This exhibition features more than two dozen images by thirteen photographers working in the United States from the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries. Their photography ranges across genres including environmental, group, and family portraits. At the same time, most of the photographers are keenly aware of the medium’s power to shape individual and group identities—to resist or reinforce stereotypes. Their subjects represent a diverse cross-section of American identities— from women rabbis, cantors, faculty, and students at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan by Frédéric Brenner to a girl with her mother and younger sister preparing for her first communion in the Bronx by Larry Fink; from Cuban American princesses in a staged self-portrait tableau by GisMo (Jessica Gispert and Crystal Pearl Molinary) in Miami to Pueblo community members in the Southwest by Toba Tucker. The exhibition also includes portraits of such iconic cultural and historical figures as Ray Charles, James Dean, Betty Friedan, Lee Krasner, Pete Seeger, and Frank Sinatra.
The public is invited to free talks in the Museum on Sunday, October 11, at 2 p.m. during New York State’s Path Through History Weekend, and in conjunction with Open House New York on Sunday, October 18, at 2 p.m. An artists’ panel in collaboration with En Foco will take place in the Museum on Thursday, December 3, at 6:30 p.m. Admission to the Museum is always free. Photo I.D. required for entry.
Taking a Broad View: Portrait Photography from the Collection
