Photographic Abstraction

Photographic Abstraction

Photographic Abstraction August 16–December 22, 2022

Photographic Abstraction Since the advent of photography, artists have used cameras for more than documentation. Much like abstract painters and sculptors, many twentieth-century photographers became less concerned with depicting their subjects and more engaged in capturing form, shadow, and pattern.

Centering formalism over realism in their images, these lens-based artists have used abstract visual language to encourage the viewer to participate in the creation of meaning.

In this selection of photographs, abstraction is achieved through unusual perspective, strong lighting, close proximity to the subject, and cropping.

While these photographs may contain discernible remnants of the perceived world—a cloud, a sink, or a bird—their true impact lies in the shapes, textures, and atmospheres they expose.

Laura Aguilar

Gary Goldberg

Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Barbara Karant

Ruth Bernhard

André Kertész

Marilyn Bridges

Victor Landweber

Peter Brown

Arthur S. Siegel

Wynn Bullock

Aaron Siskind

Harry Callahan

Paul Strand

Sarah Charlesworth

Arthur Taussig

Judith Cherry

Brett Weston

Alan Cohen

Edward Weston

Imogen Cunningham

Minor White

Roy DeCarava

Don Worth

Daniel Farber

Thomas Wynne

Exhibition support is provided by Dillon Foundation, and Erica Peterson and Bart Dillashaw.

LAURA AGUILAR San Gabriel, CA 1959–Long Beach, CA 2018 Grounded #105 Inkjet print, 2006–2007, printed 2018 University of Nebraska–Lincoln Charles W. Rain and Charlotte Rain Koch Gallery Fund U-6994.2022 RECENT ACQUISITION

In the mid-1990s, Laura Aguilar began to photograph her naked body in natural settings, often melding with the surrounding landscape. For Grounded, her final series and the only one in color, she traveled to Joshua Tree National Park in California. She was drawn to the serene setting dotted with large rock formations. In several photographs made there, she shaped her body to mimic nearby boulders and closely cropped the images to blur the distinctions between flesh and stone. By photographing herself and her friends, Aguilar commemorates the lives and bodies of working-class, queer Chicana women.

MANUEL ALVAREZ BRAVO Mexico City, Mexico 1902–Mexico City, Mexico 2002 Carrizo y Tele [Reed and Television] Gelatin silver print, circa 1976 University of Nebraska–Lincoln Gift of John Marvin U-3657.1 .1 983

Manuel Alvarez Bravo developed his surreal photographic style in Mexico, far away from Paris and New York, the two centers for avant-garde photography in the 1920s and 1930s. He is part of a group of post-revolutionary Mexican artists such as Frida Kahlo and Rufino Tamayo who imbue cultural heritage, modernity, and mysticism into their work. Walking around Mexico City and the countryside, Alvarez Bravo captured abstract images by juxtaposing, concealing, and isolating everyday objects and figures. In Carrizo y Tele [Reed and Television], leaves appear animated, crawling across the photograph like a spider posed to attack technological intrusion. For Alvarez Bravo, a parable lies in every photograph.

SARAH CHARLESWORTH East Orange, NJ 1947–Canaan, CT 2013 Candle Cibachrome print laminated with lacquered frame, 2002 Nebraska Art Association Woods Charitable Fund N-783.2003

I don’t think of myself as a photographer. I’ve engaged questions regarding photography’s role in culture…but it is an engagement with a problem rather than a medium.

—Sarah Charlesworth Sarah Charlesworth is part of the Pictures Generation, a group of American artists who came into prominence in the 1970s for their critical analysis of imagery from mass media. Charlesworth began her work by isolating images from newspapers, magazines, and books to highlight their ability, or inability, to convey information, history, or desire.

Beginning in 1992, Charlesworth began photographing objects herself and continued to explore their symbolic potential once removed from context. For her Neverland series, she presents objects on fields of color with matching lacquered frames. In many works from this series, including Candle, the objects blend in with the background to the point of near obscurity, complicating the act of seeing for the viewer.

ALAN COHEN born Harrisburg, PA 1943 Robert Morris 132-3 Gelatin silver print, 1989 University of Nebraska–Lincoln Gift of Dr. Susan F. Walsh U-4488.1 992

Having studied under Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design in Chicago, Alan Cohen began exploring the possibilities of creating compositional abstraction in public spaces. For his series based on a sculpture by Robert Morris installed outside Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, Cohen placed a small reflective piece of plexiglass within Morris’s structure and photographed the overlapping planes of aluminum mesh. The result is a complex amalgam of geometric shapes and shadows that leaves the viewer with few hints of the subject.

Cohen’s intervention led to photographs that reinterpret Morris’s sculpture, rather than merely document it.

Robert Morris, Untitled, 1969, expanded aluminum, overall: 60 × 126 × 366 in., Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Gift of the artist and Fund for Contemporary Art. © Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM Portland, OR 1883–San Francisco, CA 1976 Two Callas Gelatin silver print, circa 1929 University of Nebraska–Lincoln Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust H-1163.1 966

Imogen Cunningham’s interest in botanical subject matter began when she was taking care of her young children at home and “couldn’t get out of [her] own backyard.” Her photographs highlight the natural, nearly abstract designs found in flora. In Two Callas, Cunningham gathered two lilies from her neighborhood and photographed their white, swirling forms against a dark velvet background using a combination of daylight and blue tungsten photofloods for a continuous light source.

Cunningham was a member of Group f.64, a short-lived collective of California photographers in the early 1930s, who captured images in sharp detail and with the greatest depth of focus. Their formation was a reaction against the rise of avant-garde photo-manipulative styles that originated in Europe. Group f.64 included other West Coast photographers such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and his son Brett Weston.

ROY DECARAVA New York, NY 1919–New York, NY 2009 Bird on a Spike Gelatin silver print, 1962 University of Nebraska–Lincoln Catherine M. Johnsen Acquisition Fund U-690.1 970

Roy DeCarava used his camera to capture the sights and sounds of Harlem and other predominantly Black neighborhoods in New York City. Beginning in the 1940s, his work was a response to the documentary style, which lacked creativity and emotional depth, typically used to photograph African American communities.

DeCarava’s early training in drawing and commercial art illustration informed the spare visual language and graphic sensibility that characterize his photography.

In Bird on a Spike, he balances light and shadow, using the sky as a backdrop in contrast with the silhouettes of sharp and soft forms found in everyday life.

BARBARA KARANT born Chicago, IL 1952 820 Ebony/Jet Floor 10 #9 Archival color print, 2013 Sheldon Art Association Purchased with funds from the Sheldon Art Association and Sheldon Forum S-962.2016

In 2013, before the Chicago building that housed the offices of Ebony and Jet magazines was renovated by a new owner, Barbara Karant photographed the vibrant interior designs of the vacant workspaces. Each room was uniquely decorated with its own floor-to-ceiling patterns and colors.

This photograph provides a glimpse of the swirling patterns that enveloped the Ebony test kitchen. Only the yellow countertop, dishwasher, and sink offer viewers a respite from the domineering pattern. In her series 820 Ebony/Jet, Karant commemorates the history of Chicago’s first high-rise designed by an AfricanAmerican architect and the two groundbreaking Black publications that occupied inside it.

Johnson Publishing Company building that formerly housed the offices of Ebony and Jet magazines, 820 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. The building was designed by architect John Moutoussamy, the first African American to design a high-rise building in Chicago, and interior designer Arthur Elrod.

VICTOR LANDWEBER born Washington DC 1943 Light Smog, Downtown Los Angeles, 10/10/84, from the Smog series Chromogenic color print, 1984 University of Nebraska–Lincoln Olga N. Sheldon Acquisition Trust U-3957.1 987

Victor Landweber’s Smog series documents the changing conditions of the Los Angeles sky. He titled each work with the smog report for the location and date on which the image was made. For example, another title from the series is Better than Standard for Three Pollutants, West Hollywood, 7/16/85.

Due to the toxic levels of smog, Los Angeles County became the first in the nation to establish an air pollution control program in 1947. In Light Smog, Landweber removes all traces of the city, preferring to focus on the striking atmospheric effects of pollution at dusk.

AARON SISKIND New York, NY 1903–Providence, RI 1991 Jerome, Arizona Gelatin silver print, 1949 University of Nebraska–Lincoln Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust H-616.1 960

I found myself making straight pictures, working on a flat field, isolating images so that the tonalities seemed to be almost controlled—which is something that a painter does, using objects in a kind of symbolic way, using ambiguities.

—Aaron Siskind Aaron Siskind’s photography took a turn in the 1940s when he dispensed with straightforward documentation and focused more on formal expression. This break coincided with one taken by many artists at the time, especially abstract painters, who preferred to disengage from social and political issues. Siskind routinely photographed distressed walls head on, capturing their cracks, textures, and patterns.

This frontal approach drew visual comparisons to the work of abstract expressionists, who also did away with perspective and presented flat, painterly surfaces.

MINOR WHITE Minneapolis, MN 1908–Boston, MA 1976 Moenkopie Layer, Capitol Reef, Utah Gelatin silver print, 1964 University of Nebraska–Lincoln Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust H-1130.1 966

Minor White’s closely cropped photographs of geological formations in Capitol Reef National Park, Utah, exemplify his theories of “fluctuating space,” a continuous optical illusion where the viewer is unable to contextualize the image. This is particularly true of his photographs that capture equivocal closeups of their surrounding environments. White was also interested in the viewer’s emotional response and how ambiguity in an image could keep it in flux.

A longtime educator and founder of the journal Aperture, White was a key figure in the development a of modern American photographic style. In the early fifties, White wrote Fundamentals of Style in Photography and Elements of Reading Photographs, which broke down design elements found in photographs into distinct categories such as structure, form, distance, balance, and “associated feeling.”