ART ABOUT TOWN WITH PETER FRANK
“Experimental Modernism,” and “Romantic Modernism.” She provides handy descriptions of these rubrics, but chooses and arranges the examples with a didactic grace driven by some of the same taste and sheer love of photography that motivated the Vernons. Salvesen consistently finds images that rhyme across countries, decades, techniques, and ideologies, for instance pairing the skeletal images of trees or the looming spaces of churches by photographers whose lives and allegiances were otherwise markedly disparate. Each of Salvesen’s four strains occupies its own time frame, but – like any good cultural phenomenon – none too tidily, and she goes to great lengths to identify examples of all four tendencies in the time periods of all three others. Don’t be surprised (much less jarred) by finding a William Henry Fox Talbot portrait, otherwise the early-cameratic model of Victorian propriety, displayed with photographs a century newer. Actually, you’ll be surprised by the fact that you’re not being jarred; there is a great sense of continuity, technical and optical, among the selection of works here. There are few color photos, for instance, and the
CHARLES HARBUTT, TRIPTYCH, (1978, PRINTED 1978) • GELATIN SILVER PRINT. IMAGE: 8 X 12 IN. MAT: 16 X 16 IN. THE MARJORIE AND LEONARD VERNON COLLLECTION, GIFT OF THE ANNENBERG FOUNDATION, ACQUIRED FROM CAROL VERNON AND ROBERT TURBIN © COPYRIGHT © BY CHARLES HARBUTT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COURTESY PETER FETTERMAN GALLERY. PHOTO © 2013 MUSEUM ASSOCIATES/LACMA
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