Windows to the Soul

Seeing and being seen are themes of a photography exhibit at the Lawrenceville School.

By: Susan Van Dongen

	"Dubuffet’s Eye," by Bill Brandt.

   Vietnam, 1966. A medic kneels in a field of mud, his face bandaged from an injury, feeding a wounded comrade Army-issue canned peaches. He looks up through the bandage and one shrouded eye meets the camera of photojournalist Henri Huet. The image is immortalized on the cover of Life magazine.
   A hooded and masked terrorist lurks on a Munich balcony during the 1972 Summer Olympics. That picture has also burned itself into our collective memories, although the photographer’s name has been forgotten.
   Consider as well the Irving Penn portrait of two women from a nomadic tribe in Morocco, draped from head to toe in native robes that look more like slipcovers. The only personal touch is the beaded necklace one wears around the neck of her garb.
   All three of the images have a sense of mystery about them, not just because they are compelling works or art and documentary. The characters have their eyes obscured. We’re drawn to stand in front of these photographs and ponder, searching to see if we can learn any more clues about human beings behind the bandages, masks and robes. Something of their soul is missing because the eyes — the very windows to the soul — are hidden.
   These are just three out of some 70 images in the exhibit Seeing: Selections from Collection Dancing Bear at the Hutchins Galleries at the Lawrenceville School’s Gruss Center of Visual Arts. The show is courtesy of W.M. Hunt, director of photography at New York’s Ricco/Maresca Gallery, and the images are from his Collection Dancing Bear, a personal project he has nurtured for 30 years.
   The show features a wide range of works by the New York-based collector, curator and champion of photography. Giants of 20th century photography are represented — Henri Cartier-Bresson, Harry Callahan, Diane and Amy Arbus, Bill Brandt, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange, Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Duane Michaels, Irving Penn, Weegee, Edward Weston and Joel-Peter Witkin are just some of the artists whose works are in the show.
   Mr. Hunt also is exhibiting a number of anonymous 19th century prints, including several ambrotypes, tintypes and a daguerreotype. Many "vernacular" images are on view as well. These are press photos or snapshots, unattributed but equally compelling.

Obstructed vision, from top: "Portrait of Andy Warhol," by Weegee; "The Dream," by Imogen Cunningham.

   "This show is drawn from the many images I have assembled over a 30-year period," Mr. Hunt writes in the artist’s statement accompanying the show. "In all of these photographs, there are no eyes, or the photographer hasn’t attempted to capture anyone’s essence through their eyes.
   "There is a lot to this seeing business; not only what it is to see but what it is to be seen. And there is a lot of seeing in this exhibition. There is a kind of peering, surreptitious looking from behind the veil, Imogen Cunningham’s ‘The Dream, 1930.’ Consider also that the woman appears to want to be seen and witnessed as a maidenly, spectral vision. This is one of the first images I bought, and it is still a touchstone of the collection. It is enigmatic and not very revealing."
   Mr. Hunt, who is much less passionate about making his own pictures than he is about collecting, says he was a struggling actor who stumbled into his current role as connoisseur. Purchasing his very first photograph — an anonymous tintype — pulled him out of a funk after a failed audition. That’s when he had his first inkling of the power of photography. As he began to gather more works, he realized that buying pictures with a consistent subject matter had a certain potency.
   "Collecting was an idea that presented itself only vaguely," Mr. Hunt says. "There was a first picture that I had bought and taken home. It was an odd picture and I had an idea to go out and find another in which the face was obscured. Who knew it would turn out to be a collection?
   "It’s a curious phenomenon," he continues. "People who don’t collect think you’re nuts. They’re put off by it, whereas other collectors love it. I’ve always been a gatherer. It seems like there have always been piles of magazines, books and seashells around the apartment. But the photo collecting thing has made for many life changes."
   Over the past 30 years, Mr. Hunt, a 1964 graduate of the Lawrenceville School, went from being an unemployed actor to someone who is sought after as a photography consultant, curator and occasional guest editor of Aperture magazine. Much of this happened through networking, but the success essentially boils down to his curiosity about photography and inherent sense of taste.
   He bought the Cunningham photo for $325 in the early 1970s — unimaginable now, he says. Since photography has grown to be more accepted as a fine, collectible artform, the prices have gone through the roof. Still, Mr. Hunt is driven by his passion to possess certain images.
   "A collector sees the picture and then wonders, ‘How am I going to pay for this?’" he says. "It’s not the other way around. You find creative ways to feed the obsession. But the expense is one of the reasons people buy vernacular photographs. You see something you like and you buy it, even if it’s not by someone you know, just so you don’t lose the habit of buying."
   The Huet photograph was one such unattributed work Mr. Hunt found.
   "I bought it as a press print at some photography show," he says. "It isn’t signed. It just has the wire service stamp and the caption on the back. I had to do some research to learn who the photographer was."
   Ironically, Huet was a victim of the Vietnam War too, killed in a 1971 helicopter crash along with British photojournalist Larry Burrows.
   "I don’t know where this interest in photography comes from," Mr. Hunt says. "Perhaps people my age have a visual education from TV and magazines. Objectively speaking, I’ve learned I have a really good eye and I never knew that. People pointed this out to me."
   One of the show’s signature images is Bill Brandt’s extreme close-up portrait of sculptor Jean Dubuffet’s eye. It’s off-putting at first and doesn’t even look human. The dark, craggy skin and the angle of the shot make you wonder whether you’re looking at an elephant’s eye.

	From top: "Haschezhini-Navajo," by Edward Curtis; "Thomas (In a Circle)," by Robert Mapplethorpe.

   "(It) seems full of wonder and an enigmatic range of possibilities from terror to enchantment," Mr. Hunt writes. "I think the image really does offer some sense of both artists’ infinite imaginations. Eyes in most photographic portraits rarely offer such possibilities."
   In some of the photos, the eyes aren’t seen at all. People are gathered with their backs to the camera or, as in the Penn "Two Guedras, Morocco," they’re completely covered in costume or cloth. "Hanover-No.1" is an anonymous picture taken at a Ku Klux Klan gathering. No eyes there, just slits in the pointy white headpieces.
   A press print by photographer Leonard McCombe portrays a rather absurd scene, circa 1956, of a group of women gathered to test tissues or paper towels. Seated at long tables in a cafeteria-like setting, the women have the tissues over their faces while another woman in ’50s-style dress stands, facilitating the event. Off to her side is a sign that reads "lubrication."
   At the other end of the aesthetic spectrum is "Martinique, 1972," by André Kertész. It’s a simple, graphic shot taken late in the artist’s life, of a balcony overlooking the sea, against a brooding sky. The only human presence is a ghostly shadow seen through a pane of frosted glass.
   "The Very Last Old Man, 1991" is a series of five large photos by Todd Watts, shot in a way that makes the model’s face look like a theatrical mask or face adorned with mime makeup.
   "There’s something very mythic about those and it’s not only the scale," Mr. Hunt says. "They’re pictures that come with a curious story. I had known of them for quite some time, woke up on my 50th birthday and said, ‘I want to buy those.’ I think Watts is iconoclastic, although he’s not very well known."
   This is reflective of Mr. Hunt’s quote from a recent Aperture interview, in which he says, "Show me the image, because for me that’s what it’s all about, not the camera or how the print is made." It’s a philosophy that goes against the grain of contemporary photography, where the process frequently supersedes the image content. The statement also flies in the face of new technologies, including digital photography.
   "I totally back that up," Mr. Hunt says. "I’m driven by the thing in front of me. I don’t care who made it. As a collector and dealer, the best barometer of the success of a picture is my gut. Anything that I’ve reacted to viscerally has continued to be exciting.
   "If you’re just on fire about something, no matter what you pay for the piece, it will always retain this with you. If people have to explain how good the picture is, that’s where you get in trouble."
   Although you sense that Mr. Hunt loves all his images, he does have a couple of favorites in the collection.
   "’The Two Guedras’ by Irving Penn was the first time I ever spent more money than I had on a photograph," he says. "But the Irving Penn self-portrait lives over the fireplace in my apartment. If the house was on fire that’s the one I’d rescue. Penn is the guy."
   This is the second world-class photography exhibit in six months at the Hutchins Galleries at the Lawrenceville School. Last year, the school purchased and exhibited some 50 works by photographers such as Eugène Atget, Edwaerd Muybridge, Emmet Gowin, Eliot Porter and Ray Metzger. Both shows offer a rare occasion and privilege for the students — as well as the community — to see works by so many modern masters.
   "I hope they find it liberating," Mr. Hunt says. "The collection is a very personal statement and I want to impart the sense that you can write your own book. It’s your sensibility that counts.
   "That said, I believe in individual taste, but I also believe you should look at things outside of what immediately appeals to you. I think that takes effort."
Seeing: Selections from Collection Dancing Bear from the photography collection of W.M. Hunt, is on view at the Hutchins Galleries, Gruss Center of Visual Arts, the Lawrenceville School, Route 206, Lawrenceville, through June 7. Gallery hours: Mon.-Tues., Thurs.-Fri. 9 a.m.-noon, 1-4:30 p.m.; Wed., Sat. 9 a.m.-noon. For information, call (609) 620-6026. On the Web: www.lawrenceville.org