Peter Aaron’s photographs preserve the majesty of Levantine sites damaged and destroyed in the ongoing conflict.
Reconsidering sepia: Clarence White’s photography at the Davis
Clarence H. White, one of the pioneers of the pictorialist style in photography, is having his first retrospective in more than a generation, a traveling show now on view at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College.
Neglected viewpoints at the National Gallery of Art
A body of work that has received scant attention from collectors is on view this spring at the National Gallery of Art.
Lulu and the Shadow Catcher
An adventurous photographer and a Midwestern librarian—trailblazers both.
Pictorialist photography at the Palmer
The subject of a new exhibition at the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University, the photographer Eva Watson-Schütze (1867–1935) was a leading member of the Photo-Secession, the early twentieth-century movement founded by Alfred Stieglitz that sought to elevate photography to the status of fine art.
From specimens to souls: The evolution of early portrait photography at the Cleveland Museum of Art
Every photographic portrait confers on its subject some degree of immortality. We take for granted the ability to know what a person looks like, since images of family, friends, and famous strangers dead and alive are at our fingertips through a Google Images or Facebook search. But until 1839 only the wealthy could have a likeness recorded, share it with others, and leave it behind for future generations.
Finding beauty in decay: The documentary photography of Sherman Cahal
For almost twenty years Sherman Cahal has traveled the Middle West and Appalachia, photographing residential, industrial, and commercial buildings that exist in various states of disrepair and decay, creating a visual record that is, of course, sad, but that also invokes the peculiar appeal of old, worn things.
Walker Evans: early and late
The man who, more than any other, gave visual expression to American life during the Great Depression was not a painter, but a photographer who originally wanted to be a writer. As surely as Aubrey Beardsley’s graphic mastery defined London in the mauve nineties, Walker Evans’s stark photographs remain the most powerful and enduring images of America in its time …
Enlightenment in Black and White
Nestled along the luxuriant cliff-side banks of the Mekong River, Luang Prabang, the former royal capital of Laos, is a city of stately palaces, villas, and bungalows left from the French colonial period, as well as many golden temples (vats) alive with the Buddhist culture of their attendant monasteries. While its local textile industry is renowned, what seduces the visitor …
Still Startling, Still Electric
Julia Margaret Cameron was almost twenty-four when Louis-Jacques-Mondé Daguerre announced the invention of photography at the Académie des Sciences in Paris in 1839. But it wasn’t until she was forty-eight—another lifetime later—that she would fully take up the medium herself. The catalyst was a Christmas gift from her daughter Julia and Julia’s husband in 1863.”It may amuse you, Mother,” they …