MCMULLEN MUSEUM • BOSTON COLLEGE CRnilNIt This publication is issued in conjunction with the exhibition Common Ground: Photographers on the Street, organized by the Charles S. and Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College. Curated by Naomi R. Blumberg June 11-September 7, 2003 PHOTOGRAPHERS ON THE STREET MCMULLEN MUSEUM-BOSTON COLLEGE Naomi R. Blumberg Figure 1: Garry Winogrand, NYC, 1972, Silver gelatin print, ©Tufts University Gallery Permanent Collection Introduction The photographs exhibited in Common Ground examine and record common- place events, people, and objects. This street photography succeeds through the split-second decisions of artists — because of their urban instincts and their ability to identify incongruities and sur- prising coincidences in public spaces. Photographs taken on the street exist as visual documents both of the current urban experience and — by implication — of the state of a wider culture. Like words, these photographs act as "quotations” about life; they can be "read" in many ways, depending on the contexts in which they are viewed and the identity and pre- conception of the readers. Common Ground: Photographers on the Street connects the roots of classic street photography of the 1960s and 1970s New York school to the contempo- rary street tradition as practiced in cities all over the United States. Works by Garry Winogrand (1928-1984), Lee Friedlander (b. 1934), and Joel Meyerowitz (b. 1938) illustrate the flux of public life — its subtleties as well as its theatrics. Quickly and seemingly randomly taken images contain biting social com- mentary, humor, incoherence — and unex- pected clarity. Compositions often border- ing on the chaotic introduce multiple points of interest that at once disorient and compel a closer look. The second section of the exhibition examines the work of contemporary street photographers, a group less often presented in the museum setting. Although aesthetically rooted in a classic street tradition, these photographers take provocative and insightful detours from it. The photographer is always trying to colonize new experiences or find new ways to look at familiar subjects — to fight against boredom. For bore- dom is just the reverse side of fasci- nation; both depend on being out- side rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other. -Susan Sontag On Photography, 197 7 1 The Old Street: The 19th Century The street has long fascinated photogra- phers. Since the development of photog- raphy in the nineteenth century, viewers recognized how the medium's immediate and indexical documentation could per- fectly grasp and record the urban experi- ence. For many, this immediacy gave pho- tography an advantage even over the work of many contemporary European painters who also sought to convey the vibrancy of public life. The nineteenth-century street appears most notably in the work of Eugene Atget (1856-1927), a chronicler motivated by the transformation of the public spaces and structural layout of Paris. In a key moment of urban transition, Atget photographed the old and the new, finding brilliance in the most mundane of sub- jects. He systematically recorded the city's past by choosing subjects destined for oblivion: buildings marked for demolition and workers in trades soon to be eliminat- ed by social and economic changes. Atget rejected contemporary trends in art photography by practicing 'straight' photography, an approach that influenced later generations. His images invoke still- ness and silence, even as they depict a dynamic city in physical and social disar- ray. Instead of manipulating the chemical process when developing his negatives, he relied on his camera, using the expressive qualities of light and shadow to create images that moved beyond sim- ple description. With a purity of vision, Atget captured the city's unofficial reali- ties, its deteriorating infrastructure and neglected populations. The Modern Street The invention of the lightweight and portable Leica camera in the 1930s transformed picture taking into a reflex as opposed to a ritual. 2 Timing was now essential to the process. According to John Berger, “the content of a photo- graph is invisible,” relying “not on form, but on time.” 3 Thus, the subject of a pho- tograph becomes the moment in which the photographer chooses to release the shutter. Rather than choosing between subject a or subject b, the photographer is choosing between moment a and moment b. Here the element of human choice plays its most definitive role. Berger's definition seems especially appropriate with regard to street photog- raphy: the street photographer attempts to capture a constantly moving target and thus is left at the mercy of his subject's pace and movements. Using the Leica's capacity for rapid, continuous shooting, a photographer’s idiosyncratic timing pro- duces a series of photographs taken within seconds, each recording a unique content. Not knowing if he will seize his intended moment, the photographer releases the shutter; his subjects and meaning may change with a split-second of indecision. Because the tension between tradition and modernity has been historically most visible in urban streets, Atget's succes- sors, particularily Walker Evans (1903- 1975), Henri Cartier-Bresson (b. 1908), and Robert Frank (b. 1924), were also drawn to the turbulence and changing face of a public arena. Their work rejects the overt social and political agendas of many documentary photographers of the early- to mid-twentieth century. Evans, Cartier-Bresson, and Frank sought not to change and improve their environment by way of their visual imagery; rather, these photographers attempted to understand and appreciate it. 4 These three masters influenced the work of Winogrand, Meyerowitz, and Friedlander. Garry Winogrand is credited with the reinvention of the 1960s street move- ment. His images bring to the foreground the obvious things in our environment — those ordinary objects and figures on the surface that might otherwise be ignored. His street pictures, presented without narrative, intend no moral or immediately readable content. Looking at Winogrand’s body of work approximates the experi- ence of the roving eye on the street. In his photographs we see what we create around us through our dress, gestures, gaze, and expressions. Street photography is deeply voyeuris- tic. The photographer acts as spectator, exposing his subjects in a variety of daily life behaviors and activities. Winogrand’s style was rife with contradictions: He was physically confrontational amid the public, but kept his subjects at a distance; he was an urban voyeur, but unlike other street photographers, made no attempt to remain invisible; his imagery illustrates an empathy and affection for its subjects, but can also appear invasive and threat- ening (fig. 1). Working closely with Meyerowitz, he wandered the streets each day photographing people en route or engaged in their everyday activities. Because Winogrand’s subjects rarely return the camera's gaze, his images are portraits of life, rather than of people. Observing the unlikely juxtapositions and behaviors in Winogrand's and Meyerowitz's images, we begin to compre- hend the incredible speed by which street photographers work — and the hyper-atten- tiveness to detail which distinguishes their enterprise. Like Winogrand and Meyerowitz, Lee Friedlander made the street a primary subject in his 1960s and 1970s work. In contrast to his contemporaries’ photo- graphs, however, Friedlander’s images are markedly personal, even self-referential, simultaneously looking outward and inward and frequently referring to his photograph- ic process. Through self-portraiture or images of his own shadow, he inserts a self explicitly into his photographs. Like his contemporaries, Friedlander infused his images of the ordinary with monumentality — even going so far as to devote an entire series of photographs to American monuments. 5 In Chicago, for instance, the profile emerging from behind the large black pole is trans- formed into something like a Roman por- trait bust or an old master portrait in profile (fig. 2). With the same focus and intensity, Friedlander highlights both the details within the man’s profile and the surface of the obstructing pole. Each element bears significance in the photograph’s compositional structure. Meaning, however, remains inscrutable, as Friedlander imposes a mysterious quality on this regular street corner. Bridging the Old and the New: Contemporary Visions Contemporary street photography is now once again positioning itself within an established museum world. Although identifiable groups of photographers com- parable to those working in New York in the 1960s have not (yet) appeared, indi- vidual practitioners have returned the movement to the forefront of art photog- raphy. Like their predecessors, many con- temporary photographers in Common Ground turn to the startling juxtapositions appearing before them as they traverse the urban streets. Photographic compositions of the street encompass the relationships between people, between words and signs, between colors, between the ani- mate and the inanimate. These contem- Figure 2: Lee Friedlander, Chicago, 1975, Selenium print, ©Tufts University Gallery Permanent Collection Figure 3: Melanie Einzig, Sept. 14. 2001, C-print, Courtesy of the artist Figure 4: Sylvia Plachy, Confetti. 1993, Silver gelatin print, Courtesy of the artist porary artists record the seemingly infi- nite variety of connections in the public space around us. With an uncanny ability to capture subtly detailed visual corre- spondences on the street, Constantine Manos discovers elusive colors that dic- tate compositional structure and expres- sion. 6 His brilliant images capture optical parallels to create fluid tapestries of pat- tern and form: the longer we focus on the airborne form in Venice Beach, for exam- ple, the more that form merges with the chaotic backdrop of swirling graffiti. The strange juxtapositions making up Einzig's Sept. 14. 2001 yield meaning when they are fixed on film (fig. 3). The photographer's reaction to the events of three days previous appears on the two- dimensional photographic surface through a series of relationships estab- lished: between the mysterious, bodiless homeless figure, the looming advertise- ment for the US army, and the title of the piece. Despite the specific date of its title, the image assumes significance for any generation. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the image reminds that whereas tragedy struck randomly and catastrophically, one walks by tragedy on the streets each day. Aware, like Winogrand, of the role of the photographer’s gaze in constructing meaning, Einzig focuses on expressive glances and body language to reveal human behavior. Without even portraying an authentic New Yorker figure, Tourists satirically comments on the obvious con- trast between the native and the visitor. The photographer herself retains the role of invisible “insider,” the point of con- trast in her ironic portrayal of the "out- sider” tourist. Whether focused on the tragic, as in Sept. 14, 2001, or the comic, as in Tourists, Einzig's discerning eye discovers a universal human condi- tion on the street. Gus Powell’s photographs — like those of Einzig, Meyerowitz, and Winogrand — reveal daily urban absurdities, as well as an intensity of living and breathing among crowds of people.' Powell strives to attach monumentality both to unusual and typical moments arising in the human traf- fic of New York City. Despite the stillness of his images, he catches the dynamism of constantly changing relationships, thereby making the viewer privy to the role each urban element plays in the construc- tion of the street's "theater." In Still Life: Houston Street, each component of the composition creates correspondences, making up a geometry of interlocking sur- faces. Resembling a high Renaissance fresco in its careful array of action and its classical use of one-point perspective, Sixth Avenue Frieze (fig. 6) makes deliber- ate reference to classical art. Its figures are heroic, each playing an integral role within the layout of the scene. Powell’s anachronistic approach to this work firmly places the medium of photography within the discourse of art history. Powell’s work reveals that the visually and aurally clamorous street offers no respite from chaos. But Sylvia Plachy, the only contemporary photographer in Common Ground working in black and white, imbues her urban images with a reverential calm (fig. 4). Approximating stills from a silent film, her images read as arrested moments; they can verge on the abstract, requiring the viewer to rec- oncile the spatial relationships between forms. Her photographs contain the sto- ries of how and why they were made, rather than explicit narratives or mean- ings. Plachy's varying techniques encour- age a personal and empathic representa- tion, even when her photographs depict strangers or inanimate objects. Moving between various aesthetics and refusing to confine herself to one mode of pho- tography or another, Plachy creates her images with the technique she sees fit. She deviates from the ’straight’ photog- raphy often reserved for the street and resists the picturesque and romantic aesthetic of Pictorialism — a movement also drawn to the urban spaces, but working with a calculated attempt to approximate painting. Unlike Plachy’s calm images, Alice Attie’s photographs of Harlem are unquiet — communicating the concerns and trou- bled anticipations of an evolving communi- ty (fig. 5). Living in upper Manhattan, Attie explored the constant physical and social changes transforming the urban land- scape of her neighboring Harlem. 8 Her resulting photographic work, like color meditations in a style recalling Atget’s, honor individuals directly affected by gen- trification. These almost airless images record the tension between the goals of urban renewal and the attempt to pre- serve a dying neighborhood and its com- munity. Attie’s subjects, whether buildings Figure 5: Alice Attie, Tony Laundromat, 2000, C-print, Courtesy of the artist Figure 6: Gus Powell, Sixth Avenue Frieze. 2000, C-print, Courtesy of the Ariel Meyerowitz Gallery, NYC or people, exist in boldly colored and con- frontational photographs of loss. Although the images exhibited in Common Ground are excerpts from a longer series called "Harlem in Transition," each dramatic photograph can be read out of context — as an individual statement, observation, or challenge. In a series of diptychs of bodies in motion, Roswell Angier presents the most conceptual work in Common Ground. He photographs his subjects from the waist down and concentrates on qualities of movement, as if he were excerpting two frames from a nineteenth- century Eadweard Muybridge movement study. In juxtaposing two photographs, sometimes of the same street corner taken at different times, Angier illustrates what he calls, the "constant parade” of city life. His process includes pairing images to illuminate parallels in color, movement, posture, angle, or any nuance that creates a compelling juxtaposition. The parallels implied by the paired photo- graphs are not necessarily obvious, for we are offered no hidden narrative. Only when we realize that the elderly women in Somerville/NYC were photographed in two different cities, can we begin to apprehend the parallels. Angier's imagery, eschewing a focus on facial expressions and fleeting incidents, chal- lenge the classic approach to street pho- tography. Whereas the genre generally conveys movement through composition- al structure or through the subject's ges- ture or posture, movement in Angier's diptychs is itself his subject. Rather than confronting the chaos of neighborhood streets in Brooklyn, New York, Travis Huggett seeks scenes of des- olation (cover). His images record an urban environment in which we regularly move but a scenery that we intentionally ignore. This city is devoid of human activi- ty. Automobiles, inanimate reminders of human presence, inhabit the streets, but we see no drivers. Often, the contents of Huggett's photographs come into focus only when we examine the images close- ly. Red dots appear as streetlights and black loops, as barbed wire; fences, walls, wire, and guardrails seem ubiqui- tous. Drawn to the paradox of being locked out of a place he would never want to enter, Huggett photographs these uninviting scenes from afar and from behind fences. Alex Webb’s street portraits of both well-known and less familiar places in Florida are far less urban. 9 His eerie pho- tographs — unsettlingly real and simulta- neously suggesting dreamlike refuges from reality — induce unease. Fort Pierce fuses Florida's color palette with inner city grime (fig. 7). Visible through the store window, a flamingo pink house hints at the local tropical aesthetic, whereas the remaining colors, although equally saturated, appear disquieting. Like Friedlander, Webb frequently relies on dominant foreground elements. In Fort Pierce, an image in which interior and exterior space merge and flatten, the young boy lends a lighter tone to an oth- erwise bleak setting. The artist distorts the depth of field by eliminating the space between the boy's smiling face and the exiting woman. Despite such spatial ambiguity, the boy's blurred form signals the photographer's power to transform what might be read as a tech- nical error into a distinguishing feature of his work. Webb does not confine himself to one mode of representation. The very differ- ent Plant City maintains focus throughout the entire composition. Like Powell's Sixth Avenue Frieze (fig. 6), the spatial arrangement of the figures and the array and interrelationship of their gestures appear almost classically composed. The image is particularly striking in its con- trasts — between blinding sun and threat- ening storm, black and white skin, con- frontation and obliviousness. Cameras always in hand, the photogra- phers of Common Ground look to the street for inspiration, extracting beauty from the ordinary. Their images create metaphors and meaning about the human condition and our use of public space. These artists ask us to examine how we see. Whether discreetly unobtrusive or confrontational and assertive in their approach, the photographers in this exhi- bition live and work on a literal common ground with their subjects. Adjusting their movements to the pace of the city, or waiting patiently for that instant offering the right configuration of elements, they become part of the urban landscape they document. But even as we are prima- rily the viewers of Common Ground: Photographers on the Street, we may well find ourselves as its subject. 0 Figure 7: Alex Webb, Fort Pierce, Florida, 1989, Crystal archive, Courtesy of the artist Endnotes 1 Susan Sontag. On Photography. (New York: Dell Publishing, 1977) 42. 2 John Berger. About Looking. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980) 49. 3 John Berger, "Understanding a Photograph," Classic Essays on Photography, ed. Alan Trachtenberg. (New Haven: Leete's Island Books. 1980) 293. 4 This does not include Walker Evans's street pho- tographs that were created as part of the gov- ernment sponsored Farmer Security Administration project (1930s). 5 Lee Friedlander, The American Monument. (New York: Eakins Press) 1976. 6 Manos's photographs are excerpts from the forthcoming second part to his original series entitled. American Color (New York City: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc.) 1995. 7 Powell's photographs are part of a series origi- nally called "Lunch Pictures:" they are now col- lected in one volume entitled, The Company of Strangers (Atlanta. Georgia: J&L Books). 2003. 8 The photographs exhibited in Common Ground are excerpts from Attie's series entitled “Harlem in Transition." to be published in a volume in fall 2003. 9 Webb's photographs are excerpts from his book. From the Sunshine State (New York: Monacelli Press) 1996. Acknowledgements I thank Vera Kreilkamp and liana Blumberg for their insightful and helpful editing; for the design and production of all exhibition materials. Keith Ake and Andrew Capitos of the Boston College Office of Marketing and Communication ; for loans. Doug Bell and The Tufts University Gallery and the photogra- phers. And finally, for their assistance in coordinat- ing the exhibition and for their guidance and encouragement. I am grateful to Stoney Conley. Sofia Mavrides. John McCoy, and Nancy Netzer. Object List Lee Friedlander ib. 1934) 1. Shadow, NYC. 1966 Selenium print, 6 5 /ie" x 9 r/i6" Tufts University Gallery 1980.7.4.7 2. Chicago. 1975 Selenium print, 6 5/8” x 10" Tufts University Gallery 1980.8.4.7 Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) 3. NYC. 1968 Silver gelatin print. 9" x 13 n/i6" Tufts University Gallery 1979.1.2 4. NYC. 1972 Silver gelatin print, 9" x 13 3 /8" Tufts University Gallery 1979.1.11 Joel Meyerowitz ib. 1938) 5. New Year's Eve, NYC, 1965 Silver gelatin print, 16" x 20” Tufts University Gallery 2002.02.11 6. Fifth Avenue. NYC, 1968 Silver gelatin print, 16" x 20" Tufts University Gallery 2002.02.06 Melanie Einzig (b. 1967) 7. Sept. 14. 2001 C-print. 14” x 11" Courtesy of the artist 8. Tourists. 2002 C-print, 11” x 14" Courtesy of the artist Travis N. Huggett (b. 1975) 9. Park Avenue I, Brooklyn. 2003 C-print, 10" x 12" Courtesy of the artist 10. Park Avenue III, Brooklyn, 2003 C-print, 11 3/4” x 9 3/4" Courtesy of the artist Constantine Manos (b. 1934) 11. Los Angeles, CA. 2001 Ink-jet print, 13" x 19" Courtesy of the artist 12. USA. Venice Beach. CA. 1997 Ink-jet print, 13”x 19" Courtesy of the artist Alice Attie (b. 1950) 13. Apollo. 2000 C-print, 20" x 16" Courtesy of the artist 14. Tony Laundromat. 2000 C-print, 16" x 20" Courtesy of the artist Sylvia Plachy (b. 1943) 15. Bird on Wire. 1987 Silver gelatin print, 17 1/2" x 7 1/2" Courtesy of the artist 16. Confetti. 1993 Silver gelatin print, 16" x 20" Courtesy of the artist Roswell Angier (b. 1940) 17. Somerville/New York City. 2003 Ink-jet print, 19" x 13" Courtesy of the artist 18. New York City, 2003 Ink-jet print, 19" x 13" Courtesy of the artist Gus Powell ib. 1974) 19. Still Life: Houston Street. 2000 C-print, 16" x 20" Courtesy of the Ariel Meyerowitz Gallery, NYC 20. Sixth Avenue Frieze. 2000 C-print. 16" x 20" Courtesy of the Ariel Meyerowitz Gallery. NYC Alex Webb (b. 1952) 21. Plant City. Florida. 1989 Crystal archive, 20" x 24" Courtesy of the artist 22. Fort Pierce. Florida. 1989 Crystal archive. 20" x 24" Courtesy of the artist Front cover: Travis N. Huggett, Park Avenue I, Brooklyn. 2003. C-print, 10" x 12". Courtesy of the artist MCMULLEN MUSEUM • BOSTON COLLEGE