Danny Lyon, Crossing the Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky, 1965, Courtesy of the Edwynn Houk Gallery
CLICK HERE - Download the Streewise Gallery Guide
Streetwise: Masters of 60’s Photography
Organized by the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA
Monday, October 3, 2011 – Sunday, January 22, 2012
Knight Gallery
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 6 from 6-9pm
Streetwise builds on what Swiss photographer Robert Frank began with his new “snapshot aesthetic”, which was brought to the foreground with the domestic release of his ground breaking book The Americans, in January 1960. His focus on a more personal documentary style would influence a new generation of photographers—Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Jerry Berndt, Ruth-Marion Baruch, Garry Winogrand, Bruce Davidson, Danny Lyon, and Ernest Withers, all of whom are featured in Streetwise alongside Frank.
Intent on redefining the nation based on what they saw, documentary photographers were increasingly concerned with revealing a more realistic, sometimes dire, but always challenging view of an America undergoing change. Ranging from the “outlaw culture” of bikers and chain gangs; Boston’s red light district known as the Combat Zone; Black Panthers; the gritty streets and neighborhoods of New York; the politically charged South; to the America’s darker subcultures. Many of these photographers spent time with their subjects and wanted their photographs to represent the larger narrative of actual events.
A catalogue published by Modernbook, which includes an essay by consulting guest curator Andy Grundberg, is available for purchase here.
