NYAB Event - “Global Perspectives: Photography as History, Sociology, and Art” Exhibition

“Global Perspectives: Photography as History, Sociology, and Art” Exhibition

Baruch College/Sidney Mishkin Gallery

This event has ended.

Global Perspectives: Photography as History, Sociology, and Art features a dramatic selection of photographs by 20 artists including Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Sarah Charlesworth, Walker Evans, Jerome Liebling, Leonard Sussman, and Andy Warhol. Presenting a global view, these photographers create intriguing images while they document aspects of history and sociology, or delve into issues of artistic concern.

Global Perspectives features photographs from as early as 1930 to as recently as 2009. The show reveals how photographs can function as history, sociology or art. The historical photographs showcase works depicting both the tragedy and dynamism of life across the globe. Seen here are works such as Walker Evans’s portrait of an Alabama tenant farmer’s wife during the Great Depression and Candice Sharsu’s image of a child soldier in Sierra Leone.

Sociological images like Milt Hinton’s Train Station, Atlanta, Georgia (1940), with the musicians standing in front of a “Colored Entrance” sign, are important reminders of discrimination in American history. Sociology is also fundamental to Carrie Mae Weems, whose Sea Islands Series figures prominently in this exhibition. The Sea Islands Series is at once a celebration of a group with African origins and a poignant record of cross-cultural transformation.

Since the nineteenth century, photographers have struggled to raise the medium to the same heights as painting and sculpture. In the twentieth century, artists such as Andy Warhol used photography to bring glamour to everyday life. His photographs are casual and spontaneous, forming a visual diary of Warhol’s comings and goings.

Drawn from the collection of Baruch College, this exhibition features the work of photographers Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Marilyn Bridges, Sarah Charlesworth, Larry Clark, Lucien Clergue, Elliott Erwitt, Walker Evans, Andreas Feininger, Donna Ferrato, Larry Fink, Ralph Gibson, Milt Hinton, Jerome Liebling, Jill Mathis, Gilles Peress, Robert A. Schaefer, Jr., Candace Scharsu, Cindy Sherman, Neil Slavin, Andy Warhol, and Carrie Mae Weems.