Friday, October 5, 2018

Arbus, Frank, Penn: Masterworks of Post-War American Photography

 


Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park and Museum,

Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum

Hamilton, Ohio

OH

October- November, 2018

 



Drawn from a single private collection, Arbus, Frank, Penn: Masterworks of Post-War American Photography comprises 38 glorious vintage gelatin silver prints of many of the icons of the era, including

Diane Arbus’s

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“Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J.,”

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“Boy with a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park,”

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and “Jewish Giant at Home with his Parents in the Bronx”;

Robert Frank’s


Robert Frank’s “Trolley – New Orleans (1955)” 
 
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans
“Trolley, New Orleans,”

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“Parade, Hoboken,”

and “Chicago (Man with Tuba)”;


and Irving Penn’s


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“Mountain Children, Cuzco, Peru,”

 

“Chimney Sweep, London,”

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and “Running Children, Rabat, Morocco.”

The Irving Penns in this exhibit all date from the seminal period in his career 1948-51, and cover his three most important series from those years: the “small trades,” the “big nudes,” and the confrontational portraits of the diminutive yet fierce mountain-top residents of Cuzco, Peru.

The Robert Franks date from 1953-58 and feature some of the key works reproduced in The Americans, arguably the most influential photography book of the 20th century. Frank’s sly lens captured the incipient fissures of Eisenhower-era America across several fault lines, racial, generational, urban/rural, that were to explode in the decade to follow.

The Diane Arbus photos date from 1961-70 and include her most celebrated portraits. Arbus's photographs merged Frank’s unblinking socially-conscious lens with a piercing psychological approach akin to Penn’s Cuzco work which stands as a vision all her own.