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Thursday, April 2, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Photojournalism exhibit is dramatic and diverse
By JENNIFER FORKER
Staff writer
A dramatic and enthralling color photojournalism exhibit opened Saturday at the Spencer Museum of Art. The exhibit, "On the Line: The New Color Photojournalism," features photographs from 12 notable photojournalists.
Each photojournalist supplied 10 prints for the exhibit. Subjects range from Alex Webb's Mexican urban landscapes to Susan Meiselas' depictions of the horrors of war-torn Nicaragua, Alfred Yaghobadeh's moving images of the Lebanese war contrast with photographs by Jeff Jacobson, which depict conventions and political rallies.
The other photographs on display are by David Burnett, Michel Folco, Harry Gruyaert, Mary Ellen Marx, Jan Moran, Gilles Peress, Rio
Branco, and Jean-Marie Simon.
Tom Southall, curator of photography, said diversity and contrast made the exhibit appear as if it were 12, small portfolios.
"Some of these photographers are much more event-oriented, especially the war photographers. They add a specific quality of time and newsworthiness to their photographs," Southall said.
Other photographs in the exhibit are about the pictorial subject matter and the feeling of a place. In these prints, the photographers were more concerned with U.S. social customs than with events. Examples in the exhibit are Burnett's minor league baseball prints and Mary Ellen Mark's photographs of U.S. retirement communities.
bid but was handled well and in good taste.
Gary Mason, associate professor of journalism, said the show was mor-
"You feel drained after seeing it," he said. "It's a show that has to be presented. All of the images are extremely strong."
He said people should see it more than once because first impressions weren't always correct.
"If you look at one photograph for a fleeting moment, you might come out of that gallery with a wrong impression." Mason said.
Adam Weinberg, curator of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, organized the exhibit because he had seen color photojournalism that struck him as being influenced by art photography.
"It seemed different from the photojournalists who are more interested about getting a message across," he said.
The exhibition opened at the Walker Art Center in March 1986, and since has traveled to Portland, Oregon, Maine and Chapel Hill, N.C. After six weeks at the Spencer Museum of Art, it will travel to Austin, Texas, Pittsburgh, and Aspen, Colo. The exhibit then will close and the prints will be returned to the photographers, Weinberg said.
He looked at thousands of photographs made by hundreds of photographers to find the 120 prints for the exhibit. Weinberg said he was looking for interesting and diverse subjects.
"It was not an exhibition about war, revolution or civil wars. It was an exhibition about color journalism. I wanted to represent different styles and different subjects," he said.
Weinberg said photography was as subjective as any other art form
"Everyone is subjective. It's coming out of your hand or your eye. No one tool is more subjective.
'Photography transcribes information more effectively, but it's not really more objective. The biases are shown in different ways.'
Gilles Peres ' photograph,"The Eve of the Passion Play," was taken in 1977 in Zunil, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.
It was not an exhibition about war, revolution or civil wars. It was an exhibition about color journalism. I wanted to represent different styles and different subjects.'
Adam Weinberg Walker Art Center curator
"Using color was an intrusion into the awkward privacy of war. War was such hell, and the added realism color was an intrusion." Southall said.
Weinberg said that only during the last 10 to 12 years had color photography been used regularly. Black and white photography took precedence over color because it was considered more serious and abstract.
Southall said color in photojournalism was avoided for a long time because certain subjects, like war, were considered to be produced better in black and white.
He said that people thought that color photography was too real, and that they preferred the abstract qualities in black and white prints.
The title of the exhibit refers to more than the fact that photographers must put their lives "on the line" when covering dangerous events like wars, Southall said.
"It also refers to photographers who straddle the line between the world of photojournalism and the art world," he said.
"Color is as abstract as black and white, but in a different way," Weinberg said.
Photojournalists are increasingly displaying their work in museums and galleries.
"These photographers, whose work is frequently seen in magazines and new papers, are taking them out
of that photojournalism world and firmly putting them in the art photography world," Southall said.
show that rivalry shouldn't exist between photojournalists and art photographers and that putting photographers into catagories was useful.
Weinberg said the two terms arose largely for convenience and were dangerous if strictly relied upon. Petitioners don't fall into either category.
"An awful lot of people cross the boundaries," he said.
The Ansel Adams exhibit, which also is on display at the museum, contrasts the color photojournalism exhibit. Adams' photographs of magnetic mountains and serene streams are in stark contrast to the horrific war photographs displayed in the "On the Line" exhibit.
The rivalry, if one exists, is how individuals approach their work. South Korea's
"The contrast is between photographers who want their work to be very much about the outside world, and photographers, in contrast, who want their work to be primarily about their own emotions and personal feelings," Southall said.
Adams photographed his emotional responses to the landscape and wanted to depict beauty, Southall said. But others, like Alex Webb, were concerned with what was going on in the world, both positive and negative.
Alex Webb said, in the book that described the exhibit, "I'm first and foremost a photographer. I care more about seeing than anything else. I'm bored by pictures that don't, on some level, make you think about the world. I don't want to just be able to see my navel in fascinating ways."
Photographers choose what to photograph and editors choose which photographs to print. But photojournalism is less subjective than art photography.
"Art photography can be seen as a more personal, more expressive. more openly subjective way of using photography," Southall said.
Mary Ellen Mark, whose work is featured in the exhibit, said, in the exhibit book, "I think you're always subjective. You have opinions about things and you shoot them. You try and be fair, but it's basically your opinion . . . it's your truth and you believe it's true. Someone else may think you're a liar."
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