So yesterday I ditched my afternoon class (sorry Prof. Hight) and went up to Portland to check out the current exhibit. It's called The Triumph of Group f/64, and I would not have known anything about the title of the exhibit if I wasn't in this course. Today, I know that it refers to the "stop" on the camera, and most importantly the depth of field you get at that setting.
It was a debate on modern photography (modern being the 1930's) and the end of the so-called Pictorialist era. A bunch of dudes from out west (including Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, and Willard Van Dyke) were championing the tools of their trade and the sharp focus and depth of field that could be accomplished with the large format cameras. The outlook of the club (Group f/64) was that soft focused, painterly photos were a thing of the past. The exhibit puts the Pictorialist photos on the wall along-side Group f/64 so that the comparisons are obvious and you can see how the crisp images of the guys out west were so completely different from the soft prints of the expressionists.
The Pictorialists said that Group f/64 showed a lack of emotion, while the Group was trying to use the art form of photography to be simple and direct. A great historical perspective on two points of view and a look at one of the many steps photography has taken in the last 80 or so years. The prints were beautiful and showed a variety of subjects from portraits, to landscapes, to abstracted nature. I was hoping to get a little inspiration for the current assignment, but instead it made me realize how boring most of my photos are. The drama they capture in black and white (both styles) is something I hope I can some day approach. Maybe I'll put down my digital and get a medium or large format camera?
I did reference the museum hand-out flyer thing while typing this.
