The world’s oldest photograph was taken in 1826 by French physicist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The realities of how artists captured and understood the world around them changed from that moment on. Thomas Sutton’s famous image of a tartan ribbon in 1861 marked the beginning of colour photography, although the method was not popularised until almost a century later. The 20th century saw the lens turned on the political events of the day, resulting in iconic images like Robert Capa’s the Falling Solider, which showed a fatally wounded soldier during the Spanish Civil War and Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother. Artists began to use the camera as a means to challenge social injustices, highlight marginalised communities or revolutionise traditional art forms. Saul Leiter caught snippets of daily life, brought to life with one of the first uses of colour, whilst Cindy Sherman and Leigh Bowery pushed the boundaries of aesthetics to explore ideas of identity and self-expression. These five exhibitions showcase how the artists redefined the genre, bringing vibrant ideas and stunning visuals to new audiences.
“Photographs are often treated as important moments, but really they are fragments and souvenirs of an unfinished world.” Saul Leiter (1923 – 2013) documented daily life in New York City for almost sixty years. The lens-based artist transformed seemingly mundane street scenes into visual poetry. Leiter was a pioneer of the craft and was one of the only non-commercial photographers to work in colour during the 1940s and 1950s. Images were created in the rain and snow and used windows and other reflective surfaces, resulting in abstract scenes. A red umbrella, a green traffic light, or the yellow flash of a passing taxi add an unexpected play of colour to his photographs. Foam brings together more than 200 works, revealing an eclectic oeuvre that uses shadow, light and reflection to craft layered compositions.
Cindy Sherman (b. 1954) is best-known for probing the construction of identity and playing with the concept of art, celebrity and gender. She was part of the Pictures Generation, a movement of creatives in the 1970s who responded to the cultural landscape with humour and criticism, appropriating images from advertising, film, television and magazines. Now, M+ presents Sherman’s work alongside that of Yasumasa Morimura, whose One Hundred M’s Self-portraits (1993 – 2000) series shows the artist masquerading as a wide range of celebrities and historical figures, including Audrey Hepburn, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe and even Cindy Sherman herself. The two demonstrate how the art of masquerade is a powerful strategy to explore relationships between identity, mass media and history.
“You have to catch a moment that would never ever return again and do it justice.” Ming Smith was the first female member to join Kamoinge, a collective of Black photographers in New York in the 1960s. She went on to become the first Black woman photographer to be included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art. The Columbus Museum of Art presents August Moon, an exhibition where the essence of everyday Black life unfolds with breathtaking honesty and reverence. In the images, Smith embarks on a poignant journey through the streets of Pittsburgh Hill District, intimately familiarising herself with the landscape that inspired playwright August Wilson. Through Smith’s lens, viewers are invited to immerse themselves in the beauty, complexity, and resilience of ordinary Black existence.
In a short but extraordinary life, Leigh Bowery (1961 – 1994) proved to be one of the most fearless and original artists of the 20th century. Known variously as an artist, performer, club kid, model, TV personality, fashion designer and musician, Bowery reimagined clothing and make-up as forms of sculpture and painting. His work tested the limits of decorum and created a new form of performance art, which explored the body as a shape-shifting tool with the power to challenge norms of aesthetics, sexuality and gender. For the first time, Tate Modern will bring together Bowery’s outlandish and dazzling costumes alongside painting, photography and videos to explore how he became the globally recognised figure that changed the face of art, fashion and popular culture forever.
The photographs of Irving Penn (1917 – 2009) left an indelible mark on the fashion world. He worked for Vogue for nearly 70 years and his inventive fashion shoots, which transformed American image-making in the postwar era, continued to appear in the magazine up until his death in 2009. According to the Irving Penn Foundation: “At a time when photography was primarily understood as a means of communication, he approached it with an artist’s eye and expanded the creative potential of the medium, both in his professional and personal work.” He created some of the most iconic images to grace the pages of Vogue, including the instantly recognizable picture of bumblebee crawling across a mouth, as well as portraits of icons like Salvador Dalí, Truman Capote, Pablo Picasso and Susan Sontag.
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
Anne, 1950s. © Saul Leiter / Saul Leiter Foundation.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #96, 1981. Chromogenic colour print © Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Ming Smith, Untitled, from the series August Moon, 1991. Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.
Fergus Greer, Leigh Bowery Session 1 Look 2 1988 © Fergus Greer. Courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery.
Irving Penn, Issey Miyake Fashion, White and Black, New York, (1990). Vintage gelatin silver print mounted to board 15″ × 14-3/4″ (38.1 cm × 37.5 cm), image and paper. 17″ × 16″ (43.2 cm × 40.6 cm), mount. Edition of 6. No. 110674.02.
