10 / AMAM.OBERLIN.EDU ON VIEW / RIPIN GALLERY / JAN 2, 2024–JAN 18, 2025 FEMME ’N ISMS, PART II: FLASHPOINTS IN PHOTOGRAPHY Drawn from the Allen’s collection, this exhibition spans more than 150 years. Although far from comprehensive, the loosely chronological presentation encompasses key practitioners and decisive moments in the history of photography. From the mid-19th century to the first decades of the 20th, there was widespread debate as to whether photography should be considered a fine art rather than a mechanical trade. The exhibition opens with practitioners who took advantage of this ambiguity to enter the field andmake crucial discoveries, largely through portraiture. Works on view from the 1920s-1950s show how photographers used the unique characteristics of the medium to document the quintessentially modernist processes of urbanization, infrastructure, and scientific discovery. The second half of the exhibition focuses on strategies of appropriation and collage from the post-World War II period to the present, foregrounding the effects of mass media. Alongside these concerns, photographers developed conceptual modes of portraiture to address identity-based issues. This is the second installment of the multi-year series Femme ’n isms, which highlights women-identified artists in the Allen’s collection and expands art-historical notions of the feminine through the intersections of gender, race, and class. The exhibition includes works by Berenice Abbott, Laura Aguilar, Margaret Bourke-White, Claude Cahun, Julia Margaret Cameron, Nan Goldin, Dorothea Lange, Barbara Norfleet, Cindy Sherman, Iiu Susiraja, Carrie Mae Weems, and others. Organized by SamAdams, Ellen Johnson ’33 Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Laurie Simmons (American, b. 1949), New Bathroom/Woman Kneeling, 1980. Type “C” color photograph. Fund for Photography in honor of Ellen H. Johnson, 1982.97.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTczNTM=