2008 Woodie Awards
Capture and Release
Photographing Humanity and Humanizing Photography
Menachem Wecker
Issue date: 4/18/05 Section: Arts & Culture
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First Seen: Photographs of the World's Peoples, 1840-1880
February 1 - May 1, 2005
Dahesh Museum
580 Madison Avenue (at 57th Street)
New York, NY 10022
Phone: (212)759-0606
http://www.daheshmuseum.org/
The current exhibit at the Dahesh Museum "First Seen" is shockingly beautiful in its execution. Wall after wall after wall showcases over 250, nineteenth century photographs of subjects from all over the world, and they are the kinds of photographs that come from the time when photography used to be painterly and beautiful. Instead of glossy and sparkly surfaces, these photographs speak in nuance, variegation and depth.
Take Felice Beato's 1864 "Samurai Costume, Front and Back." A double portrait of a Samurai warrior in full body armor, harboring what appears a white tassel (surrender?) in one hand, while the other rests beside his sword and sheath, the photographs simultaneously reveal the Samurai's face-set deeply in an intimidating scowl-and his more vulnerable back. The location is nondescript, and the Samurai seems set anywhere or nowhere, as in Richard Avedon's photography, where heightened, empty white backgrounds force the character of the sitters to leap forward, almost into the audience's arms.
The Dahesh Museum is perfectly set up for this sort of endeavor, as "the only institution in the United States devoted to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting works by Europe's academically trained artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries." Walking into the Dahesh is like walking through a portal where the postmodern New York City cityscape dissolves into a calmer, more silent meditative space where color, and tone and aura matter far more than traffic gridlocks and flashing neon lights.
"First Seen" requires a particularly calm sort of investigation, and even the titles are telling: from "Yukichi Fukuzawa, Ambassador" to "Man With Performing Goat" to "Syrian Muslim Women in Local Dress," from "Hairy People of Burma" to "Street Peddlers Constantinople." The camera looks everywhere and records everything, and as we would expect, it finds two Jews in its path.
February 1 - May 1, 2005
Dahesh Museum
580 Madison Avenue (at 57th Street)
New York, NY 10022
Phone: (212)759-0606
http://www.daheshmuseum.org/
The current exhibit at the Dahesh Museum "First Seen" is shockingly beautiful in its execution. Wall after wall after wall showcases over 250, nineteenth century photographs of subjects from all over the world, and they are the kinds of photographs that come from the time when photography used to be painterly and beautiful. Instead of glossy and sparkly surfaces, these photographs speak in nuance, variegation and depth.
Take Felice Beato's 1864 "Samurai Costume, Front and Back." A double portrait of a Samurai warrior in full body armor, harboring what appears a white tassel (surrender?) in one hand, while the other rests beside his sword and sheath, the photographs simultaneously reveal the Samurai's face-set deeply in an intimidating scowl-and his more vulnerable back. The location is nondescript, and the Samurai seems set anywhere or nowhere, as in Richard Avedon's photography, where heightened, empty white backgrounds force the character of the sitters to leap forward, almost into the audience's arms.
The Dahesh Museum is perfectly set up for this sort of endeavor, as "the only institution in the United States devoted to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting works by Europe's academically trained artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries." Walking into the Dahesh is like walking through a portal where the postmodern New York City cityscape dissolves into a calmer, more silent meditative space where color, and tone and aura matter far more than traffic gridlocks and flashing neon lights.
"First Seen" requires a particularly calm sort of investigation, and even the titles are telling: from "Yukichi Fukuzawa, Ambassador" to "Man With Performing Goat" to "Syrian Muslim Women in Local Dress," from "Hairy People of Burma" to "Street Peddlers Constantinople." The camera looks everywhere and records everything, and as we would expect, it finds two Jews in its path.
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