LOS ANGELES (voa) - Two exhibitions at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles span more than a century of photography, offering 19th century prints of European monuments as well as glimpses of Depression-era America. The exhibits show how a 19th-century science led to a new art form.
An exhibition called Photographers of Genius looks at 38 pioneers in the art of photography from the 19th and 20th centuries. A companion exhibit features recent acquisitions by the Getty Museum. All of the works in the two shows are from the museum's own collections.
Curator Weston Naef says the 158 works in the main exhibition display the talents of some of the world's greatest photographers, from Russia's Alexander Rodchenko to Mexico's Manuel Alvarez Bravo. The curator says all were artistic and technical innovators.
"It's no coincidence that some of the most inventive photographers also were masters of their craft, and took the art and the craft of photography, to new levels of potential," says Mr. Naef. "So for example, Carleton Watkins had made for him a huge camera that was called a mammoth plate camera, that weighed 75 pounds [34 kilograms], with a 30 pound [14 kilogram] lens, that he carted up to the wilderness of Yosemite [National Forest] in order to most effectively record the grandeur of that place, which could best be done on a very large negative."
France's Gustave Le Gray devised a negative that could display a better range of subtle shadings. Later, Henri Cartier-Bresson used new lightweight Leica cameras to capture the spontaneity of his subjects.
The works of the innovative American photographer Man Ray are also on display, and those of Dorothea Lange, who captured classic images of the America's Great Depression in the 1930s.
The works of a younger contemporary named Milton Rogovin are included in the exhibit of recent Getty acquisitions. Mr. Rogovin, now 94, came to the opening of the show. "All my work always concentrates on those who I consider the forgotten ones, los olvidados, and that's the only ones that interested me," he says. "I've never photographed the rich or the middle class. And I don't do the photography for money. I'm just interested in showing these people as individuals."
Mr. Rogovin graduated from Columbia University at the height of the Great Depression, and the poverty of the era made a deep impression on him. At the age of 48, he began taking pictures in small storefront churches in Buffalo, New York, where he lived and worked as an optometrist. He later visited the poverty-stricken Appalachian Mountains in the American South to record the lives of the people there. As much a social activist as a photographer, he captured images of coal miners and labor leaders.
He would travel to many countries, photographing miners and workers in Cuba, France, Spain, China, Mexico and elsewhere.He says his subjects were not accustomed to being photographed.
"As one fellow said, at least there's someone paying attention to me," says Mr. Rogovin. "I'm not just a spot on the wall. Of course, they appreciated it, and sometimes I'd go into a person's home and I'd see my photographs on the mantelpiece. They really valued it."
Today, Mr. Rogovin devotes his time to organizing his works, but no longer uses his camera. "At age 94, my hands are not that steady," he says. "So I've finished taking photographs, but I'm interested in seeing that the work is published and exhibited. As my wife used to say, this is harvest time."
The Getty Museum is celebrating its 20th year of collecting photographs, a form of expression that brings together art and science in a magical way, says curator Weston Naef.
Photographers of Genius will be on display at the Getty Museum through late July, and "Recent Acquisitions," including those of Milton Rogovin, will be shown through the end of May.
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/
