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Annie Leibovitz - Ansel Adams Show in Wash, DC - a review
LittleLew
Registered Users Posts: 368 Major grins
For photographers or lovers of photography who live in the Washington, DC area there is an almost unparalleled opportunity to see, at one venue, exhibitions by two icons in the field. Although it is tempting to say that they are polar opposites, there are no such things as poles in this art multiverse. They are however dramatically different, in their techniques, in their attitudes and in the final images.
The Corcoran is in very downtown Washington, virtually within stone’s throw of the White House – if you are interested in throwing stones at the White House. I got there well before noon on a very cold Saturday in December and the crowd had not started to accumulate so I had the chance to wander through both exhibits without the pressure to move along. The Adams exhibit was smaller – albeit it was a large collection – and so I chose to walk through that first. The following is from the brochure.
ANSEL ADAMS takes a new look at the work of this important and influential photographer through approximately 125 images drawn from The Lane Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Acquired by William H. and Saundra B. Lane directly from the artist during a 10-year period in the early 196os and 1970s, the photographs showcase Adams’ extraordinary range and span the length of his six-decade career, with particular emphasis on his early work. Rarely exhibited prints are presented along with several of Adams’ iconic landscapes, offering new insight into one of the very few photographers in the history of the medium whose name and images enjoy worldwide recognition.
Known primarily for his dramatic black-and-white vistas of Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, Adams was in fact a versatile photographer who made portraits of artist friends, close-up nature views, striking architectural and urban views, and documentary images. Ansel Adams is arranged chronologically and divided into several sections: Early Work (including photographs of the High Sierra, Canadian Rockies, and Pueblo Indians), Group f/64: Exploring Straight Photography, Yosemite, The American Southwest, Alfred Stieglitz and New York, The National Parks, and Late Work.
Let me say in advance that I have, like most photographers who came out of B&W photography, an enormous amount of respect and admiration for AA. I was a devotee of his zone system and, for several years, spent much of my photographic effort trying to gain the control that he exhibits. Except for reproductions in art books, I had seen only two of his prints ‘in person’; I saw ‘Monolith, The Face of Half-Dome’ at a gallery in Carmel, California in the 90’s. In the very early 70’s at a small gallery in NYC I saw ‘Moonrise, Hernandez New Mexico’ and, to my utter disgrace, I walked away from the opportunity to buy the print for $175.
The brochure for the show had great small reproductions of the two works I mentioned before, plus ‘Aspens, Northern New Mexico’, ‘Freeway Interchange, Los Angeles’ and a rare 35 mm candid entitled “Georgia O’Keefe and Orville Cox’. So I was very excited to get the chance to see so much of his work at one time, in one place. This all ended when I walked into the gallery. The images were technically perfect. Composition, tonal range, dof, focus – all spot on. I’m certain that I could find all ten possible tones in every one of the images on display. It was a virtuoso display of control – without a spark of life in it. There were exceptions of course. The five pictures chosen for the brochure clearly rose above the rest in terms of composition and impact – the great majority of the pictures shown were just, dare I say it, boring.
To me, the most interesting and memorable picture on display is the candid shot, taken with 35 mm, of Georgia O’Keefe and Orville Cox (who was their travel guide in 1937 while traveling through the southwest ).
http://www.anseladams.com/ProductImages/posters/15441027.jpg
This picture has life and virtually jumps off of the wall compared to the zestless pictures of majestic landscapes that surround it.
Perhaps I am jaded by the flash and color of today’s photography, perhaps I should give more credit to the innovativeness of AA who established the methodology of control, who gave meaning to ‘visualization’, but from where I am, where we are today in photography, technical achievement needs to be matched by meaning and impact. Just getting it right isn’t enough.
An interesting point – at several places in the exhibition, the notes posted next to the picture made reference to the pains that AA took to expose the same scene with different color filters to get the effect that he wanted. The image of Half-Dome was created as it ought to be, not as it really appears. So much for the arguements purity and the ethics of post-processing; AA did what he could to match the captured image to the image in his mind's eye.
Next to the entrance to the AA show is a picture of Adams in his darkroom. Adams is this jolly little man, sort of a Edmund Gwenn as Santa Claus figure, not at all the tall, ascetic person that one would picture. This charming, well-lit, well-composed picture was taken, coincidentally enough, by Annie Leibovitz in 1979 when she was a photographer for Rolling Stone.
From the brochure for the Show: Annie Leibovitz: : A Photographer’s Life, 1990—2005
From the very beginning of her career, Annie Leibovitz has redefined the modern celebrity portrait, altering the way we think about the people who populate our cultural landscape.
Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990—2005 includes more than 200 photographs, encompassing well-known work made on editorial assignment as well as images of her family and close friends. “I don’t have two lives,” l.eihovitz says. “This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it.”
The exhibition features many of Leibovitz’s best-known portraits of public figures,…….. Leibovitz’s assignment work includes reportage from the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s, the election of l-Iillarv Clinton to the U.S. Senate, and the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. The artist has photographed landscapes from the American West, the Jordanian desert, and the wilds of upstate New York, and these are feature prominently.
At the heart of the exhibition, Leibovitz’s personal photography documents intimate moments from her life, including the birth and childhood of her three daughters, as well as vacations, reunions and rites of passage with her parents and extended family. A Photographer’s Life threads together the two sides of Leibovitz’s work both chronologically and creatively, projecting a narrative of the artist’s private world against the backdrop of her public image as one of America’s best -known portrait photographers.
I had already read/looked at the book which shares the origins of this exhibit and was greatly impressed. More than the exhibit the book shows the deep love and attachment that AL had for Susan Sontag, the writer, and the deep pain she suffered during Susan’s illness and death. She documented much of this time in a series of deeply affecting photographs. These photographs and those many of her family and friends, virtually all done in bw, demonstrate the truth of what Leibovitz has said before, that photography is part of her life, that it is her life, inseparable. And that is what makes this such a marvelous show, perhaps the best I have seen.
There is a terrific complexity to this show; on one hand, there are the virtually perfect, big-production staged portraits of famous people, all wonderfully lit, wonderfully staged, wonderfully printed. These are the AL trademarks. They somehow have her stamp on them yet the subject’s personality is directly incorporated in the costume and pose and setting and are the epitome of expensive, perfectly crafted portraits. On the other hand, there are the hundreds of much more casual pictures taken of friends and family, invariably well exposed, well-framed but often the content makes them little more than snapshots. Yet the ‘snapshots’ are grouped in ways that make a complex picture-story or impression. Perhaps the most interesting part is the extent to which she has incorporated her photography so much into her life outside the studio, always in BW, always a direct look at the world around her. I recognize that AL has the resources to collect and print even her snapshots ‘perfectly’ yet she has chosen to show many of these in a virtually unedited way – the file shots tacked to a wall, with notes and annotations
She is strongest in her portraits, a direct confrontational style, and the images give the viewer a lot to look at. They are never stock standard views but always are evocative of the character and life outside the frame. The consistency of her style throughout the years, rather than showing a lack of growth, demonstrates that she fully realized her artistic eye early and has maintained this impressive style for almost 40 years.
I am often disappointed in large shows. Either the artist has such a consistency of style that it overwhelms the content and thus the pictures become boring (a Claude Monet exhibit makes me look for the exit) or has not yet developed a consistent enough style and so there is no mood to appreciate (see any beginner photo board where the newcomer puts up a bunch of pix and asks what you think.). AL, however, has this distinctive direct style, whether in the large portraits or the informal ‘snaps’, that allows the individuality of the content to merge with the artist in a surprising and exciting way.
There were some pictures I didn’t get, several printed with what seems like the edge of the negative showing. This kind of bombastic, ‘look at me, I frame perfectly’ gesture seems out of character and out of place. The pictures were excellent however.
AL is human – luckily for the rest of us. She has lately tried some landscapes and, in a search to find something new, has taken them from a helicopter and incorporated lots of motion blur. Six or seven of these are printed very, very large and are displayed in the last room of the show. They are, in general, failures and quickly become wallpaper.
The AL show is worthwhile to see again and again, there is a lot to see in the pictures and there are too many to appreciate at one time – but it is an hour drive, the crowds get in the way and I have compromised by buying the book. I recommend it to all.
Cliff Notes: Ansel Adams show has a few highlights, Annie Leibovitz show is terrific.
Ansel Adams show runs through January 27,2008
Annie Leibovitz show runs through January 13 ,2008
.
.
.
.
Lew
The Corcoran is in very downtown Washington, virtually within stone’s throw of the White House – if you are interested in throwing stones at the White House. I got there well before noon on a very cold Saturday in December and the crowd had not started to accumulate so I had the chance to wander through both exhibits without the pressure to move along. The Adams exhibit was smaller – albeit it was a large collection – and so I chose to walk through that first. The following is from the brochure.
ANSEL ADAMS takes a new look at the work of this important and influential photographer through approximately 125 images drawn from The Lane Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Acquired by William H. and Saundra B. Lane directly from the artist during a 10-year period in the early 196os and 1970s, the photographs showcase Adams’ extraordinary range and span the length of his six-decade career, with particular emphasis on his early work. Rarely exhibited prints are presented along with several of Adams’ iconic landscapes, offering new insight into one of the very few photographers in the history of the medium whose name and images enjoy worldwide recognition.
Known primarily for his dramatic black-and-white vistas of Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, Adams was in fact a versatile photographer who made portraits of artist friends, close-up nature views, striking architectural and urban views, and documentary images. Ansel Adams is arranged chronologically and divided into several sections: Early Work (including photographs of the High Sierra, Canadian Rockies, and Pueblo Indians), Group f/64: Exploring Straight Photography, Yosemite, The American Southwest, Alfred Stieglitz and New York, The National Parks, and Late Work.
Let me say in advance that I have, like most photographers who came out of B&W photography, an enormous amount of respect and admiration for AA. I was a devotee of his zone system and, for several years, spent much of my photographic effort trying to gain the control that he exhibits. Except for reproductions in art books, I had seen only two of his prints ‘in person’; I saw ‘Monolith, The Face of Half-Dome’ at a gallery in Carmel, California in the 90’s. In the very early 70’s at a small gallery in NYC I saw ‘Moonrise, Hernandez New Mexico’ and, to my utter disgrace, I walked away from the opportunity to buy the print for $175.
The brochure for the show had great small reproductions of the two works I mentioned before, plus ‘Aspens, Northern New Mexico’, ‘Freeway Interchange, Los Angeles’ and a rare 35 mm candid entitled “Georgia O’Keefe and Orville Cox’. So I was very excited to get the chance to see so much of his work at one time, in one place. This all ended when I walked into the gallery. The images were technically perfect. Composition, tonal range, dof, focus – all spot on. I’m certain that I could find all ten possible tones in every one of the images on display. It was a virtuoso display of control – without a spark of life in it. There were exceptions of course. The five pictures chosen for the brochure clearly rose above the rest in terms of composition and impact – the great majority of the pictures shown were just, dare I say it, boring.
To me, the most interesting and memorable picture on display is the candid shot, taken with 35 mm, of Georgia O’Keefe and Orville Cox (who was their travel guide in 1937 while traveling through the southwest ).
http://www.anseladams.com/ProductImages/posters/15441027.jpg
This picture has life and virtually jumps off of the wall compared to the zestless pictures of majestic landscapes that surround it.
Perhaps I am jaded by the flash and color of today’s photography, perhaps I should give more credit to the innovativeness of AA who established the methodology of control, who gave meaning to ‘visualization’, but from where I am, where we are today in photography, technical achievement needs to be matched by meaning and impact. Just getting it right isn’t enough.
An interesting point – at several places in the exhibition, the notes posted next to the picture made reference to the pains that AA took to expose the same scene with different color filters to get the effect that he wanted. The image of Half-Dome was created as it ought to be, not as it really appears. So much for the arguements purity and the ethics of post-processing; AA did what he could to match the captured image to the image in his mind's eye.
Next to the entrance to the AA show is a picture of Adams in his darkroom. Adams is this jolly little man, sort of a Edmund Gwenn as Santa Claus figure, not at all the tall, ascetic person that one would picture. This charming, well-lit, well-composed picture was taken, coincidentally enough, by Annie Leibovitz in 1979 when she was a photographer for Rolling Stone.
From the brochure for the Show: Annie Leibovitz: : A Photographer’s Life, 1990—2005
From the very beginning of her career, Annie Leibovitz has redefined the modern celebrity portrait, altering the way we think about the people who populate our cultural landscape.
Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990—2005 includes more than 200 photographs, encompassing well-known work made on editorial assignment as well as images of her family and close friends. “I don’t have two lives,” l.eihovitz says. “This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it.”
The exhibition features many of Leibovitz’s best-known portraits of public figures,…….. Leibovitz’s assignment work includes reportage from the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s, the election of l-Iillarv Clinton to the U.S. Senate, and the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. The artist has photographed landscapes from the American West, the Jordanian desert, and the wilds of upstate New York, and these are feature prominently.
At the heart of the exhibition, Leibovitz’s personal photography documents intimate moments from her life, including the birth and childhood of her three daughters, as well as vacations, reunions and rites of passage with her parents and extended family. A Photographer’s Life threads together the two sides of Leibovitz’s work both chronologically and creatively, projecting a narrative of the artist’s private world against the backdrop of her public image as one of America’s best -known portrait photographers.
I had already read/looked at the book which shares the origins of this exhibit and was greatly impressed. More than the exhibit the book shows the deep love and attachment that AL had for Susan Sontag, the writer, and the deep pain she suffered during Susan’s illness and death. She documented much of this time in a series of deeply affecting photographs. These photographs and those many of her family and friends, virtually all done in bw, demonstrate the truth of what Leibovitz has said before, that photography is part of her life, that it is her life, inseparable. And that is what makes this such a marvelous show, perhaps the best I have seen.
There is a terrific complexity to this show; on one hand, there are the virtually perfect, big-production staged portraits of famous people, all wonderfully lit, wonderfully staged, wonderfully printed. These are the AL trademarks. They somehow have her stamp on them yet the subject’s personality is directly incorporated in the costume and pose and setting and are the epitome of expensive, perfectly crafted portraits. On the other hand, there are the hundreds of much more casual pictures taken of friends and family, invariably well exposed, well-framed but often the content makes them little more than snapshots. Yet the ‘snapshots’ are grouped in ways that make a complex picture-story or impression. Perhaps the most interesting part is the extent to which she has incorporated her photography so much into her life outside the studio, always in BW, always a direct look at the world around her. I recognize that AL has the resources to collect and print even her snapshots ‘perfectly’ yet she has chosen to show many of these in a virtually unedited way – the file shots tacked to a wall, with notes and annotations
She is strongest in her portraits, a direct confrontational style, and the images give the viewer a lot to look at. They are never stock standard views but always are evocative of the character and life outside the frame. The consistency of her style throughout the years, rather than showing a lack of growth, demonstrates that she fully realized her artistic eye early and has maintained this impressive style for almost 40 years.
I am often disappointed in large shows. Either the artist has such a consistency of style that it overwhelms the content and thus the pictures become boring (a Claude Monet exhibit makes me look for the exit) or has not yet developed a consistent enough style and so there is no mood to appreciate (see any beginner photo board where the newcomer puts up a bunch of pix and asks what you think.). AL, however, has this distinctive direct style, whether in the large portraits or the informal ‘snaps’, that allows the individuality of the content to merge with the artist in a surprising and exciting way.
There were some pictures I didn’t get, several printed with what seems like the edge of the negative showing. This kind of bombastic, ‘look at me, I frame perfectly’ gesture seems out of character and out of place. The pictures were excellent however.
AL is human – luckily for the rest of us. She has lately tried some landscapes and, in a search to find something new, has taken them from a helicopter and incorporated lots of motion blur. Six or seven of these are printed very, very large and are displayed in the last room of the show. They are, in general, failures and quickly become wallpaper.
The AL show is worthwhile to see again and again, there is a lot to see in the pictures and there are too many to appreciate at one time – but it is an hour drive, the crowds get in the way and I have compromised by buying the book. I recommend it to all.
Cliff Notes: Ansel Adams show has a few highlights, Annie Leibovitz show is terrific.
Ansel Adams show runs through January 27,2008
Annie Leibovitz show runs through January 13 ,2008
.
.
.
.
Lew
New pictures at LewLortonphoto.com
0
Comments
Photos that don't suck / 365 / Film & Lomography
Museum opens at ten. On weekends, parking is fairly easy before 11 on adjacent streets behind museum. No metering. Closest Metro is Farragut Square West or North. Food in museum is good->OK but a little pricey.
BTW - why the "hateful" prefix?
-Fleetwood Mac
Sorry that I left that out, now added to OP.
Ansel Adams show runs through January 27,2008
Annie Leibovitz show runs through January 13 ,2008
I live in Columbia, MD, a planned community. Upper-middle class sterility. Totally uninteresting place. When I had children at home it was heaven, tot-lots, great schools, miles of bike-paths, great amenities - but for an adult photographer it has all the innate charm and beauty of an immense golf-course.
:puke1 :puke1 :puke1