Questioning the true age of photography, the exhibition will open with some of the first known Victorian images by William Henry Fox Talbot, positioning his experimentation with paper negatives as the very beginning of photography. It will also introduce a key selection of cyanotypes by one of the first women photographers, Anna Atkins (1799-1871), who created camera-less photograms of the algae specimens found along the south coast of England. Displayed publicly for the first time, these works highlight the ground-breaking accuracy of Atkins’ approach, and the remarkably contemporary appearance of her work which has inspired many artists and designers.

The exhibition will also foreground the artists who produced unprecedented photographic art in the twentieth century without artistic intention. The medium allowed for quick documentation of nature’s infinite specimens, making it an important tool for scientists and  botanists such as the German photographer and teacher Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) who captured close-up views of plant specimens in order to study and share an understanding of nature’s ‘architecture’. A selection of Blossfeldt’s ‘study aids’ will be displayed alongside work by the proud gardener Charles Jones, who used a glass plate camera to keep a meticulously illustrated record of his finest crops. Seen together for the first time, the two artists will be examined for their pragmatic approach that set them apart from the romanticised style of their time.

Nobuyoshi Araki - Anna Atkins - Alois Auer - Sir Cecil Beaton - Karl Blossfeldt - Adolphe Braun - Jan Brueghel I - Mat Collishaw - Imogen Cunningham - Roger Fenton - Adam Fuss - Ori Gersht - Cecilia Glaisher - Joy Gregory - William Henry Fox-Talbot - John Frederick Herschel - Gyula Holics - Jan van Huysum - Henry Irving - Charles Jones - Sarah Jones - André Kertész - Nick Knight - Lou Landauer - Richard Learoyd - Pradip Malde - Robert Mapplethorpe - John Moffat - Sarah Moon - James Mudd - Kazumasa Ogawa - [Enami Nobukuni] T. Enami - Albert G. Richards - Charles T. Scowen - [Maurice Scheltens & Liesbeth Abbenes] Scheltens & Abbenes - Helen Sear - Edward Steichen - Josef Sudek - Lorenzo Vitturi - Edward Weston - Walter Bentley Woodbury -
Curator Alexander Moore -

Portraiture customarily takes on the aura of fact, as it communicates information about a sitter’s visage. When captured through the mechanical lens of the camera, such likenesses impress us as vivid surrogates for reality. Face It: The Photographic Portrait considers the notional world—where ideas are balanced with facts—presented in the close-up. It assumes that there is more to the photographic portrait than meets the eye. In place of seeking a strict reportage of a subject’s features, or outright flattery, Face It bids us look for the affective moment, the human interest, and the metaphorical associations inherent in portraits of persons known or anonymous. When confronted with figures loosed from the conventions of traditional portraiture, we, as viewers, are prompted to be active rather than passive in our experience of the images. The intimacy that occurs in such an encounter with the informal or ambiguous conjures in us a psychology of looking.

A series of special events are being offered in conjunction with the exhibition. More information can be found on the museum's website.

Manuel Álvarez-Bravo - Diane Arbus - Imogen Cunningham - Judy Dater - Minor White - John R. Gossage - Philippe Halsman - Lee [Elizabeth] Miller [Lady Penrose] - Robert Delford Brown - Douglas Gilbert - Charles H. Traub -
Curator Gloria Williams Sander -