Pure Energy: Leonard Nimoy’s Photography

“Pure energy,” intoned Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock in the classic Star Trek episode "Errand of Mercy." (In 1988, Information Society immortalized the phrase when they sampled it into their synthpop hit, “What’s On Your Mind.”) Actor, director, author, poet, philanthropist, photographer—Nimoy brings pure creative energy to every enterprise. R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Massachusetts, in conjunction with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, present a retrospective of Nimoy’s photography, capped off by his latest work, Secret Selves, in which he directs everyday people to tap into their inner energy and give form to their fantasy selves. The results are, as Mr. Spock would say, “Fascinating.” Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Pure Energy."

[Many thanks to R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Massachusetts, for providing me with the image above and press materials for Leonard Nimoy, which runs from July 29, to October 31, 2010.]

Heights and Depths

I’d love to know what percentage of art-related calendars consist of the art of Norman Rockwell, Thomas Kinkade, and Ansel Adams. The number has to be staggering. Born February 20, 1902, Ansel Adams has become over the years the comfortable-as-an-easy-chair photographer of choice for many Americans the same way that Rockwell has become synonymous with Americana and Kinkade with kitsch. Images such as Adams’ Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (above, from 1941) simply take your breath away with their composition and beauty. Black and white photography never seems archaic in Adams’ hands. The tonalities just leap out at you. Adams also had the ability to frame an image in such a way that it seemed unfamiliar yet recognizable—just changed enough to make you look at it with fresh eyes. Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico could almost serve as a pendant to the “Earthrise” photo taken by astronaut William Anders of the Apollo 8 mission that landed on the moon.

Unlike Alfred Stieglitz, Adams never resorted to distorting tricks to make his photographs more painterly, which was the ideal of much early photography. Instead, Adams pushed the technical limitations of photography to the brink ,experimenting with sharpened focus, increased contrast, different rates of exposure, different types of paper, and other darkroom magic to achieve realer-than-real images such as Winter Sunrise, the Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California (above, from 1944). Adams helped further photography as a medium when he founded with Edward Weston the Group f/64, which eventually became the photography department of the MoMA. Thanks to Adams’ efforts, photography grew from a poor cousin to painting and the other accepted fine arts to a medium on equal standing. Adams’ work also preserved much of the natural beauty of the American west, particularly that of Yosemite National Park. Sadly, much of the actual land has been altered by climate changes, but at least we have Adams’ photographs to remind us of what once was and what we have lost.



Other photographers, particularly Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, are associated with the social injustices of the first half of the twentieth century in American, but Adams also belongs in that circle. When the U.S. government detained Japanese-Americans in camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Adams felt compelled to fight back with his camera. Adams visited the Manzanar War Relocation Center and took a series of photographs to demonstrate that these Japanese-Americans were “real” Americans, too. Adams faced heavy opposition (even Theodore Geisel, the future Dr. Seuss, drew cartoons questioning the loyalty of the Japanese-Americans), but he hoped that photographs such as Manzanar Baseball (above, from 1943) would change minds in a “See, they play baseball, too!” kind of way. Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans, the book that came out of this project, remains an almost-forgotten chapter of Adams career and certainly one that will never make it to the calendars. As with Norman Rockwell, we have grown too familiar with Ansel Adams and think we know him, but Adams has depths that we too often lose in his mountains.

Eye Spy

Barbara Crane (b. 1928). Eaters, 1981. Courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center. © Barbara Crane, 1981.

At just around five feet in height, Barbara Crane has a height advantage over most other photographers. Crane makes herself inconspicuous and captures people at their most vulnerable, unguarded, and real moments, such as in Eaters (above, from 1981). The Amon Carter Museum’s current exhibition Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision displays this period of Crane’s long, protean career as well as many others. The catalogue, which features an introduction by Kenneth C. Burkhart and essays by John Rohrbach and Abigail Foerstner, brings Crane into clear focus not only as a visionary photographer but also as a groundbreaking woman photographer breaking into the boys club of modern photography while raising three children, who actually posed for her as her thesis subjects for 35 cents an hour. “It took me years—really years, way into adulthood to say I was an artist,” Crane confesses. In 1970, Crane began a two-year project of photographing people passing through a doorway, which became the series known as People of the North Portal. “Brought together, the images deliver a vivid sense of place and activity,” Rohrbach writes in his essay, “Seeing Life Differently,” “the repetitious dance of life walking out of a public doorway and into the street, given a nostalgic twist through hairstyle and clothing.” Crane’s still photography captures the movement and vitality of life with all its change and randomness. Crane herself has never stopped moving artistically over five decades of creating.

Barbara Crane (b. 1928). Human Forms, 1964–65. Courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center. © Barbara Crane, 1964–65.

Crane’s Human Forms series (above, from 1964-1965) shows the influence of Edward Weston’s nudes but also just how different Crane’s approach to photography evolved from the work of Weston and others. Weston skirted the edges of abstraction with his nudes, but they always remained recognizably human. Crane, contrastingly, pushes the recognizable to the point of abstraction to make us see it anew. “Crane’s goal,” Rohrbach believes, “has been to critique our subservience to photographic realism and to suggest that we have fallen into a bad habit of giving undue preference to that part of photography’s magical language.” Writing specifically of Crane’s nude studies, Rohrbach writes that “[e]ach body almost dissolves, becoming a sinuous river flowing across a snowy landscape.” The gentle lyricism and natural sense of flow of Crane’s nudes departs drastically from Weston’s almost sculptural, static nudes. Such works beautifully capture the philosophical difference between Crane’s “challenging vision” and the vision of her contemporaries. Crane achieves what Rohrbach calls an “unnerving disconnect” that breaks old associations and forces us to reconnect with what we see before us.

Barbara Crane (b. 1928). Neon Cowboy, 1969. Courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center. © Barbara Crane, 1969.

Crane jumps from subject to subject throughout her career, always seeking something new to cast askew and make new. In a series of collaged photographs involving neon lights, Crane “juxtapos[es] neon lights over faces like ceremonial urban masks,” writes Foerstner in her essay, “On the Path to the Perfect Photograph.” In Neon Cowboy (above, from 1969), Crane superimposes a grid of neon cowboy signs over a series of male nudes. Rohrbach connects Crane’s use of series to the influence of John Cage’s music celebrating the artistic potential of chance. Although the neon sign does not move, the male model beneath does, sometimes wearing the neon like a mask and sometimes pulling away, revealing the hollow “mask-ness” of the sign. Rohrbach also makes a fascinating connection between Crane and the philosopher- semiotician Roland Barthes. Contrasting Crane with Lee Friedlander, who sees photography as seeing rather than making, Rohrbach calls Crane “a linguist at heart, in love with photographs as signs rather than signifiers.” Such philosophical depth adds a whole new dimension to what seem to be Crane’s simple pictures of people, buildings, neon signs, etc. “Crane taps the everyday world for the tumultuous undercurrents of unifying themes: chance, accident, chaos, contradiction and mystery playing out before our eyes,” Foerstner concurs.

Barbara Crane (b. 1928). Coloma to Covert: Fleshy Fungi, 1990. Courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center. © Barbara Crane, 1990.

After years of photographing the urban landscape and its inhabitants, Crane went “back to nature” in the 1990s with her Coloma to Covert series. Crane brings her “unnerving disconnect” to such subjects as mushrooms in Fleshy Fungi (above, from 1990), rendering them more alien than earthly. Stretching her images into panoramic scrolls, diptychs, and triptychs, Crane not only mimics the Chinese scroll in style but in substance. “The images recall the pared-down vocabulary of haiku poetry,” Rohrbach writes. “Crane’s world may be alien, but it is remarkably inviting.” In other photographs consisting mainly of out-of-focus leaves, Crane makes “[t]he eye, desperate to find a foothold, fall ever deeper into the chasm of crystal-sharp trees beyond,” writes Foerstner. Whereas someone such as Ansel Adams, a friend of Crane’s, used mountains to speak of infinity, Crane uses the minutiae of nature to open up a universe. Flipping through the 265 beautifully reproduced plates of the catalogue, you get a true sense both of the versatility of Barbara Crane as she shifts from subject to subject and of her unchanging faith in what Burkhart calls in his introduction, “the serendipity of happenstance.”

Barbara Crane (b. 1928). Schisms, 2001. Courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center. © Barbara Crane, 2001.

The Amon Carter Museum’s exhibition and catalogue may help win a place for Barbara Crane and her art in the hearts of the mainstream public. Crane’s art is both uniquely accessible while remaining uncompromisingly modern in its theoretical underpinnings. Crane continues to expand her repertoire by embracing the latest innovations in digital photography and computerized manipulations. Perhaps more than ever, the reality Crane photographs will find itself remolded in her spiritual likeness. Crane’s story is more than just a feminist success story, but it is certainly that as well. Faced with the reality of a male-dominated, realist-centered medium, Barbara Crane changed the rules of the game and continues to ask us to play along.


[Many thanks to the Amon Carter Museum for providing me with a review copy of Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision, with an introduction by Kenneth C. Burkhart and essays by John Rohrbach and Abigail Foerstner, and for the images above from the exhibition.]

Sex and Magic

"For me, S&M means sex and magic, not sadomasochism,” the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe once said. “It is all about trust." Born November 4, 1946, Mapplethorpe became the poster child for cultural controversy in the 1980s as AIDS, the disease that claimed Mapplethorpe’s life in 1989, thrust homosexuality into the American spotlight and opened up discussion of all types of sexual conduct. Whereas most of us see violence in many of the acts Mapplethorpe alludes to in his photography, he saw intimacy—acts natural to his sense of sexuality. Mapplethorpe fostered through his work an ideal of male physical beauty to rival the traditional female ideal in art. Mapplethorpe’s Robert Sherman (above, from 1983) echoes Man Ray’s famous portrait of Lee Miller titled simply Neck. Whereas Miller embodied the idea of the female muse for Ray, Sherman’s bald pate and heavily muscled neck and shoulders does the same for Mapplethorpe. Personally, I find much of Mapplethorpe’s work disturbing, but that’s more of an issue of my own boundaries than of any failure on his part. Sexuality is perhaps the most deeply personal aspect of whom we are, so any judgment is by definition a personal value judgment and not, as many hold, some universal rule to which all must conform. Sadly, Mapplethorpe’s sexuality and his artistic exploration of his sexuality still overshadow his larger achievement as an artist.

Mapplethorpe knew and exploited the whole history of Western art, especially in the field of portraiture. He felt a special kinship with musicians, including Deborah Harry, Peter Gabriel, Grace Jones, and Patti Smith (shown photographed above, from 1976). Mapplethorpe also photographed Smith for the cover of her first album, Horses. During the days of disco, Mapplethorpe enjoyed the freer sexual and cultural climate that these musicians came to embody. Unlike so many other celebrity photographers, Mapplethorpe actually maintained his high art aspirations while climbing the social ladder. The photo of Smith above reflects the singer’s “naked” style of emotional singing and playing. Smith famous “unladylike” persona struck back against sexual stereotypes as much as Mapplethorpe did in his sexually charged photography. It’s fascinating to see how Mapplethorpe flourished during this period knowing in retrospect the struggles he faced in the American culture wars just a few years later.

With the possible exception of Brett Weston, Edward’s son, Mapplethorpe emulated the flower and vegetable studies of Edward Weston like no other. Mapplethorpe’s Calla Lilly (above, from 1988), one of a series of studies of that flower, captures all the beauty of the surfaces and folds in striking close-up. Like Georgia O’Keeffe, Mapplethorpe also clearly alludes to the sexual overtones of the flower’s shape, but by the fact of his sexual orientation turns those allusions on their head. Sexual politics aside, Mapplethorpe knew how to create striking images in any format. The fact that his name has become synonymous with controversy seems a sad legacy. However, the number of artists and curators who have risen to his defense in the name of artistic freedom gives one hope that one day Mapplethorpe’s work will hang beside that of his inspirations and bring a sprinkling of that sex and magic that pervades all his art.

Birthday Suite

Tomorrow is my 41st birthday. Another year older and, hopefully, wiser. The intelligent, beautiful Annie and the curious, cuddly, and energetic Alex help keep me young. Every day that I get on the treadmill and get the blood pumping, I do it for myself and for them. I plan on sticking around a good, long time to enjoy every possible minute with both of them.

Since I usually commemorate the birthdays of great artists with a selection of their works, I decided to commemorate my own birthday by inflicting on the world a suite of my own amateurish works. If you’re a fan of Edward Weston’s photography, you may recognize my homage to one of his signature works in the drawing above. As I kid, I wanted to draw like Neal Adams and work on Batman comic books for the rest of my life. I still would like to draw like Neal Adams, but I’d “settle” for drawing like Michelangelo. Since Alex was born, I haven’t had as much time to draw, paint watercolors, or do pastels, but that time will come when he’s old enough to sit out on the deck and we can do art side by side. That’s a nice future memory I have to look forward to. Meanwhile, I keep a set of pencils, kneaded eraser, and sketch book in my desk at work and wander out to the park on nice days to draw whatever strikes me. The statues of Independence National Historical Park make great models, since they never move an inch. I’ll never make a living at art, but the feeling of blissfully losing myself for a stretch of time, concentrating on capturing light and shade as it defines a form, is more than enough recompense.

[All of these drawings were done in graphite pencils on white paper. I photographed rather than scanned them, so the reproductions are OK but not great, like the drawings themselves.]

The Son Also Rises

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993). Cactus, Santa Barbara, 1931. Silver gelatin photograph; 8 x 10 in. The Brett Weston Archive. Courtesy, The Christian K. Keesee Collection

We all like to think of history as a neat progression—time goes forward, things get better and easier, the future builds on the past. In the Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s new exhibition Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow, they turn the idea of generation influencing generation on its head. Not only does Brett Weston re-emerge as an important figure in the history of photography in his own right, but we see how Brett influenced the work of his father, Edward Weston, in so many ways. As the Directors’ Forward to the catalogue puts it, this exhibition is “a study of progressions—photography’s ascent from trade to fine art, a son’s emergence from his father’s footsteps to transcendent legacy, and an artist’s evolution from youthful prodigy to foremost American modernist photographer.” While both Brett and Edward ventured out to the deserts, they returned with greatly different results, as seen in Brett’s Cactus, Santa Barbara (above) which brings a far greater sense of abstraction to the subject than similar works by his father, reflecting not only a difference in their two approaches but a shift in the development of photography itself.

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993). Dune, Oceano, 1934. Silver gelatin photograph; 8 x 10 in. The Brett Weston Archive. Courtesy, The Christian K. Keesee Collection

When Edward’s marriage to Brett’s mother began to fall apart, Brett left school in 1925 and joined his father in Mexico. Working with his father on photography became Brett’s primary education. With access to Edward’s professional equipment, Brett soon schooled himself in the early technology of photography and began creating images himself. As Scott Hale points out in his essay in the catalogue, “In His Own Light,” Brett’s early work in glossy silver prints inspired Edward to give up the matte platinum paper he had been using. When Brett learned to drive, something Edward never learned, Brett sought out new subjects. After showing those works to Edward, the father would often ask the son to drive him out to shoot the same scenes, such as Dune, Oceano (above). “I note Brett’s interest in photography,” Edward wrote of Brett’s early work. “He is doing better work at fourteen than I did at thirty. To have someone close to me, working so excellently, with an assured future, is a happiness hardly expected.” Brett’s prodigious talent surprised Edward initially, but he soon came to see him as a collaborator in addition to a son. Brett and Edward exhibited their work side by side as early as 1927, when Brett was only fifteen. Edward also trusted Brett like no other to print his photographs. “In printing his father’s work,” Hale writes, “Brett exercised the ultimate influence on Edward’s art.” Edward taught Brett the ground rules, but very quickly the student caught up to, if not surpassed, the teacher. A solo exhibit in 1928 and inclusion in the landmark 1929 Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany, alongside the likes of his father, Paul Strand, Man Ray, and others, announced to the world that Brett had arrived as an artist separate from the shadow of his father.

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993). Garrapata Beach, California, 1954. Silver gelatin photograph; 11 x 14 in. The Brett Weston Archive. Courtesy, The Christian Keesee Collection

Part of that separation from Edward required a departure in approach to the subject itself. As much as he could look for different subjects, there would always be a comparison until he made a distinct break. Edward came from the old school of photography, beholden to the conventions of painting. Although he emulated some of the trends of modern art, such as Surrealism, Edward remained a painterly photographer for the most part until his death in 1958. Brett, on the other hand, took photography to a new abstract level, abandoning the painterly concentration on the subject for pure pleasure in the possibility of photography, helping establish the independence of his medium simultaneously with his own freedom. “Edward’s photographs grant the immediate recognition of the subject, giving way to form and abstraction, something he called ‘intellectual jugglery,’” Hale writes in drawing distinctions between father and son. “But Brett’s nonobjective photographs reverse the object/subject dichotomy: form denies the subject, requiring a reevaluation of the object and its understanding.” Garrapata Beach (above), at first glance, seems an abstract arrangement of darks and lights and varied textures. Not until you see the footprints trailing off into the distance and recognize the tiny curve of surf peeking in from stage left are you sure this is a beachscape. Brett, who was colorblind, worked exclusively in black and white, amplifying those two extremes to render the natural abstract, whereas Edward excelled in the middle tones, documenting before composing possible aesthetic form. While Edward’s nudes stand as some of the most beautiful and intriguing in the history of American photography for their celebration of the human form, Brett’s few nudes are shot underwater, allowing the play of light through the water to dance on the subject’s skin, painting abstract patterns and making even that most recognizable subject initially indiscernible.

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993). Kelp and Sand, c. 1970. Silver gelatin photograph; 11 x 14 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Gift of the Brett Weston Archive from the Christian K. Keesee Collection, 2006

Brett “seems to have had a sunny disposition and natural optimism, and his work displays none of the gloomy irony that can come across as contrived in his father’s work,” Johanna Halford-MacLeod and Stephen Bennett Phillips write in their catalogue essay that gives the exhibition its title. Movie-star handsome, as can be seen in the youthful self-portrait that begins the catalogue, Brett comes across as a straightforward man of action in contrast to the complex thoughtfulness of his father. Brett actually played an extra in the film Captain Blood and reportedly inspired the playboy character at the center of the film Love Affair and it’s remake, An Affair to Remember. “My work is perhaps more graphic, but at the same time it is more sensual,” Brett said in comparing his photos with his father’s. “The difference is enormous… He would say that I had influenced him.” Edward may have been more thoughtful, but Brett’s sensuality doesn’t come thoughtlessly, as seen in Kelp and Sand (above). The arrangement of the kelp on the sand in thick ropes that almost seem alive attracts the eye, but the complexity of the image engages the mind as well. The catalogue essays downplay the influence of modern painting on Brett, calling it “generalized,” mainly to widen the gap between him and Edward, but I see echoes of Abstract Expressionism, itself a sensual genre with a brainy side, in images such as Kelp and Sand.

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993). Building Reflections, c. 1975. Silver gelatin photograph; 11 x 14 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Gift of the Brett Weston Archive from the Christian K. Keesee Collection, 2006

As much as I enjoyed the essays, which help resurrect Brett’s reputation, which has faded somewhat since his death in 1993, the catalogue truly excels in allowing the pictures to speak for themselves. With almost 140 beautifully reproduced plates, you get a full sense of the versatility as well as the consistency of vision of Brett Weston’s work from the 1920s up until the 1980s. Whether it was sand dunes in the 1930s or modern office windows in the 1970s (above), Brett Weston found abstract beauty in the reality at hand. I found myself wondering at the bottomless chasms of blackness in so many of his works, which make the surrounding highlights surge with life. I’ve always been a fan of Edward Weston’s work and now appreciate it even more in contrast to and in symbiosis with Brett’s. Both as a dichotomy and as a team, Brett and Edward Weston helped shape the course of modern photography. Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow does, indeed, pull the son into the light, but it also manages to keep his paternity intact—a feat of “intellectual jugglery” that both would have appreciated.


[Many thanks to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for providing me with a review copy of the catalogue to Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow and for the images from the exhibition.]

Imperfect Friends

Lee Friedlander, Galax, Virginia, 1962; Gift of Celeste Bartos; The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2005 Lee Friedlander

America is “like a friend who is not perfect,” the photographer Lee Friedlander once said. Such imperfection never stopped Friedlander from making America and other imperfect subjects the focus of his art for half a century. A mammoth retrospective exhibition of Friedlander’s photography that began at the MoMA in 2005 and went overseas for several years now returns to the United States at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the catalogue to the exhibition, Peter Galassi notes Friedlander’s “signature nonchalance: distanced but full of curiosity, ironic but playful and often witty.” The face on the television at the foot of the bed in Galax, Virginia (above) looks back at us with the same nonchalance that Friedlander uses to look at his world—conscious of its flaws while celebrating its joys and pleasures.

Lee Friedlander, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1968; Stephen R. Currier Memorial Fund; The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2005 Lee Friedlander

Galassi, Chief Curator of the MoMA’s Department of Photography, brings an encyclopedic and intimate knowledge of Friedlander the man and the photographer to his essay, which spans not only the different phases of Friedlander’s career but also takes the time to place him within the larger context of the still-being-written history of the “infant” medium of photography. Growing up in Washington State, Friedlander chose photography as his destiny early on, working in a camera shop assisting the local professional, and otherwise putting all other education aside as he schooled himself on the world of photography. Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Henri Cartier-Bresson were early influences. Through Evans, who became a personal friend to Friedlander, Lee discovered Eugène Atget, whose cityscapes influenced such photographs by Friedlander as New Orleans, Louisiana (above). “They invented what we now call the history of photography,” Galassi writes, “a lifeline of pictures, many of whose most creative protagonists had not enjoyed—or been hampered by—the arrangements and ambitions of high art.” Galassi wonderfully shows how that history of photography was literally written on the fly, and how Friedlander helped shape the course of that history.

Lee Friedlander, Miles Davis, 1969; Purchase, The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2005 Lee Friedlander

Friedlander allowed himself one passion other than photography—jazz. “I was dumbfounded,” Friedlander said of hearing Charlie Parker play. “I somehow knew exactly where he was coming from. He made me understand that anything is possible.” Galassi beautifully relates how this jazz sensibility merged with Friedlander’s photography, riffing on how the two art forms paralleled one another. “Each art arose unbidden from vernacular roots in the early part of the twentieth century and reached greatness in a hurry,” he writes. “Neither was something you could learn in school. There was no academy, but by 1950 there was a tradition—a collective maturity, shaped by distinctive individual voices, that welcomed and challenged fresh talent to enrich it further.” Friedlander’s love of jazz allowed him to create portraits of jazz and blues musicians distinguished by their warmth and tact, such as his portrait of Miles Davis (above; a similar shot was later used for the cover of a Davis greatest hits collection). “Lee’s pictures show who these people were when they weren’t being who they were,” Atlantic Records producer Joel Dorn once said. Davis, famous for his intimidating “Prince of Darkness” persona, comes across as an insecure, deeply introspective figure in Friedlander’s photograph.

Lee Friedlander, Father Duffy. Times Square, New York City, 1974; Purchase, The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2005 Lee Friedlander

Friedlander’s consciousness of photography’s history as an art spurred him early on to collect his photographs in books, giving shape to the huge mass of work sprawling across the decades. Over two dozen books now allow anyone to have access to Friedlander’s work and, more importantly, how he envisioned it presented. From tomes dedicated to quirky self-portraits to the life of everyday factory workers (“for him,” Galassi writes, “work isn’t about things; it’s about people”), Friedlander brings the same sensibility that sees the flaws and beauty of the world and people around him. The American Monument, a 1976 collection of photographs of statues, “makes hay with the foibles and failures of our civic pronouncements, and yet makes room, too, for heroism and communal pride.” The statue of Father Duffy (above) seems lost in the sea of Times Square commercialism, neatly questioning the place of such values of Duffy’s heroism amidst the noise of modern existence. Photographing such works during the dark days of Vietnam and Watergate, Friedlander published his works during the Bicentennial year as a chanticleer call reminding us of what was once good about America and what could be good again.
Lee Friedlander, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, 1999; Collection of the photographer © 2005 Lee Friedlander

Looking through the almost eight hundred images in the catalogue, half of which appear in the exhibition, you wonder at the versatility and expansive nature of Friedlander’s photography. Just when you begin to expect an artist of the concrete jungles, you discover the Friedlander of natural beauty, as in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming (above), which one critic described as “like Ansel Adams on crack.” Speaking of the beauty of his native Washington State, Friedlander says, “I was indigenous to it. I felt part of it, then and now… The same wonder still exists and I feel the same connection and belonging. It is mine, and I am its.” America, that “imperfect friend,” remains a friend not just despite the flaws but also for such moments of perfect natural splendor.

Lee Friedlander, Nude, 1982; Purchase, The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2005 Lee Friedlander

If Friedlander’s takes on nature are like druggy Ansel Adams, his nudes are a poor man’s Edward Weston. At first, I couldn’t help but mentally compare Friedlander’s nudes (above) to the high art conceptions of Weston and find them flawed. These flaws, however, are their beauty. “The nudes nicely elucidate the circular fecundity of Friedlander’s art,” Galassi writes, “in which the described and the description—the inexhaustible quiddity of the world and the ways photography can explore it—follow up on each other like the chicken and the egg.” Friedlander’s nudes, many of whom were personal friends of the artist, are not sexy or pornographic in any sense. The decidedly un-model-like women seem vulnerable and real in their living room settings, free of fantasy and freed by the acceptance of their physical imperfections captured by Friedlander’s camera. Friedlander dismisses the concept of ideal beauty with the power of fact, which proves both more powerful and beautiful in his eyes.

Lee Friedlander, California, 1997; Robert and Joyce Menschel Fund; The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2005 Lee Friedlander

Like those by Rembrandt, Friedlander’s self-portraits show him at different ages striking different poses and guises, such as in the quirky self-portrait titled California (above). The artist who made so many images of the dappled nature of reality doesn’t flinch on turning that same eye upon himself in all his imperfection. Snapshots are famous for catching life at its most real, completely unstaged. Friedlander excels in bringing a snapshot mentality to his photography, both capturing reality and putting a personal signature upon it. While the 1955 photographic landmark The Family of Man argued through photography that we are all the same, regardless of place or time, Friedlander’s body of work seconds that emotion and adds the important coda that we are all the same—imperfect, and beautiful for and not despite our imperfections.


[Many thanks to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for providing me with a review copy of Peter Galassi’s Friedlander and for the images from the exhibition.]

Living Long, and Prospering

An Art Info interview with actor-director Leonard Nimoy and his wife Susan discusses how they’ve become avid collectors of modern art since 1987. Susan is a trustee of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Nimoys have contributed to the MOCA’s exhibitions of emerging artists. Along with a discussion of their love of collecting, the interview features a selection of Leonard Nimoy’s own photography, which I found interesting in its almost classical approach. One photo from The Borghese Series (above) shows a hooded figure that seems almost from another planet. Didn’t Spock mind meld with this guy on Rigel VII?

Nimoy’s photography reminded me greatly of that of Edward Weston, especially photographs such as Nimoy’s Dance Nudes Series (above) and his Egg Series. Clearly, Nimoy knows the history of photography and appreciates figures such as Weston. Another photo, featuring a pair of disembodied hands, pays homage to Alfred Stieglitz, who did a similar study of the hands of the painter Georgia O’Keeffe.

Nimoy’s photography seems most interesting in his unique Self-Portraits, such as the double-exposure study shown above. In another self-portrait, Nimoy places his face, full of the marks of age and experience, in the foreground, while a nude woman lays in the background, slightly out of focus. It’s a fascinating study of the contrast of age and youth. I’ll confess to being a Trekkie and a devout follower of the original series. Along with Brent Spiner as Data in The Next Generation, Nimoy’s Mr. Spock always struck me as the most fascinating, complex character, thanks mostly to the ability of the actor behind the makeup. Nimoy’s autobiographies—I Am Not Spock and I Am Spock (yes, I've read both)–demonstrated that he was more than just a typecast actor. His photography proves that Leonard Nimoy truly has an artist’s soul.

Life After Death

Even posthumously, Robert Mapplethorpe continues to incite controversy with his sexually charged photographs, many of which involve homosexual and even sadomasochistic imagery. Born November 4, 1946, Mapplethorpe celebrated sexuality in his art right at the beginning of the American culture wars of the Reagan years. The specter of AIDS added another deadly dimension to the debate, generating fear and misunderstanding of homoerotic art in general and Mapplethorpe specifically, thanks to his NEA grants. Conservatives couldn’t accept that their tax dollars could subsidize works such as Ajitto (above, from 1981), even if the reality was that such subsidies were a miniscule percentage of the government budget. Free of the cultural and sexual context, images such as Ajitto could be taken for Renaissance-like celebrations of the human body. Sadly, Mapplethorpe could only find that freedom in death, and just barely. West

Edward Weston’s nudes and studies of flowers and other natural forms inspired many of Mapplethorpe’s modern interpretations. Photographs such as Calla Lily (above, from 1986) allow the natural form of the flower to take on a whole new existence as a work of art itself, elevating the natural forms in the same way that Georgia O’Keeffe did in her paintings, with the same sexual undertones, of course. Many forget this side of Mapplethorpe today, as well as his stint as the photographer to the stars. Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, Peter Gabriel, and many other artistically inclined celebrities of the time all posed for Mapplethorpe, helping him generate the income that allowed him to pursue his more controversial work.

After the public learned that Mapplethorpe had contracted HIV in the late 1980s, prices for his photographs ghoulishly soared. The disease ravaging the gay community at that time had claimed one of its most visible figures. In his Self-Portrait of 1988 (above), Mapplethorpe’s face seems much older than that of a 41-year-old man. The skull atop his walking stick almost echoes his own face. Mapplethorpe places that skull forward in the frame, pushing it and his mortality into our consciousness. Within a year, AIDS took his life. American cultural conservatives continually resurrect their image of Mapplethorpe whenever necessary to point towards all they see as wrong with the arts and society today. Clearly, many of his images are intended to offend, to shock the viewer into seeing an aspect of life they may not understand or appreciate, but cannot deny. Perhaps one day those who are shocked and appalled will allow themselves to see the other images of flowers, of celebrities, and of beautiful, healthy human bodies and see all of Mapplethorpe’s art and life rather than the two-dimensional ideological caricature he has become.