PASADENA, CA.- The Norton Simon Museum presents Face It: The Photographic Portrait, an exhibition of portraits by some of the most important artist-photographers of the 20th century, including Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Diane Arbus, Imogen Cunningham, Judy Dater and Minor White. Drawn from the Museum’s significant collection of photographs, assembled largely in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the 20 works on view feature a range of subjects, from the young to the old, in varying poses and expressions, but all invoking us to look closer. On view in the Museum’s small exhibitions gallery on the main level, the exhibition runs from April 4 through Aug. 11, 2014.
Portraiture customarily takes on the aura of fact, as it communicates information about a sitter’s visage. When captured through the lens of the camera, such likenesses serve as surrogates for reality. Photos of friends and family, displayed in our homes, and miniature images of them, nestled in our wallets or saved on our smart phones, serve a similar function. Face It: The Photographic Portrait assumes that there is more to the photographic portrait than meets the eye—it bids us to look for the affective moment, the human interest, and the metaphorical associations inherent in portraits of persons known or anonymous. Distanced from the context of time, culture and motive, we impose a wide range of interpretations that issue from our personal experiences and sympathies. In our reactions, we learn about ourselves and become transformed through our experience of the photograph. And through our viewing, the photograph, too, is transformed.
Historically, humankind has invested the head and the eyes with great importance—as the seat of the intellect and as the mirror of the soul, respectively. It is small wonder, then, that the close-up remains so compelling. Indeed, many photographers have sought out the challenge of portraiture precisely because it demands an exchange between the artist and the sitter. Here, inventiveness, skill and even patience combine to elicit meaning and response in what has long been considered an “anxious” craft. In Face It, pictures by Álvarez Bravo, Arbus, Cunningham, White, Dater, John Gossage, Philippe Halsman and Lee Miller, among others, demonstrate the breadth and scope of creative approaches.
The haunting photograph of a young girl, Miss Juare, 1934, by Mexico’s greatest photographer, Álvarez Bravo, is full of visual and psychological texture. A master of composition and style, Álvarez Bravo has been celebrated for imparting the rhythms and tenor of his country with sympathy and clarity. As we look at his work anew, from a 21st-century perspective, we might wonder how our interpretations are affected by the distance of time, in an age of increased cultural awareness.
Dater has been creating compelling and insightful photographic portraits and self-portraits for more than 50 years. A founding member of the medium’s breakout moment from the authority of modernism in the 1960s, Dater has distinguished herself by drawing out transitory moments of genuine vulnerability in male and female subjects alike. About portraiture, she notes, “People tend to reveal themselves to the camera and express something about themselves, perhaps even something hidden from them.” What Dater has identified here is “portrait behavior,” a quality evident in the exhibited prints and yet difficult to characterize because it is so subjective. George Livia, 1996, and Maria Rosario Dominici, 1998, demonstrate two modes of portrait behavior that appeal to our ability to decipher self-presentation, self-consciousness and the tradition of posing subjects based on gender.
“Uncharted” and “uncomfortable” are terms that have been used to describe portraits produced by Arbus and Robert Delford Brown. Retired Man and His Wife at Home in a Nudist Camp One Morning, N.J., 1963, for instance, was a shocking subject in the 1960s. Yet, Arbus’ frankness and apparently neutral perspective contradict any sense of prudishness that might arise. Likewise, Delford Brown, an innovator connected to the “happenings” and performance art of the 1960s, touches a nerve by portraying himself as defunct in Memorial Photo: Self-Portrait, c. 1970. One of the most technically experimental prints in the exhibition, this half-ironic, half-sincere appropriation of the cemetery portrait comments on the construction of identity.
“Portrait behavior” takes many forms. In the case of Dater’s Looking Back, June Wayne, 2006, Douglas Gilbert’s Ture, Lake Tismarec, Sweden, 1968, and Charles Traub’s Portrait: Ralph Eugene Meatyard, 1971, we may puzzle out whether we are encountering resistance from the subject or the artful orchestration of the artist. We feel compelled to ask about the intent of the presentation: what degree of artistic control, or complicity, has been exercised?
In the work of the influential photographer and educator White, spiritual and metaphorical concerns are foremost. William LaRue, Point Lobos, California, 1960, depicts White’s principal model. The artist’s feeling-oriented photographs depend not only on his disciplined search to communicate the essence of his subject, but also on our active contemplation as a means to experience the transcendental.
Viewers are invited to experience these photographic portraits with the understanding that their reactions and interpretations are important and contribute to the continuing vitality of each photograph. Visitors can share their responses with #NSMFaceIt and follow the conversation @nortonsimon.
Face It is organized by Curator Gloria Williams Sander. It is on view in the Museum’s small rotating gallery on the main level, adjacent to the Membership Desk.
