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The Morning is due to all
--
to some -- the night --
to an imperial few -- the auroral light.
EMILY DICKINSON
Works by over eighty
women photographers are the subject of this exhibition,
drawn from the collections of Grolier Club members.
Exploring a little-known aspect of Grolier member
collecting, the exhibition unites modernist and postmodern
photographers from Berenice Abbott to Helen Levitt, from Nan
Goldin to Cindy Sherman. This gathering of over 130
photographs and photographically-illustrated books serves as
an evaluation of women's contributions to camera art and
documentation, three decades after the first feminists
brought female photographers to wide public attention.
Organized thematically, "The Auroral Light" shows how these
generations of women photographers have tackled portraits
and figure studies, the landscape, cityscape, and still
life, and how they experiment with set-up subjects,
photocollage, photograms, and the like. Well-known
photographers such as Margaret Bourke-White, Imogen
Cunningham, Lotte Jacobi, and Louise Dahl-Wolfe are
represented by signature images as well as lesser-known
prints. Less familiar names, including Eva Watson-Schutz,
Carlotta Corpron, and Edith Worth, come from the ranks of
photographers who worked in the first half of the 20th
century. Younger photographers include Ellen Carey, Susan
Derges, Sally Mann, and Catherine Opie, while Mari Mahr,
DoDo Jin Ming, Barbara Pollack, and Liz Rideal are among the
newcomers.
Portraits of photographers and writers are a strong suit of
"The Auroral Light," reflecting the Grolier Club mission to
preserve and promulgate knowledge of books and the book
arts. Here are photographs of James Joyce by Giselle Freund,
Janet Flanner by Berenice Abbott, Henry Miller by Mary Ellen
Mark, Paul Strand by Lotte Jacobi, and Irving Penn by Lisa
Fonssagrives, among other portraits. The earliest photograph
in the exhibition is by the passionate Victorian, Julia
Margaret Cameron, of her friend Alfred, Lord Tennyson as
"The Dirty Monk."
"The Auroral Light" is curated by Anne Hoy, former curator
at the International Center of Photography, and Kimball
Higgs, Gagosian Gallery, and the show is sponsored by the
Club's Committee on Prints, Drawings, & Photographs. The
Grolier Club members who lent to this exhibition do not
collect photographs by women exclusively: major contributors
such as Nancy and Robert Grover of Hartford, CT, collect
contemporary photographs that experiment with perception and
expand the boundaries of the medium; Donald Oresman of New
York City collects images of people reading; Neale Albert
and George Meredith, of Manhattan and Upper Montclair, NJ,
respectively, acquire photographs from photographers they
have known. Among the motives for the exhibition's focus on
women photographers was to call attention to women as
collectors of books and book arts and to celebrate the
contributions of women to the life of the Grolier Club.
An
illustrated
checklist
accompanies the exhibition.
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