Evidence Revisited Looks Anew at Pioneering Photography Exhibition, from October 2 through December 19 at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

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POUGHKEEPSIE, NY (September 7, 2004) — For Evidence, their 1977 exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the young photographers Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel selected several dozen anonymous photographs from the files of government archives, research laboratories, corporate offices, and law enforcement agencies, and presented them in a whole new light. Divorcing the functional images from all explanatory context and exhibiting them in no obvious sequence, the curators created what they called "a poetic exploration upon the restructuring of imagery." In an international tour that included the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Evidence went on to inspire both admiration and controversy.

Evidence Revisited, a touring exhibit that brings new perspectives to Sultan and Mandel's experiment, will be presented October 2 - December 19, 2004 at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. Accompanied by a new edition of the 1977 Evidence book, Evidence Revisited comprises the original exhibition prints as well as various items related to the history and fortunes of the original groundbreaking project. Vassar will also bring Evidence curator Mike Mandel to campus for a public talk on Tuesday, October 12 at 6:00 p.m. in Taylor Hall 203, with a reception to follow in the Art Center.

The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona acquired the entire Evidence collection in 1977, organized its international tour, and mounted Evidence Revisited in January 2004. This new exhibition is being presented at Vassar's Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center through the generous support of The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.

"The perverse wit of Evidence and its accompanying book made it an instant classic among photographers and helped inspire uses of appropriated imagery that have characterized artistic practice since the 1980s," explained Joel Smith, photography curator at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. "By pairing the original Evidence prints with historical documents, Evidence Revisited lends a human dimension to an influential episode in photography's postwar history."

The unauthored or "found" photograph emerged as a central topic for the photographic arts in the 1970s, as the snapshot, the news photograph, postcards, advertising images, and other functional genres of imagery were introduced into museum contexts. Tuned to this trend, and leveraging a National Endowment for the Arts grant to support their research, Sultan and Mandel corresponded with hundreds of offices and agencies, requesting permission to rummage through their photographic files for compelling images. The two curators went on to examine over 2 million institutional photographs from 70 archives over a 2-year period, and narrowed the group down to 243 images, from which the project's final 89 were chosen.

Sultan and Mandel's file of Evidence correspondence — a selection of which is part of Evidence Revisited — is full of unintentional humor, as they tried to explain their unusual request to institutional gatekeepers and archivists. To add further perspective, Evidence Revisited also samples from Sultan and Mandel's subsequent artistic collaborations of the past 25+ years.

About the Center for Creative Photography

Through its archives, collections, education programs, exhibitions, and publications, the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona promotes research into and appreciation of the photographic media. The CCP art collection numbers more than 70,000 works, and holds more archives and individual works by 20th-century North American photographers than any other museum in the nation, including the archives of Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston and Garry Winogrand.

About the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, with collections of more than 15,000 works, charts the history of art from antiquity to the present. Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, the 34,000 square foot Art Center, designed by Cesar Pelli, features approximately 350 works at any given time in its Permanent Collection Galleries. Notable holdings include the Warburg Collection of Old Master prints, an important group of Hudson River School paintings, and a wide range of works by major European and American painters of the twentieth century. The Art Center is the successor to the Vassar College Art Gallery, which was begun in 1864, making Vassar the first college founded with a permanent art collection and gallery.

Admission to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is free. The Art Center is open to the public Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday. 1-5 p.m. Located at the entrance to the historic Vassar College campus, the Art Center can be reached within minutes from other Mid-Hudson cultural attractions, such as the new Dia:Beacon, the Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt national historic sites and homes, and the Culinary Institute of America. The Art Center is wheelchair accessible. For more information, the public may 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 Tuesday, September 7th, 2004.