The New York Times
September 9, 1984
IS A GENERATIONAL SEA CHANGE IN THE OFFING?
By ANDY GRUNDBERG
If we imagine photography to be an organism with feelings like the rest of us, then it enters the fall entertaining a complex set of emotions. There is a sense of optimism and empowerment as a result of the J. Paul Getty Museum's large-scale entry into the medium, a sense of uncertainty as a result of the planned move of the International Museum of Photography collection from the George Eastman House in Rochester to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C., and a sense of fragility in the face of the deaths within the last six months of Ansel Adams, Brassa"i and Garry Winogrand - all important and respected figures in the field. One consequence of these events is a new awareness that photography has come of age, and that as the years pass its present bears less and less resemblance to its past.
It may be a bit premature to say, but it seems that a generational sea change is taking place, with a large, middle-aged group of photographers, curators, gallery owners and writers replacing the senior photographic establishment, many of whose members are now in their 70's and 80's. The new middle-aged establishment is in a unique and in some respects advantageous position, being sandwiched between an older generation devoted to the Modernist conception of photography as a Purist, unmanipulated, black-and-white medium and a younger generation that is insouciantly Post-Modernist in outlook. The budding powers-that-be - most of whom are in their 30's and 40's - recognize the virtues of Modernist photography and respect its tradition, but they also recognize that that tradition has become historical - that today's photographers need to forge their own styles to reflect the sensibility of their world.
Perhaps in recognition of how rapidly the masters of 20th-century Modernist photography are becoming historical rather than living presences, much of the most important exhibition activity this fall is devoted to them. There will be museum exhibitions of the work of Irving Penn, Horst P. Horst and historian Beaumont Newhall, and gallery shows featuring work by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Val Telberg, O. Winston Link and Harold Edgerton - all of the latter group being senior citizens of the photography world whose contributions remain underrecognized.
However, the single most anticipated exhibition of the season - the long-awaited retrospective of Andre Kertesz's photographs due to open in December at the Metropolitan Museum of Art - has been put off for another year, at least for New Yorkers. Organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan, the planned 161- print comprehensive survey apparently was waylaid by the Getty Museum's acquisition of the Metropolitan's photography curator, Weston Naef, who was organizing the show with David Travis, curator of photography at the Chicago museum. The 90-year-old photographer's first major retrospective in more than 20 years is now scheduled to open in Chicago May 9 and will come to the Metropolitan in December 1985.
Mr. Kert esz, it will be remembered, spent his first 15 years in the United States working as a photographer for the Conde Nast Publications, a job he found vastly unsuitable to his artistic temperament. The photographers Irving Penn and Horst P. Horst, however, flowered within the ambiance of Conde Nast Inc., as their retrospectives should make clear. (Mr. Penn's starts this Thursday at the Museum of Modern Art and Mr. Horst's opens Oct. 3 at the International Center of Photography.) They are unusual artists in that they have made no distinctions between their ''commercial'' and their ''creative'' work, and part of what makes them fascinating is the way in which they straddle the borderline between art and commerce.
Mr. Penn's 40-year career includes portraits, nudes, fashion images and still lifes, as well as outsized platinum prints of crushed cigarette butts. His color still lifes, in particular, are marvels of Bauhaus-style design translated into the vocabulary of the marketplace, but equally remarkable are his on-location studio portraits in black and white of New Guinean mudmen and other exotic fashion ''primitives.'' Mr. Horst, who was born in 1906, learned photography at the foot of George Hoyningen- Huene in the early 30's and quickly developed his own complexly lit but highly graphic style of fashion photography and portraiture. While his more recently published work has consisted mainly of architectural interiors, the glamour style of his 30's portraits is making a comeback to the fashion spotlight.
Fashion as a genre is in photography's spotlight this fall. Besides the Penn and Horst museum exhibitions, galleries with a fashion photography bent have full schedules. At the Staley-Wise Gallery in SoHo, Horst's contemporary Louise Dahl-Wolfe, who pioneered the use of color in fashion photography during her tenure at Harper's Bazaar from 1936 to 1958, will be showing work in October in conjunction with the publication of her book ''A Photographer's Scrapbook.'' In Los Angeles, the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery this week opens an exhibition of Helmut Newton's recent naughty-but-nice photographs and will follow it in mid-October with a retrospective of the work of Francesco Scavullo, the photographer who fabricated ''that Cosmo girl'' look. Scavullo's work will be exhibited here at Light Gallery, in conjunction with the publication of the book ''Scavullo'' (Harper & Row).
While fashion may be in style this fall, what's fashionable isn't always what endures. What does seem sure to last, however, is the kind of style that is developed over the course of a career by an artist of integrity and commitment. A prime example of art that hews to this often lonely road will be seen in Houston in November when ''Unknown Territory,'' a mid-career retrospective of Ray K. Metzker's photographs, goes on view. A traveling show organized by Anne Tucker, Houston Museum of Fine Arts curator, ''Unknown Territory'' features 180 of Mr. Metzker's formally innovative pictures, the best of which capture the rhythms of urban life in a unique, syncopated manner. (The exhibition is due in New York the summer of 1986, after having been seen in Mr. Metzker's hometown of Philadelphia and at Atlanta's High Museum.)
Meanwhile, there will be something of a celebration for Beaumont Newhall, the 76-year-old father figure of photography history and, it turns out, something of a photographer as well. While writing what has become the definitive version of the medium's first 100 years, Mr. Newhall managed to photograph in his spare time; 50 of the resulting pictures, which evidence his affection for Purist photography, will go on view Sept. 21 at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, in Rochester.
On Nov. 1 Mr. Newhall will be honored - together with Helmut Gernsheim, the British photo historian - by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers. The association's annual exposition in New York has become quite an event over the past four years, featuring booths chock full of historical and contemporary imagery as well as exhibitions, symposia and awards. Mr. Newhall and Mr. Gernsheim will put their heads and experience together Friday morning, Nov. 2, in a discussion moderated by Robert Sobieszek, Eastman House curator; on Saturday a clan of museum curators will be discussing the state of contemporary photography. One imagines that much of the rest of the time will be spent by the dealers comparing notes on how much of their rent the Getty Museum has been paying lately.
The work of Brassa"i, the Transylvanian transplant who captured Paris's more seedy essence in the 1930's and who died in July at the age of 84, will be shown at Marlborough Gallery starting Tuesday in a posthumous survey called ''Homage to Brassa"i.'' Less guaranteed at the box office but equally deserving of attention are two shows of seldom-seen work from the 1930's through the 50's. Val Telberg's exhibition at Lawrence Miller Gallery in November will feature strange and sometimes spooky combination prints from the hand of a surrealist artist, while Theodore Roszak's show at Zabriskie Gallery in October introduces New York to a series of virtuoso photograms produced by an artist much better known for his Constructivist sculpture.
Several shows promise to have considerable historical interest. In 19th-century photography two shows of early British photography are likely to revise, or at least renew, our appreciation of that nation's contribution to the medium. ''A Vision Exchanged,'' at the George Eastman House starting Sept. 21, surveys amateur photography in England in the 1850's, when photography clubs and societies were in vogue. Curator Grace Seiberling's thesis is that these early efforts prefigure later art photography. ''The Golden Age of British Photography, 1839-1900'' at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from Oct. 27, takes in more territory but is less argumentative, presenting 240 acknowledged treasures culled mainly from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
In early 20th-century territory, Peter MacGill of Pace/MacGill Gallery has tracked down 12 vintage platinum prints made by Paul Strand in 1915-17 for exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz's 291 Gallery; these will be on view from Oct. 18 to Nov. 24. Finally, for what may be the most entertaining and amusing historical survey of the season, look to ''Life: The Second Decade, 1946-55,'' a document of the postwar years as seen through the sometimes idiosyncratic lenses of Life magazine's photographers. The exhibition opens Nov. 11 at the International Center of Photography, which will use the occasion to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
On the contemporary scene there is an abundance of activity but few clear trends - at least few trends that seem significantly novel. With exhibitions this fall of work by David Hockney, Barbara Kasten and Les Levine (at Andre Emmerich, John Weber and Ted Greenwald, respectively), the tradition of interchange between photography, painting, sculpture and Conceptual art continues at full blast. On the other hand, shows by Mitch Epstein, Richard Pare and Joel Sternfeld (at H.F. Manes, Sander and Daniel Wolf galleries, respectively) testify to the enduring possibilities of the straight, evidentiary style. Relative newcomers to the gallery scene worth a look include Pierre Cordier, whose chemically manipulated ''Chimagrammes'' will be on view at Lawrence Miller Gallery next month, and Russell Drisch, whose large- sized painted prints will dominate Marcuse Pfeifer's new SoHo space in November.
New work continues to play well out of town as well, with exhibitions of John Pfahl's ''Power Places'' (dreamy photographs taken near nuclear power plants) at the Los Angeles County Museum, of Chauncey Hare's acidic view of big business America at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston, and of Richard Misrach's picturesque color views of the Sonoran Desert (often ablaze) included in a mid-career retrospective at the Friends of Photography in Carmel, Calif. In all, it will be as busy and complex a season as one could hope for, and one sure to have surprises, too.
