Mirrors and Windows [antikvár]

M-Il ^i: / 11, ' I mirn-mM In this book I hope to provide a balanced but critically focused view of the art of photography as it has evolved in the United States during the past two decades. I hope, in other words, to be not only just but clear. In those circumstances where there seems a conflict between the two goals, I will try my best to favor clarity, on the grounds that clear error may be more instructive than vague truth. The book is a selection of 127 pictures that seem exemplary of the work of American photographers who have come to public attention during the past twenty years. This definition excludes such major contemporary figures as Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Irving Penn, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer, and others whose work was already a significant force by 1950 or earlier. The pictures included here are arranged in two sections. This arrangement is designed to illustrate a critical thesis which 1 hope may offer a simple and useful perspective on the bewildering variety of technical, aesthetic, functional, and political philosophies that characterize contemporary photography's colloquium. This thesis suggests that there is a fundamental dichotomy in contemporary photography between those who think of photography as a means of self-expression and those who think of it as a method of exploration. This idea will be argued later in this essay. The changes in American photography during the past twenty years have been profound, and go to the root issue of the photographer's definition of his function. In large part these changes are the expression of mutations in the professional circumstances and artistic environment in which the photographer works. To understand better the significance of these recent changes it would be useful to review the situation of photography during the preceding period, with special attention to the cracial decade of the fifties. The general movement of American photography during the past quarter century has been from public to private concerns. It is true that much of the most vital photography done in this country during the preceding period was also essendally private. The work of Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston made concessions neither to the large concerns of public polity nor to the small ones of public taste, and although Paul Strand insisted in his written credos that social morality was the ultimate measure of an artist, only his most determined followers could discern a clear connection between his work and his stated philosophical position. There were, however, others of the period—photographere whose work was in fact much more widely known—who provided an alternative model. Edward Steichen's brilliant celebrity portraits, illustra-dons, and fashion photographs provide a conspicuous example. Only slightly less well known, and in a comparable idiom, was work by Cecil Beaton, George Piatt Lynes, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Anton Bruehl, Paul Outerbridge, and others. Outside of the studio, a more radical definition of the photographer's role was being developed by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bill Brandt, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorodiea Lange, and others who consciously chose the politically and socially significant issues of the day as the raw material of their art. Each assumed that it was the photographer's function to act as a trustworthy interpreter of the events and issues he was privileged to witness. Many of the best of this group were European, but die natural home of their work was the popular magazine; thus its tradition was international rather than local. For a quarter century the magazines gave promise of providing a structure that might accommodate an important part of the best of photography, that part directed toward issues of broad concern. It is this writer's impression that as late as the 1950s most young photographers of high ambition still considered the magazine a potential