The photography department of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is mounting four exhibitions that will be on view during Houston´s biennial photography celebration, FotoFest 2008, running March 7 through April 20, 2008. Exhibitions of work by the American photographer and photo historian Beaumont Newhall (1908-1993) and the German-born English photographer Bill Brandt (1904-1983) are drawn from the museum´s own extensive photography collection.
American Nan Goldin (b. 1953) is the subject of a show drawn from the museum´s collection and a private Houston collection and presents the American museum debut of a major installation by the artist. The Japanese photographer Miwa Yanagi is receiving her first solo show in the United States with more than 30 photographs and a new video work from the Deutsche Bank Collection.
The presentation of the four exhibitions began with Nan Goldin: Stories Retold, which opened November 18 and is on view through March 30. In 2008, Passionate Vision: Celebrating the Life and Photographic Work of Beaumont Newhall runs January 15 — May 4, 2008; followed by Photographs by Bill Brandt: A Sense of Wonder, February 2 — April 27, 2008; and then Miwa Yanagi: Deutsche Bank Collection, February 10 — May 4, 2008. Miwa Yanagi will be on view in the large, dramatic space of Cullinan Hall in the Caroline Wiess Law Building, 1001 Bissonnet Street, and Nan Goldin: Stories Retold and Work of Beaumont Newhall are installed in galleries in the same building. Photographs by Bill Brandt will be in the Audrey Jones Beck´s Building´s Cameron Foundation Gallery for works on paper, 5601 Main Street.
Peter C. Marzio, director of the MFAH, said, "The MFAH is pleased to once again present the powerful work of Miwa Yanagi, whom audiences first encountered here at the MFAH during the landmark History of Japanese Photography, which was organized by the museum under the guidance of Anne Wilkes Tucker. The museum is grateful to Deutsche Bank for sharing this work. Likewise, the museum is happy to showcase the breadth of its own collection with exhibitions devoted to three major artists of the twentieth century."
"Each of these four photographers presents a fresh, sometimes radical view of his world," said Tucker, the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the MFAH. "And while the shows are not linked in any formal way, and the photographs span nine decades, from the 1920s through 2005, the works in the shows convey the photographers´ ongoing and constant engagement with their subjects and their unusual ways of seeing and expressing themselves."
Miwa Yanagi: Deutsche Bank Collection
The compelling photographs of Miwa Yanagi (b.1967) explore themes depicting the role of women in the context of Japanese society, yet reflect the archetypal concerns of many women across cultures. Mixing both the imaginary and the real, Yanagi conjures compelling visions in her large-format compositions using theatrical set-ups and mesmerizing color. The installation comprises three series, Elevator Girls, a series begun in 1993, My Grandmothers, started in 1999, and Fairy Tale, dating from 2004 as well as two videos, Kagome Kagome, from1994, and Girls in her sand, 2004. The Elevator Girls series features groups of identically dressed female models not dissimilar to modern-day Japan´s dutiful elevator greeters. According to Yanagi, the series is about "myself and other Japanese women" who feel the kind of standardization that exists in modern Japanese society and elsewhere. The ongoing Grandmother series is a response to the youth of Elevator Girls. In this series, Yanagi projects the dreams of the young women into the future 50 years. After talking with her collaborating models, Yanagi creates digitally altered images depicting their personal visions of life in old age, and accompanies the images with related texts. In Fairy Tale, Yanagi reinvents well-known Western fairy tales such as Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Little Red Riding Hood to explore the underlying meaning of the tales, twisting the mythologies further using masks, wigs, mixed-race models, and young girls dressed as older women.
Organized by Deutsche Bank Collection in collaboration with the Chelsea Art Museum, where it was presented in New York May 4 through August 25, 2007, the exhibition of more than 30 works is overseen in Houston by Tucker, who is one of the catalogue´s essayists. Generous funding of Miwa Yanagi is provided by Deutsche Bank and Ms. Carey Shuart.
Photographs by Bill Brandt: A Sense of Wonder
Bill Brandt (1903-1983) was one of the most influential and respected photographers of the 20th century. He took his first important photograph in 1928 and his last 50 years later. Photographs by Bill Brandt: A Sense of Wonder presents a retrospective of approximately 50 prints of works from each of his major series. In the 1930s, he focused on life in Britain, portraying both the wealthy and the poor at home. His first book, The English at Home, was published in 1936. Subsequent series covered London, its people and historic buildings and landmarks during World War II; landscapes; portraits of writers and artists; and a final series of nudes that he photographed with a camera that uniquely distorted the model and her environment, inventing radical new forms.
Brandt shared his philosophy in this quote: "The photographer must first have seen his subject, or some aspect of his subject as something transcending the ordinary. It is part of the photographer´s job to see more intensely than most people do."
Passionate Vision: Celebrating the Life and Photographic Work of Beaumont Newhall
The legacy of Beaumont Newhall (1903-1993), historian, curator, collector, critic, educator, and photographer, is illuminated with a two-part exhibition. In one display are eight books and seven iconic photographs by seven photographers who were friends and collaborators with Newhall throughout his career. The photographers featured in the two presentations range from the 19th-century French photographer Gustave LeGray to 20th-century artists such as Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, and Edward Weston. Newhall is best known for his pioneering study of the field of photography and, in 1937, while librarian at the Museum of Modern Art, developed the first comprehensive retrospective of photography. The show´s accompanying catalogue, The History of Photography, was a breakthrough in the treatment of the subject and became the classic history of the field. The fifth and final edition, The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present, was published in 1982.
As a photographer, Newhall´s work reflects the modernist tradition that he heralded in many of his writings and exhibitions. The exhibition is organized by Tucker and Jon Evans and Margaret Culbertson, librarians at the MFAH.
Nan Goldin: Stories Retold
Nan Goldin: Stories Retold is a career-spanning exhibition charting the evocative and highly personal work of one of America´s most significant artists. It marks the American museum debut of Goldin´s Sisters, Saints, and Sibyls (2004), recently acquired by the MFAH. Curated by Alison de Lima Greene, MFAH curator of contemporary art and special projects, Nan Goldin: Stories Retold frames Goldin´s career with two room-size installations: an updated and unique version of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1980-2006/2007), Goldin´s magnum opus, and Sisters, Saints, and Sibyls, which tells the story of three women, inspired by the life and suicide of the artist´s older sister, Barbara. Also featured are an important series of unique grids created over the past seven years, Goldin´s monumental Tokyo Spring Fever grid (1994-95), and iconic individual images from across the artist´s career.
Nan Goldin: Stories Retold is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Generous funding is provided by Mr. and Mrs. James R. Crane, The Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, and The Margaret Cooke Skidmore Exhibition Endowment. -- www.mfah.org
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