"A Tad Bit Strange and Somewhat Surreal" Exhibition
L. Parker Stephenson Photographs
This event has ended.
L. Parker Stephenson Photographs presents "A Tad Bit Strange and Somewhat Surreal: Photographs from the '60s and '70"s, a group exhibition of unexpected images from an influential movement in photographic history.
While Europe and much of the Far East were rebuilding both their infrastructure and spirit after WWII, the United States was prospering. The booming economy offered many people an opportunity to live the "ideal" life. This was defined socially by a culture of material consumption and physically by the growth of suburbia. Questioning of this "progress" inevitably followed and photographers were well placed, through an increasingly visual culture, to participate in this debate.
An emerging generation of photographers found new ways to comment on the "Social Landscape" (a term first used by Garry Winogrand in 1963, later popularized by Nathan Lyons' exhibition Towards a Social Landscape in 1966 and solidified by the exhibition at Brandeis University the following year, 12 Photographers of the American Social Landscape). Borrowing in part from their modernist and avant-garde predecessors, who transformed the familiar into the unrecognizable, these artists injected their own questions and views into their work. Some, such as those represented in the exhibition, addressed this subjective layer by using insightful cropping, subtle puns, deadpan portraits, and dynamic highlight, while others did so by experimenting with the medium itself (unfocused snapshots, in the darkroom, or in post-production). In each case, the result became a visual translation of emotional responses to changes in society.
[Image: Leon Levinstein "Untitled" (1970s)]
Media
Schedule
from June 06, 2012 to July 27, 2012