News Art Blog

When Howard Zinn first published A People's History of the United States in 1980, he hoped to
start a “quiet revolution” in the way people viewed history. By giving voice to the voiceless relegated to the wings of history while major players dominated the stage, Zinn wrote history in a wholly new, revolutionary way. Just as Zinn gave those people a voice, photographer Paul Strand gave them a face, but more than 60 years before. Paul Strand: Master of Modern Photography at the Philadelphia Museum of Art traces the development of one of the founding fathers of modern photography in search of democratic ideals not just in his native America, but all around the world. Viewing the world through Strand’s lens will renew not just your faith in the power of art, but also your faith in the human spirit’s resilience regardless of time or place. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Paul Strand Photographed the 'People’s History.'"

As kids, my siblings and I would flip through old family albums and marvel over old pictures of family members in their youth. More than just thicker hair and thinner waistlines changed with time. You could really see an evolution of self over time—more confident, more resigned, more resilient—depending on the individual. In The Serial Portrait: Photography and Identity in the Last One Hundred Years, which runs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, through December 31, 2012, artists working in that same medium of photography show not only how they and their loved ones change over time, but also how America and its people have changed over time. The Serial Portrait serves as a family album of unfamiliar and familiar faces, but all related to us as Americans. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Photographers Used the Serial Portrait toReveal Themselves, and America."



[Many thanks to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, for the image above and other press materials related to the exhibition The Serial Portrait: Photography and Identity in the Last One Hundred Years, which runs through December 31, 2012.]

When you talk about Classical music, you often begin with the three Killer B’s: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. If you talk about American photography, you need to begin with the Essential S’s: Stieglitz, Steichen, and Strand. Malcolm Daniel’s Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand: Masterworks from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the catalog to the exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through April 10, 2011, provides the perfect primer to these essential artists who saw photography through its infancy as a fine art and helped find it a place in the pantheon, as symbolized by their acceptance into The Met’s collection. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Essentials."

[Many thanks to Yale University Press for providing me with a review copy of Malcolm Daniel’s Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand: Masterworks from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the catalog to the exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through April 10, 2011.]