Page 81 - 50.La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

Strange Days

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE SIXTIES RIGHT: WILLIAM EGGLESTON

AMERICAN, BORN 1939
MEMPHIS, ABOUT 1965-1970
GELATIN SILVER PRINT
Winogrand IMAGE: 13 X 9 IN.
2000.41.6
Eggleston ©EGGLESTON ARTISTIC TRUST
COLLECTION:
Arbus THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM

LEFT: DIANE ARBUS
AMERICAN,1923-1971
WOMAN IN A ROSE HAT, NEW
YORK CITY,
NEGATIVE, 1966; PRINT BY NEIL
SELKIRK,
ED. 3/75
GELATIN SILVER PRINT
IMAGE: 14 ¼ X 14 5/8 IN.
SHEET: 19 7/8 X 16 IN.
2000.21.2
© ESTATE OF DIANE ARBUS LLC
COLLECTION: THE J. PAUL
GETTY MUSEUM

LOS ANGELES -The iconic, powerful and often andremained chilled by the Cold War threat of first time in 1955 in Family of Man at the Museum
A TURBULENT ERA CAPTURED BY THREE MASTERS OF AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY
disquieting works of three important American atomic annihilation. In the South, the integration of Modern Art, where he returned in 1969 with a
photographers will be the focus of Strange Days: of black students into formerly segregated schools solo exhibition. Winogrand’s essential subject matter
Photographs from the Sixties by Winogrand, and universities sparked violence. And the grinding was the American street, and he had a particular
Eggleston, and Arbus, at the Getty from July 1 Vietnam War spurred thousands to protest, as the eye for juxtaposing the familiar and the peculiar,
to October 5, 2003. The exhibition spotlights hippie movement flashed peace signs and practiced creating wide-angled or tilted shots that appear
more than 80 black-and-white works by Garry “free love.” Winogrand, Eggleston, and Arbus took to to be casual quick takes, but are in fact densely
Winogrand, William Eggleston, and Diane Arbus, the streets of America, aiming their cameras at what composed and layered with meaning. He moved to
who were all active during the turbulent 1960s. they saw around them, documenting the “strange Los Angeles in 1978 and made this city his subject
Each, in a unique way, captured memorable days” of the 20th century’s most restless decade. until his death in 1984.
images and evocations of that era on film: “In the midst of the cultural revolution, these three
Winogrand with a manic, amused curiosity; photographers practiced three different forms of the WILLIAM EGGLESTON (b. 1939), who was raised in
Eggleston with the quiet irony of one for whom social documentary style,” says Deborah Gribbon, Mississippi, settled in Memphis, Tennessee, in the
everything and nothing is significant; and Arbus director of the J. Paul Getty Museum and vice president 1960s. He acquired a Leica camera as a teenager, and
with an honest, confrontational mode. The works of the J. Paul Getty Trust. “Each artist used the camera after studies at three different universities, decided
on display are drawn chiefly from the Getty’s to explore contemporary dress and manners, public that photography, not academics, was his destiny.
permanent collection, including some recent behavior, and the American lifestyle.” Though his early black-and-white photographs,
acquisitions being exhibited for the first time. including those in the exhibition, are less well known
The Sixties brought relentless change and unrest GARRY WINOGRAND (1928–1984) was born in New than his subsequent color images, they prefigure
to America. Scientific innovations such as the York City and began photographing during a stint his later works in many ways. Eggleston uses the
birth-control pill and the burgeoning space in the Army Air Force (1946–47). After studies at subject matter of the typical American “snapshot”-
program made headlines, while demonstrators City College of New York, Columbia University, and bland rooms and houses, bleak lawns, empty street
marched for social reform,civil rights, and women’s the New School for Social Research, he became intersections, people in stiff and self-conscious poses
liberation. The nation’s psyche ached from the a commercial photographer, working for several - and forces viewers to see these seemingly banal
assassination of President John F. Kennedy agencies. His photographs were exhibited for the scenes in new ways.

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