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11/4/2011 Houston— In November 2012, the Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston, will debut an unprecedented exhibition exploring the
experience of war through the eyes of photographers. WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY:
Photographs of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath includes nearly 500
objects, including photographs, books, magazines, albums and
photographic equipment. The photographs were made by 284 photographers
from 28 nations who have covered conflict on six continents over 165
years, from the Mexican-American War in 1846 through present-day
conflicts. Organized by a curatorial team consisting of Anne Wilkes
Tucker, Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography, Will Michels,
photographer and Glassell School of Art instructor, and Natalie Zelt,
MFAH curatorial assistant for photography, the exhibition will travel to
the Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles; the Corcoran Gallery
of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition is
accompanied by a 600-page catalogue of the same title, with interviews
and essays by the curators, contributing scholars and military
historians.
The exhibition takes a critical look at the relationship between war and photography, exploring what types of photographs are, and are not, made, and by whom and for whom, during wartime. Rather than presenting a chronological survey of wartime photographs or a survey of ―greatest hits,‖ the curators have identified types of photographs repeatedly made during the many phases of war—regardless of the size or cause of the conflict, the photographers’ or subjects’ culture or the era in which the pictures were made. The images in the exhibition will be organized according to the progression of war, from the acts that instigate armed conflict to ―the fight,‖ to victory and defeat, and images that memorialize a war, its combatants
―WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY promises to be a landmark exhibition, following on a number of definitive exhibitions organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in the field of photography, including Czech Modernism: 1900–1945 (1989) and The History of Japanese Photography (2003)," said Gwendolyn H. Goffe, MFAH interim director. ―With the accompanying catalogue and related interpretive programming, the show provides an unprecedented exploration of this subject."
―Photographs serve the public as a collective memory of the experience of war," commented Tucker. ―Yet most presentations that deal with the material are organized chronologically or focus on one photographer, or a specific war. We believe WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY is unique in its scope, exploring conflict and its consequences across the globe and over time, analyzing this complex and unrelenting phenomenon."
The earliest works in the exhibition date from the first photographed conflict: the 1846–48 Mexican-American War. Other early examples include photographs from the Crimean War, including Roger Fenton’s iconic The Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855) and Felice Beato’s photograph of the devastated interior of Fort Taku in India during the Second Opium War (1860). Among the most recent images is a 2008 photograph of the Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in the remote Korengal Valley of Eastern Afghanistan by Tim Hetherington, who was killed in April 2011 while covering the civil war in Libya. While the exhibition is organized according to the phases of war, portraits of servicemen, military and political leaders and civilians are a consistent presence throughout the exhibition, including Yusuf Karsh’s classic image of Winston Churchill and the Marlboro Marine (2004), taken by embedded Los Angeles Times photographer Luis Sinco of soldier James Blake Miller after an assault in Fallujah (Iraq), published worldwide on the cover of 150 publications, and a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
The exhibition was initiated in 2002, when the museum acquired what is purported to be the first print made from Joe Rosenthal’s negative of Old Glory Goes Up on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima (1945). From this initial acquisition, the curators decided to organize an exhibition that would focus on war photography as a genre. During the evolution of the project, the museum acquired over a third of the prints in the exhibition. The curators have been joined on this ambitious project by an international advisory committee: Hilary V. Roberts, Head of Collections Management, Imperial War Museum Photograph Archive, London; Dr. John Stauffer, Chair of the History of American Civilization and Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University; Dr. William Sheldon Dudley, former director of Naval History for the U.S. Navy Department and retired director of the Naval Historical Center, D.C.
The exhibition takes a critical look at the relationship between war and photography, exploring what types of photographs are, and are not, made, and by whom and for whom, during wartime. Rather than presenting a chronological survey of wartime photographs or a survey of ―greatest hits,‖ the curators have identified types of photographs repeatedly made during the many phases of war—regardless of the size or cause of the conflict, the photographers’ or subjects’ culture or the era in which the pictures were made. The images in the exhibition will be organized according to the progression of war, from the acts that instigate armed conflict to ―the fight,‖ to victory and defeat, and images that memorialize a war, its combatants
―WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY promises to be a landmark exhibition, following on a number of definitive exhibitions organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in the field of photography, including Czech Modernism: 1900–1945 (1989) and The History of Japanese Photography (2003)," said Gwendolyn H. Goffe, MFAH interim director. ―With the accompanying catalogue and related interpretive programming, the show provides an unprecedented exploration of this subject."
―Photographs serve the public as a collective memory of the experience of war," commented Tucker. ―Yet most presentations that deal with the material are organized chronologically or focus on one photographer, or a specific war. We believe WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY is unique in its scope, exploring conflict and its consequences across the globe and over time, analyzing this complex and unrelenting phenomenon."
The earliest works in the exhibition date from the first photographed conflict: the 1846–48 Mexican-American War. Other early examples include photographs from the Crimean War, including Roger Fenton’s iconic The Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855) and Felice Beato’s photograph of the devastated interior of Fort Taku in India during the Second Opium War (1860). Among the most recent images is a 2008 photograph of the Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in the remote Korengal Valley of Eastern Afghanistan by Tim Hetherington, who was killed in April 2011 while covering the civil war in Libya. While the exhibition is organized according to the phases of war, portraits of servicemen, military and political leaders and civilians are a consistent presence throughout the exhibition, including Yusuf Karsh’s classic image of Winston Churchill and the Marlboro Marine (2004), taken by embedded Los Angeles Times photographer Luis Sinco of soldier James Blake Miller after an assault in Fallujah (Iraq), published worldwide on the cover of 150 publications, and a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
The exhibition was initiated in 2002, when the museum acquired what is purported to be the first print made from Joe Rosenthal’s negative of Old Glory Goes Up on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima (1945). From this initial acquisition, the curators decided to organize an exhibition that would focus on war photography as a genre. During the evolution of the project, the museum acquired over a third of the prints in the exhibition. The curators have been joined on this ambitious project by an international advisory committee: Hilary V. Roberts, Head of Collections Management, Imperial War Museum Photograph Archive, London; Dr. John Stauffer, Chair of the History of American Civilization and Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University; Dr. William Sheldon Dudley, former director of Naval History for the U.S. Navy Department and retired director of the Naval Historical Center, D.C.
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