Art Institute Offers Timely Exhibiton of Socially Engaged Photgraphy from Its Collection

Rarely Seen Images Address Photography's Relationship to Political Action
The Concerned Photographer on View March 18–June 11, 2006

March 7, 2006

MEDIA CONTACT:                 
Erin Hogan
(312) 443-3664

The past few years alone have given rise to an extraordinary reconsideration of the role of photography in objectively documenting the brutal political and social realities that exist around the world. The shock of the Abu Ghraib images and the deaths of photojournalists in Iraq are a potent reminder that photography is no mere medium of documentation; it alone has the power to engage, enrage, and catalyze energy into action. The Concerned Photographer, drawn from the Art Institute of Chicago's vast photography collection, presents an extraordinarily timely record of "concerned photography," a phrase coined by Cornell Capa to describe photography's ability to spur social and political change.

The Concerned Photographer showcases nearly 70 photographs all motivated by the need to expose, as only photography can, the abuses and atrocities of the twentieth century. Here, photography's traditional mantle of objectivity is transformed into a tool for public awareness and as a foundation for radical, socially engaged transformation. The images are thematically grouped into categories that alone offer a history of the dark side of the twentieth century and those who struggled to make it public: child labor practices, the Great Depression, World War II, the Hindu-Muslim conflict at the base of India's independence, Albert Schweitzer's work in poverty-ridden Africa, the struggle for civil rights in the United States, Ireland's Bloody Sunday repression, the aftermath of the Nicaraguan revolution, and the mining industry of Brazil.

Each section of the exhibition is composed of images that directly confront social ills and political evils, along with information that contextualizes these chronicles within the history of photography and the history of political change. Some of the photographers represented here are well known--such as Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, and Margaret Bourke-White--while others have been somewhat unfairly relegated to the category of "mere" photojournalists. The same can be said of the works on view in The Concerned Photographer; while many of these images were widely circulated or published in popular magazines such as Life and Look, others struggled to find an audience or were criticized as representations of strife too artful to be truly documentary and too rooted in documentary to be considered art.

The exhibition includes the work of 15 photographers, including:

--Bruce Davidson, a former Oak Park resident and Guggenheim fellowship recipient, who is recognized today as one of the principal photographers of the Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s. He lectured at the Art Institute of Chicago in January 2006.

--Susan Meiselas, who was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1979 for her work documenting social issues in Nicaragua and the Cornell Capa award for photo-journalism in 2005, one of the most prestigious awards given in the field. Her photographs have been published in the pages of Time, the New York Times, Life, and numerous other newspapers and magazines.

--One of the masters of American photography, Walker Evans, whose quiet and precise depictions of American life have influenced generations of photo-graphers. Evans followed the French poet Charles Baudelaire's belief that artists had an obligation to confront and present life harshest realities; only by so doing was art fulfilling its responsibility to the world.

Viewers of The Concerned Photographer will find themselves in the midst of some of the most trenchant images produced in the twentieth century and thus will need to be aware that the exhibition contains graphic content and disturbing subject matter. But creating images with the power to unsettle viewers is precisely the role of the concerned photographer, defined by Capa as one who "finds much in the present unacceptable which he tries to alter. Our goal is simply to let the world know why it is unacceptable."

With The Concerned Photographer, the Art Institute of Chicago continues the tradition of engagement and confrontation in which and for which these images were created. "Given the vast scope and size of the photography collection here at the Art Institute," notes co-curator Katherine Bussard, "we wanted to create an exhibition that could demonstrate just how uniquely positioned photography has been as an agent of change and the powerful social role it continues to play today."

The Concerned Photographer is curated by Katherine A. Bussard, Gregory J. Harris, and Newell G. Smith, Department of Photography, the Art Institute of Chicago.

The films on view in this exhibition have been generously supported by First Run/Icarus Films.

Related Events

There will be a gallery talk by co-curator Katherine Bussard on Tuesday, March 21 at noon. On Friday, May 19 at 2:00, cocurator Gregory Harris will lead an Express Talk. Both talks will meet in Gallery 100.

The exhibition is also accompanied by rare screenings of two documentaries: Intolerable Burden, a film that charts one black family's commitment to a quality education through the cycles of segregation from the 1950s through the present, and War Photographer, which chronicles the work of James Nachtwey, considered one of the bravest and most important war photographers of our time who has covered wars in Indonesia, Kosovo, and Palestine, as well as documented other troubled areas around the world. Intolerable Burden (directed by Chea Prince, produced by Constance Curry, First Run/Icarus Films, 2003, 56 minutes) will be shown at noon in Gallery 1 every day from March 18 through April 16. The Academy Award–nominee War Photographer (a film by Christian Frei with James Nachtwey, First Run/Icarus Films, 2001, 96 minutes) will be shown at noon in Gallery 1 every day from April 29 through May 29.

There will be three networked computer terminals in the exhibition galleries, bookmarked to specific sites, available to visitors who wish to learn more about social engagement and how to be involved in positive change in today's world.