Inside-Out: Portrait Photographs from the Permanent Collection
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
February 7 - May 23, 2004
Portraiture is the subject of the exhibition Inside-Out: Portrait Photographs from the Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. All recently acquired by the Whitney, these photographs explore the intricate dynamics involved in the relationship between subject and artist, examining issues such as vanity, comfort, and intimacy. The works, by such artists as Chuck Close, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, Nicholas Nixon, Irving Penn, and Stephen Shore, assert photography’s capacity both to register a subject’s physical characteristics and to suggest the complexity within the subject’s emotional and psychological interior life.
Several artists, including Dawoud Bey, Chan Chao, and Melissa Pinney photograph unknown subjects within their environments. By contrast, Chuck Close, Nan Goldin, and Nicholas Nixon portray friends, family, or people with whom they have cultivated a relationship. More formal portraits describe an activity or commemorate an occasion, as in Paul Shambroom’s image of city council members at work, or in Irving Penn’s portrait of five esteemed American artists – Chuck Close, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Kenneth Noland, and Robert Rauschenberg.
“When a subject and a photographer come together and agree that a likeness will be made, a complex dynamic is set in motion,” said Sylvia Wolf, the Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney. “In the most compelling portraits there is often a collision of wills, an exposure of vulnerability, a seduction, or surrender. The public face that the sitter wants to show the world is tempered by something deeper. Multiple layers of experience are brought to the surface and the inside is turned out for us to see.”
Whitney Museum of American Art [Click the link for more information]
