Katie's Blog: April 2012

The two photographs that I decided to compare and contrast are Rails in the Rain by Imre Kinszki, 1929 and George Washington Bridge, 1935. When I was going through the exhibit I saw multiple images that I thought would make good comparisons. These two photographs are alike in that their foreground is composed of roads or rails. The two photographs are also similar in the background information. In the background of both of these photographs there is a cityscape. In the background of both photographs, we see houses and buildings, along with trees and little hills. They also both have multiple leading lines headed towards the viewer’s eye, which pulls you into the photograph and leads you though it.

After reflecting on the photography exhibit at the Currier Museum on Thursday, I decided that the photograph I thought was the weakest was the print by Edward Steichen. The photograph was The Big White Cloud, Lake George, NY 1906. I bounced back and forth trying to decide between this photograph and Arnold Newman’s Marcel Duchamp 1966. I thought the portrait didn’t fit in with the rest of the series, but I didn’t think there was anything else wrong with the photograph. This leads me to my decision that the weakest photograph was the photo by Edward Steichen. I thought that this photo was too dark, and that the only part of the photograph that stood out was the cloud. I understand that that was most likely the purpose based on the title, but the water and the hills are too dark and blend in to create too much dark on the bottom 3/4s of the photograph.

If I could choose one image from the exhibit that I could have on my wall, it would be the photograph by Eleanor Briggs. The photograph titled Forest Floor, Tropiang Pring, Cambodia 2011 caught my attention with its two brightly colored flowers which are counteracted by the neutral colors of the other aspects of the photograph. For me, this photograph pulls me in because it the contrast of something bright and alive versus something dull and dead. And the gravel background adds a wonderful texture, which contrasts the softness and flow of the flowers.

I liked the overall setup of the exhibition; I thought it added an especially nice touch that they added a room at the end with solely Brett Weston’s work displayed in it. The second room was much different than the first room; I felt that it had more contemporary photographs. Having the exhibition set up this way, made it feel almost like you were walking through time as you were viewing the photographs. It felt this way to me because there were so many different shot of New York City; each one showed something new but you could tell that the city was changing over the photographs. One of the things I noticed about how the pieces were arranged was that in the first room all the images were smaller than the images in the second room. I’m glad they arranged it like this, because reflecting back on the setup it would have broken the flow of the exhibition in the separate rooms. I felt that the second room had a little bit better flow in photographs than the first, but I didn’t see exactly how the triptych fit in with the rest of the exhibition.