‘Histories of Photography’ — 70 works on exhibition at Vassar College July 5 - September 21.

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Centerwill exhibit "Histories of Photography" from July 5- September 21 in the Prints and Drawing Galleries.

"Histories of Photography," an overview of the medium, is drawn from works acquired by the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center over the past five years. This visually absorbing exhibition takes viewers on a criss-cross tour of photography — a medium whose history since 1839 parallels, and defines, the modern era. The seventy works in the exhibition are arranged to exemplify major trends in photography's social, technical, and aesthetic evolution. Visitors will explore this subject not through a single monumental narrative, but in the form of many wide-ranging stories — "histories of photography" that reflect the great diversity of audiences, commercial functions, technological ambitions, and aesthetic aims that the camera has touched and transformed. Sequences of three to ten photographs illuminate such lively topics as news and sensationalism, privacy and publicity, exploration and tourism, the aesthetics of painting, the technology of image reproduction, and the Moon.

Photographers represented in this thought-provoking survey include Eugène Atget, Edouard Baldus, Margaret Bourke-White, Rudy Burckhardt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gregory Crewdson, Robert Frank, Peter Hujar, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Toshio Shibata, W. Eugene Smith, and Joel Sternfeld.

The exhibition, accompanied by an illustrated checklist, is organized by curator Joel Smith and made possible by the generous support of the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.

Simultaneously, the Art Center's Project Gallery will feature twenty aerial landscapes by contemporary photographer Emmet Gowin, beautiful and harrowing documents that reveal the earth's surface as an evolving index of human activity. The season concludes with a lecture by the artist on Tuesday, September 16, followed by a reception in the Art Center.

Admission to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is free. It is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. The Lehman Loeb Art Center is wheelchair accessible. For more information, call (845) 437-5632 or visit fllac.vassar.edu.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations or information on accessibility should contact Campus Activities Office at (845) 437-5370. Without sufficient notice, appropriate space and/or assistance may not be available.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

This article was posted on Saturday, July 5th, 2003.