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Selections from the Photography Collection
 Through May 27, 2001

This powerful exhibition surveys the history of photography through the Chrysler Museum Collection. The imagery ranges from the earliest daguerreotype and calotype images to camera-less work and digital imaging. Approximately half of the photographs in the exhibition are new acquisitions never shown in this context. This Gallery features a number of new works from the David L. Hack Collection of Civil War photography. Acquired by the Museum in 1998, these photographs will be featured in a forthcoming major exhibition. Also in this Gallery one can see new acquisitions by some of the finest 19th-century French photographers including Edouard Baldus, Maxime Du Camp, and the highly accomplished but virtually unknown Jean-Baptiste Frenet.

The second Gallery features selections from the Museum's Civil Rights Movement Photography Collection. These photographs documented the Civil Rights battle that raged against racial injustice in America during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. The publication of these images in newspapers, magazines, and other media helped create public awareness and implement meaningful social change. This is a prime example of Humanistic Photography, or of the medium being used to improve the human condition.

This Gallery also juxtaposes the work of Gary Schneider, Adolphe Bertsch, and Harold Edgerton. In the 1930s Edgerton developed a stroboscopic light to photograph objects moving faster than the human eye could discern. Through science, he was able to create images that embodied an aesthetic pleasure for the viewer. Similarly, in the 1850s Bertsch used the microscope to investigate a world that only could be viewed with extreme magnification. His image of the rear of a human iris is a fitting subject for this visual medium.

The third Gallery includes a section devoted to a wide range of portraiture, from Paul Strand's classically straightforward portrait of The Family to Nancy Burson's digital composite of the major world races. These examples illustrate that photography's ability to render the human subject is limited by only the artist's imagination. This extraordinary exhibition is on view in the Alice and Sol B. Frank Photography Galleries.

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For More Information or Images Please Contact the Chrysler at (757) 664-6200 or museum@chrysler.org

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