PHOTOS COURTESY OF ZIMMERLI ART MUSEUM Among the photographs included in “A New Reality: Black-and-White Photography in Contemporary Art” are Diane Arbus’ “Two Ladies in the Automat,” from New York City in 1966 (right); and Kenneth Josephson’s “Michigan,” from 1981 (above); Frederic Brenner’s “Citizens Protesting Anti-Semitic Acts, Billings, Montana,” from 1994 (on page 29). The three Gelatin silver prints are from the collection of Anne and Arthur Goldstein. NEW BRUNSWICK – A new exhibition at the Zimmerli Art Museum explores the continued use of black and white photography as a medium of visual and historical consequence.
In its 98 works, “A New Reality: Blackand White Photography in Contemporary Art” also reflects the expanding technical and conceptual role of photography, emphasizing its recent adaptation to the complex and psychologically charged images and narratives desired by contemporary artists, according to the museum, located at 71 Hamilton St. on the campus of Rutgers University.
The exhibition, which opened this month and runs through Nov. 18, is derived from a major private collection of photography amassed by New Jersey residents Anne and Arthur Goldstein.
Following its run at the Zimmerli, the exhibition will travel to two other venues: Stedman Art Gallery at Rutgers’ Camden campus, where it will run from Dec. 10 to Feb. 23, and the Thomas J. Walsh Gallery, Fairfield University, Fairfield, Conn. (Sept. 19 to Dec. 7, 2008).
Chronologically, the collection represents major figures whose work spans the years 1950 to the present.
Among the significant photographers with work on view are: Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Sherrie Levine, Duane Michals, Vik Muniz, Cindy Sherman, Mike and Doug Starn, William Wegman and Joel-Peter Witkin.
While numerically emphasizing American photographers, the exhibition also includes prominent international photographers such as Bernd and Hilla Becher of Germany, Laurent Millet of France, Tacita Dean of Great Britain, Hiroshi Sugimoto of Japan, and Mohammad Eslami-Rad of Iran.
Over the course of their investigation of modern and contemporary photography, the collectors have increasingly included younger and emerging artists, and more determinedly gravitated toward works that reflect imagery that is unusual, imaginative, unsettling or provocative.
“The Goldsteins have continuously modified and refined their collecting goals while maintaining the high degrees of curiosity, passion and intellect necessary to create significant compilations of art,” said museum Director Gregory Perry. “Through ‘A New Reality,’ their personal vision will inspire and delight a wider audience, offering insights into the intriguing world of contemporary photography.”
While some of the earlier photographers in the collection were practitioners of “straight” photography (not manipulated through darkroom techniques or otherwise altered), the collectors’ interest in odd or “edgy” subjects is seen in works by artists such as Diane Arbus (who sought out the bizarre aspects of everyday life), Larry Clark (who documented a rough and uninhibited teenage lifestyle), and the more unusual side of the fashion photographer Richard Avedon (represented by a photograph in which Andy Warhol displays his scarred, post-operative torso).
Technical and physical alterations in photographic processes and products yielded new visual possibilities, as in Jerry Uelsmann’s evocative and symbolic multiple exposures or John Baldessari’s fragmented and collaged images.
Among the most influential and widespread of modern photographic methodologies, and well represented in the exhibition, is the involvement of the photographer not as a mere recorder of events and scenes, but as a creator of the image to be photographed. In a sense, the photographer takes on roles analogous to those in the film industry of writer, producer, director and set-designer.
At times, photographers used themselves as subjects, actors in a self-reflexive drama or transformative autobiography. Examples are Cindy Sherman, Yasumasa Morimura, Eleanor Antin and Carolee Schneeman. Some of the vignettes required enormous technical skill or obsessive acts of accumulation to realize, such as with Vik Muniz, James Casebere and Joel-Peter Witkin.
The exhibition also delves into how photographs have emerged as powerful and flexible carriers of visual information that are suitable for a wide variety of applications in conceptual art. This aspect of photography, in particular, is reflected in the exhibition title’s reference to “photography in contemporary art,” stressing that photography is now but one component of a multimedia, multidisciplinary approach that fundamentally affects the intention and creation of much art today.
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue including essays by Ellen S. Harris, former executive director of the Aperture Foundation, and Jeffrey Wechsler, senior curator of the Zimmerli Art Museum.
Several educational programs are scheduled in conjunction with the exhibition, including a lecture by Sandra S. Phillips, curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Art, who will be speaking about Diane Arbus and contemporary American photography at 3 p.m. Oct. 21.
The Zimmerli is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is $3 for adults, and free for museum members, Rutgers students, faculty and staff, and children under 18. Admission is free on the first Sunday of every month.
For more information, call (732) 932- 7237, ext. 610, or visit the Web site at www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu.