"Encounters" superb show of photography from the Sheldon collection

By L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / Lincoln Journal Star

Open the doors to the Sheldon Museum of Art’s temporary exhibition galleries and you’ll see the word “Encounters.”

Directly ahead is a bright red portrait of the French artist ORLAN. To the right, mysterious veiled figures by Moroccan photographer Lalla Essaydi. On the left, a nightmarish tableau of very creepy owls by Yinka Shonibare, who is English.

Step inside, turn back and left and find Alfred Stieglitz’s iconic “The Steerage.” To the far right are about a dozen rarely exhibited Orientalist/Ottoman Empire/Middle Eastern photographs from the 1800s.

That is the first view of “Encounters: Photography from the Sheldon Museum of Art,” a superb, thought-provoking, visually electric exhibition that surveys the museum’s deep collection of photographs.

“Encounters,” the exhibition, grew out of the preparation of a new catalog of Sheldon’s photography holdings; the last Sheldon photography catalog was published in 1977. The collection, obviously, has grown and changed in 36 years.

“The idea was to put together a catalog to represent, as best it could, the artists, subjects, styles and techniques of the Sheldon collection,” said Brandon Ruud, curator of transnational American art. “It just seemed like a natural continuation (of the catalog). Why not highlight this rich survey with the kickoff exhibition of the anniversary year?”

Throughout 2013 and into 2014, Sheldon will mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Philip Johnson-designed building and the 125th anniversary of the Sheldon Art Association. The 242-page photography catalog, published by University of Nebraska Press, and “Encounters” exhibition are the first of three such pairings set for the next year.

The photography exhibition and catalog will be followed by an update of the 1988 Sheldon painting catalog and an accompanying show. Completing the trilogy will be the first works on paper catalog produced from the museum’s collection and an exhibition of those pieces.

So how do you select 115 photographs for the show and 112 for the catalog from the 2,500  in Sheldon’s collection?

“That is the challenge,” Ruud said. “That is the fun and exciting challenge. That’s kind of the problem we all aspire to have. That’s one of the reasons we chose to organize the show thematically.”

Those themes -- “Nature and the Built Environment,” “Rites of Passage,” “Religion and Spirituality,” “Tradition and Modernity,” “Gender, Identity and Sexuality” -- allow the exhibition to avoid the dullness of chronology and a “greatest hits” presentation, juxtaposing images from across the 150 years of photography represented in the collection to explore how photographers look at the world in those areas.

The first room provides a fine example of how the themes work.

Essaydi’s striking, life-sized photographs of the women covered from head to toe in sheets against walls covered in calligraphic text were created in 2006 as a direct response to the sexualization of Arab women in the Orientalist photography of the 1800s.

The Orientalist photographs, which include landscapes and an image of the Sphinx, as well as pictures of women, create the contrast that brings the theme “Between and Across Cultures” into focus.

There is, however, no need to study the themes to be taken with the exhibition.

The images are striking, often iconic and work together. Because they are photographs, they are accessible instantly.

“I think it kind of speaks to everybody,” Ruud said. “We all have been to a graduation ceremony of some kind. We’ve all been to a wedding. We’ve all had our personal transitions. The camera is so well poised to document those events. …

“Everyone has, at some point, looked through that viewfinder and tried to capture what they wanted to, that perfect moment, that dramatic moment.”

But the photographs at Sheldon aren’t snapshots taken with the family Brownie decades ago or on an iPhone yesterday. Rather, they are works of art, often intended to be viewed formally rather than as documentary or created to make a visual statement that extends beyond the image itself.

Among the photos that were seen by the makers as formal compositions is “The Steerage,” which Ruud said Stieglitz talked about only in terms of its lines, depth, contrasts and other formal qualities.

It, however, now has come to represent a time, place and events in American history.

“That’s such an iconic image,” Ruud said. “I’ve seen it dozens of times. To my mind, it shows the experience of immigrants coming to the U.S. at that time, to Ellis Island. Working on the project, come to find out, these are not people coming to America, but leaving America. These are people for whom the American dream didn’t work.”

Similarly, the origins of Yousuf Karsh’s 1941 portrait of Winston Churchill are not what you would expect. The famous image of the British prime minister, which has appeared on more than 20 stamps in six countries of the British Commonwealth, was not taken in England.

Rather, Karsh shot it in a brief session after Churchill had addressed the Canadian Parliament. His “British bulldog” scowl was addressed to the photographer, who took away his cigar and made him pose for what became an official portrait.

Another of the most famous photos in the show, Diane Arbus’ “Child with a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, NYC” illustrates the role of the photographer in the creation of the photo. The contact sheet of images Arbus captured of the boy in short pants that day shows a number of locations and poses.

But it took a prop and, perhaps, some prompting to get the unforgettable picture.

“She put the grenade in his hand, and it just changed the photo session,” Ruud said. “It makes it a completely different photograph. In some of the others, he was mugging for the camera. This is the only one where he has that expression.”

To crib a Rod Stewart song lyric, “Every picture tells a story, don’t it.” But those stories aren’t stable. They shift with time and each viewer.

That is no better illustrated than in Tseng Kwong Chi’s “New York, New York,” a 1979 photograph printed in 2001 that is part of a series in which the Hong Kong-born Tseng depicted himself in a Mao outfit posing in front of monuments in Europe and the United States.

That photo once would have been read as a conceptual depiction of an artist exploring his identity. Because he is standing in front of the World Trade Center -- the picture shot from below -- it now reads very differently.

““It is a completely different story than it was when it was taken, than was intended,” Ruud said. “That is how stories change. We now see it differently, with 9/11. It has to work that way. It has completely changed in the last 12 years.”

Arbus and Stieglitz are among the who’s who of photographers represented in “Encounters.” That list includes Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Carrie Mae Weems, Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Lauren Greenfield, Sally Mann, James VanDerZee, Paul Strand, Joel-Peter Witkin, Eadweard Muybridge, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Edward Steichen, E. J. Bellocq. Brassai, Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, Weegee, Robert Mapplethorpe, Wright Morris and Harold Edgerton, the latter two Nebraska natives.

Other Nebraskans in the show include Omaha’s Vera Mercer, whose giant “White Still Life” puts a post-modernist take on the still life while reflecting her work as a restaurateur;  Larry Ferguson, whose abstracted “Iceberg, Antarctica” is not in the catalog because it was acquired too recently to make  publication; and Lincoln’s Dana Fritz, whose lush “Pointed Leaves and Dripping Moss, Lied Jungle” hangs next to images from her influences and teachers in the area exploring man’s impact on nature.

The final Nebraska encounter is seen when leaving the show. At the left of the doors is “Vivian Nguyen, Environmental Studies, UNL, Class of 2011,” a portrait taken in the middle of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus by Binh Danh, who did a residency in Lincoln two years ago documenting the city’s Vietnamese community.

That image opens the door to the campus that those who view it will see as they leave Sheldon. It is the kind of vibrant connection that is found in the photography of “Encounters,” one of the finest exhibitions in memory drawn from the Sheldon collection.

Source: http://journalstar.com/entertainment/arts-and-culture/visual/encounters-superb-show-of-photography-from-the-sheldon-collection/article_44ec3600-a0c2-55cf-a627-c7319f3582a6.html