"Recollection: Thirty Years of Photography at The New York Public Library" Exhibition
New York Public Library Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
This event has ended.
Henri Cartier-Bresson compared portraits to a visual reverberation, in which “the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit.” His definition of portraiture (appealing to themes of recall, repetition, and return) also applies more generally to photography itself, describing a medium that has been repeatedly renegotiated over its short history, including at The New York Public Library, whether in terms of mechanical reproduction, documentary evidence, or as an independent art. Recollection, along with its online multimedia presentation, celebrates thirty years of photogaphy at The New York Public Library.
Photography at NYPL traces its origins back to the opening of the Astor Library in 1849, a decade after Louis Daguerre announced the first commercially viable photographic process to the world. Photographs have been part of the Library ever since, whether collected as supporting reference matter for various divisions or as original source material based on depicted subjects. “Photography” as a distinct research category and collecting division, however, was not formally recognized until thirty years ago.
In 1980, the Library officially launched the Photography Documentation Project to record original photographic material throughout the Library and in 1982, the Photography Collection was established. Thousands of photographs were transferred into the collection, which today comprises 500,000 photographs by 6,000 photographers. This exhibition celebrates thirty years of photography at the Library with a selection of portraits that have become part of the Photography Collection (whether through transfer, donation, or purchase) since 1980.
[Image: Robin Bowman "Patrick Roberts, Age 19, Lawrence, Kansas. Shot on July 2, 2004 in Lawrence, KS" from the series "It’s Complicated: The American Teenager" (2004) Selenium-toned gelatin silver print © Robin Bowman]
Media
Schedule
from September 30, 2010 to January 02, 2011
Artist(s)
Berenice Abbott, Vito Acconci, Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Richard Avedon, Margaret Bourke-White, Robin Bowman, Brassaï, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, André Kertész, William Klein, Duane Michals, Irving Penn, August Sander, Cindy Sherman, Stephen Shore, and William Wegman. et al.