Photography exhibition - The Fleeting Glimpse:
Selections in Modern and Contemporary Photography
from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Roanoke, VA
Through December 4, 2010
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
January 15 - April 3, 2011
LEE FRIEDLANDER, Shadow - New York City, 1968. Silver Print, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. The John Barton Payne Fund. Photo: Travis Fullerton, © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Image © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. Recent photographs of Lee Friedlander from America from Car is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. And a retrospective of Lee Frielandler work from 1960 to 2010 will be on view at the Fraenkel Gallery.
The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University in partnership with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts presents The Fleeting Glimpse: Selections in Modern and Contemporary Photography from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts featuring 35 works by 27 artists using the photographic medium to transform common found occurrences in nature and humanity into unusual encounters and strange juxtapositions.
The Fleeting Glimpse is the first major focus on the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA)’s renowned photography collection and marks the first partnership collection-sharing program with the largest museum in the commonwealth. The Fleeting Glimpse is co-curated by Christine Carr, artist and assistant professor of art at Hollins University and Wilson Museum Director Amy Moorefield. The exhibition roster encompasses a group of provocative legends of the camera, both modern and contemporary, and features the work of artists including Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Blythe Bohnen, Judy Dater, Jen Davis, John Divola, Robert Doisneau, Martin Dorbaum, David A. Douglas, Roy DeCarava, Lee Friedlander, Ralph Gibson, Emmet William Gowin, John N. Heroy Jr., Richard Kent Hough, Connie Imboden, Alen MacWeeney, Sally Mann, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Ray K. Metzker, Joseph Mills, Brian H. Peterson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, Jerry N. Uelsmann, Garry Winogrand, and Willie Anne Wright.
HIROSHI SUGIMOTO, Byrd Theatre, 1993. Gelatin Silver Print, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Gift of the Collector’s Circle. Photo: Travis Fullerton, © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Image © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.
Through exploitation of a variety of photographic techniques including digital (Dorbaum), straightforward (Arbus), long exposure (Divola), vignette (Gowin) and pinhole process (Wright), the artists all share commonalities in the pursuit of a visually fragmented narrative in highly experimental work. The viewer has a “fleeting glimpse” of an implied alternative reality through the artists’ deliberate and sometimes happenstance staging and organization of chance elements. Using the camera, a number of the artists (Sugimoto, Dorbaum) create illusionary portals in their compositions psychologically pulling the viewer into their realms. Other works (Arbus, Doiseau, Imboden) propel the viewer away through the sitters’ carefully staged gazes controlled by the artist’s surface manipulations transforming their features into fractured and dissociated objects. All entice the viewer with implied psychosomatic drama through bizarre subject matter and compositions inviting further examination.
The approachable medium of photography allows visitors to the exhibition the first “glimpse” of never before seen significant works by extremely well known leading photographers.
The exhibition is accompanied by a full color CATALOGUE with essays by both curators as well as Emily Smith, VMFA Curatorial Fellow.
Organized by the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University in partnership with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. After its inaugural viewing at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, The Fleeting Glimpse will be on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Funding for The Fleeting Glimpse comes in part from the City of Roanoke through the Roanoke Arts Commission as well as support from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia
09/16 – 12/4, 2010
www.hollins.edu/museum
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia
www.vmfa.museum
