashion photography or trendy, celebrity snapshots that would generate pedestrian attention, but nothing of this sort is included in this exhibit. Instead, a great deal of real estate is given to people like Nan Goldin, who’s intensely personal and vulnerable self-portraits create a narrative that teaches us more about her life than a thousand words would - and isn't that what makes photography important.
