Among the earliest photographs on view is a 1953 impressionistic study of the Metropolitan Opera Bar which presages Winogrand’s interest with public events.  The exhibition also includes some very early studies of women which eventually evolved into a body of work known as “Women are Beautiful.”  The photographs on exhibit span Winogrand’s career, ending with his influential documents of peace demonstrations, political protest rallies, Marilyn Monroe, and an unpublished picture of Ali McGraw as she contributes money to a blind man.

From the mid-fifties on, Winogrand’s personal “New Documentary” photographs of densely packed moments won him acclaim as an important chronicler of contemporary American life.  In his photographs, both the world’s extraordinary complexity and the sharp, sensual delights of seeing are as evident as the obsessions of a particular man.

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Robert Adams has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships and two Photographer’s Fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts.  His work appears in numerous books and monographs including: The New West, Denver, From The Missouri West, and Summer Nights.  His work will be the subject of a major retrospective organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, opening February of 1989.

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Wegman’s collaboration with his first model, a male Weimaraner named Man Ray began in the late 1970s and continued until Man Ray’s death in 1982 at age thirteen.  Six years since Ray’s death, it is quite clear that Wegman has found a new and willing subject in Fay Ray, a young female Weimaraner.

The exhibition will include fifteen unique 20 X 24” Polaroid prints made with the large format camera also used for his studies of Ray.  The shots range from straight portraits of Fay and her friends to complicated studio set ups.  This work continues the same tail-wagging sense of humor as the previous pictures, and clearly illustrate that a genuinely new and endearing relationship has been established.  Fay is more lithe and limber than Ray and has her own ideas as to what makes a good photograph.  Wegman says that “she’s more vulnerable, whereas he (Ray) was more stoic.”

Wegman’s understanding of his canine collaborators is keen, but one look at Fay in a wig and shoes (Afganistand), or sunk back in an overstuffed chair with guitar in lap (Slow Guitar), or in a straightforward portrait triptych (Cinnamon Girl) shows that the understanding works in both directions and that this is nothing short of a true partnership.

This exhibition will be concurrent with the exhibitions: WILLIAM WEGMAN: Polaroids and Videos at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and WILLIAM WEGMAN: Paintings and Drawings at Rena Bransten Gallery.

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Taking little from the contributions of his contemporaries, Lee Friedlander stands out as one of the greats whose work has dominated American photography since the 1960s.  His images have assured him a place of honor among the photographers he admires: Atget, Evans, Cartier-Bresson, and Frank.  His crowded, tense and often humorous images, and skein-like interlocking of pictorial elements are so complex and so thoroughly defy traditional notions of photographic composition, that they are literally incomprehensible to many initial viewing, and are interpreted by some as metaphors for the obdurate chaos that is modern life.  With a small, hand-held camera and a hawk’s eye for the unnoticed, Friedlander has forged as unmistakable style.  What others may pass by as unphotogenic, Friedlander gently tucks into his lexicon: an unpeopled street with mysterious deep shadows, a cacophony of reflections in windows, a tangle of branches and blooms.  His vision, his style, his wordless visual assertions have unequivocally affected the ways many contemporary photographers envisage the urban environment.

Among Friedlander’s numerous honors, he has received three Guggenheim fellowships, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was recently the first photographer to receive the prestigious MacDowell Award.

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Throughout the nearly one dozen years of her mature work, “the couple” was a theme of ongoing interest for Arbus. Early on, the photographer recognized that when a photographic frame is placed around two individuals, a certain relationship is immediately created. The current exhibition will include two photographs dating as early as 1962: “The Junior Interstate Ballroom Dance Champions, Yonkers,” and “Man and boy on a bench in Central Park.” Though these are two very different pairs, they serve to illuminate the range of Arbus’s interest in this theme.

The subject of relationships preoccupied Arbus into her final years, as can be seen in the three “Untitled” photographs made in a home for Down Syndrome patients in Vineland, New Jersey. The exhibition will include several images that have not been published or exhibited heretofore.

Diane Arbus was a singular and explosive force in photography, reshaping both the ways pictures are made and our response to them. John Szarkowski, Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York has written:

“Arbus knew that honesty is not a gift, endowed by a native naiveté, nor a matter of style, or politics, or philosophy. She knew rather that it is a reward bestowed for bravery in the face of the truth. … Arbus did not avert her eyes. She stuck with her subject exploring their secrets (and thus her own) more and more deeply. She was surely aware of the danger of this path, but she believed that her bravery would be equal to the demands she made of it.”

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