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NEWS RELEASE ARCHIVES

Photography Speaks
New Chrysler Photography Exhibition Coincides with
Release of A Major Publication
Through December 31, 2005
Alice and Sol B. Frank Photography Galleries

Coinciding with the publication of the highly anticipated book Photography Speaks by the Aperture Foundation, the Chrysler Museum of Art presents a special exhibition of the same name. Photography Speaks features 35 of the 150 photographers whose work is included in the new book. Newly revised and expanded, it is being published 15 years after the initial Photography Speaks, and nine years since its sequel Photography Speaks II, and presents a kind of history of the medium as seen from a 21st-century perspective—told through the images and words of those who have made lasting contributions since the invention of photography in the early 19th century. In the years since the publication of the first books, the history of photography has continued to evolve in myriad ways; and, equally exciting, a number of photographers have developed entirely new ways to use this still wondrous and malleable form. Photography Speaks—both the exhibition and the new book—soundly establishes the foundations for a timely and engaging history of photography.

The first of the Photography Speaks books appeared in 1987 as an accompaniment to the inaugural exhibition of the Museum's Alice R. and Sol B. Frank Photography Gallery, which replaced the Museum's nine year-old photography gallery; and the new edition features 16 additional works also drawn from the Chrysler collection. These additions broaden the historical range of the book and include artists who have only recently entered the canon.

Not intended as simply a picture book on the history of photography or on one museum’s collection, using the framework of the earlier publications, the new Photography Speaks follows the same biography-statement-photograph format established in the first book. Each photog-raph is accompanied on the opposite page by a statement from the artist and a brief biography placing that artist within an historical context. Some of the texts deal with the specific image reproduced, while others take a broader approach, commenting on the art of photography in general. A few texts are technically oriented, and some consider the intricacies of art creation. Taken as a whole, this collection of statements provides a wide range of thinking on photography. While the book spans the history of the medium—from William Henry Fox Talbot to Cindy Sherman, the exhibition highlights new acquisitions to the Chrysler collection including, Mathew Brady, Southworth and Hawes, Adolph Braun, Andre Kertész, James Abbe, Bob Lerner, Eikoh Hosoe, Rineke Dijkstra, Thomas Struth, and Gabriel Orozco.

This handsome book is on sale in the Museum Shop for $29.95.

Home page image:
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) in the Kremlin, Moscow, April 13, 1932
Gelatin-silver print, 9-3/4 x 7-3/4 inches
Gift of Tilly Abbe for the Abbe Family, 2004.1

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