Exhibits

NYC Boy with Ribbon 1939 Helen Levitt

In the three years I've been studying with OCA I've been to perhaps a half dozen exhibits.  I've looked at far more books, and even more online collections or etexts.  Given the ease of viewing from the computer, I find it difficult to justify the time and money to visit an exhibit, especially when many are so paltry.

I'll be in the USA for a couple of weeks this summer and have found the city art museum is holding an exhibit of 30 Helen Levitt images.  30.  Tickets are $20.00, parking will be $10.00, plus gasoline and the stress of an hour's drive either way.  Forget it.  Here are 50 images and I don't even have to get up from where I'm now sitting.  Can anyone say I've missed anything essential by not seeing the printed images hung on a wall?

http://www.atgetphotography.com/The-Photographers/Helen-Levitt.html

http://www.laurencemillergallery.com/levitt_just_kids.html

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Review: Istanbul Photography Museum

I had the good fortune this month to visit the Istanbul Photography Museum, located in what looks like a middle-class neighborhood only a few blocks from the major tourist sites in Sultan Ahmet.  The museum maintains an informative website with details concerning its sponsors, leadership, and supporters, and appears to be a joint effort between art enthusiasts and government offices responsible for the promotion of the same.  Opened in November 2011, it defines its mission as “providing exhibitions, collections, publications, photography archives, electronic and standard libraries, activities, and educational projects to further develop the Turkish art of photography.”  

We arrived just as one of the staff was unlocking the front door and were welcomed in without fuss or hesitation, directed up a flight up stairs and into a lobby with a display of books for sale.  A long corridor led off this space, with doors opening into five separate galleries.  During our 40 minute stay we had the facility entirely to ourselves (something of a departure from many of the city’s often crowded museums).  

Credit - where credit is due

I was recently reviewing an exhibit catalog of Asian art and while looking through the credits was struck by the neglect shown to the person most responsible for the contents of the book.  The title page has the name of the exhibit, the name of the museum, the name of the curator (in bold), and the names of eight essay contributors.  At the back of the book there is a separate Contributors page in which brief bios are provided of each of these nine people.  The exhibit consists of approximately 300 items, photographically reproduced within the pages of this book.  Who is responsible for the photos?  That information is relegated to the Acknowledgements page.  After five paragraphs of thank you's, there is, in smaller type at the bottom, a section titled Reproductions, in which we at last find the name of the photographer.

Is it because the photographer is viewed as a technician that he doesn't rate the same credit as the essayist? Is this treatment typical at art institutions?  

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