This \u2013 only the second photography exhibition in Dulwich Picture Gallery\u2019s history \u2013 is a quietly contemplative but gripping show that traces two intersecting developments: the construction of the modern urban environment and the language of photography.<\/p>\n
Focusing exclusively on works from era-defining photographers of the 20th century made in cities across the US, it\u2019s a concise overview that begins with the pictorialist pioneers of New York, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, and keeps moving through masterpieces, starting with early examples of social documentary photography \u2013 Dorothea Lange\u2019s Migrant Mother and White Angel Breadline, and Lewis Hine\u2019s emblematic portrait of the high-steel ironworker Victor \u201cFrenchy\u201d Gosselin working on the construction of the Empire State Building.<\/p>\n
All the greats are here: Ilse Bing, Mary Ellen Mark, Diane Arbus, Saul Leiter, Richard Avedon, among others. This is partly because this show is a bit of an unusual beast: it exclusively presents works belonging to the DNB Savings Bank Foundation collection. That means the curatorial choices are limited.<\/p>\n
All the greats are here \u2026 Mary Ellen Mark\u2019s 1987 The Damm Family in Their Car. Photograph: Mary Ellen Mark\/Mary Ellen Mark Foundation<\/p>\n
A series of short film pieces offer other interpretations. A 44-second clip of footage of the White Angel soup kitchen in San Francisco in 1931, where Lange\u2019s indelible Great Depression image was made, gives an entirely different impression of the place from the grim loneliness depicted in the photograph. Set to an upbeat swing soundtrack, we see a lively community presided over by a jovial matron who distributes food and repairs clothing with a smile.<\/p>\n
Many of the photographers in the first part of the show trained as painters, and it shows in the glorious attentiveness to composition and light. Aaron Siskind\u2019s Harlem Document reflects the influence of his friendships with Rothko and Kline, searching in Harlem\u2019s torn posters and peeling paint for his own kind of abstract expression that also created a new photographic language for social protest.<\/p>\n
Moments only a city can yield \u2026 Arthur Leipzig\u2019s 1948 Divers, East River. Photograph: Arthur Leipzig\/Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York<\/p>\n
From the Great Depression to the New Deal, urban construction, regeneration and optimism soon slide into something more sinister. Images of solitary figures against the immensity of the city recur \u2013 Louis Faurer\u2019s 1949 Looking at the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center says it all \u2013 an anonymous figure in a fedora looks towards the building, so mighty it fills the whole frame.<\/p>\n
At night, a city\u2019s tensions rise to the surface, and all the weirdos come out. The highlights are the images that revel in this, like Weegee\u2019s ominous, sensationalist snapshots of New York after dark, depicting murders, awful accidents and the odd moments only a city can yield \u2013 a person\u2019s face, eyes closed, juts out from a column in an urban passageway; a large clock in the background pulls your eye into the inky shadows.<\/p>\n
There is a work of achingly simple genius by Roy DeCarava. Hallway is a photograph of an empty corridor in a tenement building in Harlem, much like the one the artist grew up in. It\u2019s lit dimly by a single lightbulb, almost entirely swallowed by shadows, as the lines of the walls draw your eye in and down the space. DeCarava\u2019s claustrophobic image makes you feel what it is to stand in that space. He finds the richness and expressivity in the colour black, as complex, volumetric and varied as any other hue.<\/p>\n
The exhibition as a whole retells the American narrative of the city \u2013 almost all of the photographers here are first- or second-generation European immigrants. It also shows how photography became a way for artists to deal with the overwhelming nature of the city, to try to take hold of it, to make it their own \u2013 or try, like Garry Winogrand, to disappear into it completely, to come closer to \u201cnot existing\u201d as the photographer described his process, a quote emphasised on the exhibition wall. Portrait of a City is about the multiplicity of quiet-but-dazzling instants that happen every day \u2013 like Peter Hujar\u2019s Richie, standing to reflect for a second in the rain on a street in New York at night, raindrops glimmering on a car windscreen.<\/p>\n
Quiet but dazzling \u2026 Peter Hujar\u2019s 1985 Richie. Photograph: Peter Hujar\/Peter Hujar Archive\/Artists Rights Society, New York\/DACS London<\/p>\n
We move through the 60s and 70s, where the hair gets hipper and politics get more intense, and end up on the subway, engulfed by 1980s Leica shots that Bruce Davidson made on New York\u2019s graffiti-covered trains. Here we\u2019re in motion again, in the place where city life collides across culture, age, race and class. People go to celebrations, to work, fall asleep, fall in love, fight. The crimson light of sunset skies bathes the carriages in a beautiful, sensuous glow. The train keeps moving. And the unstoppable city remains in maddening, merciless motion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This \u2013 only the second photography exhibition in Dulwich Picture Gallery\u2019s history \u2013 is a quietly contemplative but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":831913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-831912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}