Pride of "Place"
The Block caps a year of exceptional photography shows with highlights from its own collection.
What’s it like to organize a show based on the Block Museum of Art’s photography holdings? “Heart-wrenching,” says senior curator Debora Wood. Reached by phone, she adds that it was difficult to leave works like “a truly amazing Andres Serrano” out of “Place and Presence,” which opens Thursday 9. The Block’s fourth photo exhibition in one year follows a retrospective of photojournalist (and Shaft director) Gordon Parks, which succeeded artist Robert Mapplethorpe’s rarely seen Polaroids, which went on view after pictures of Japan that John Swope took immediately after World War II.
According to Wood, this “Three American Photographers” series, which began in September 2008, developed by coincidence, but its popularity encouraged Block staff to showcase the museum’s own collection. Attendance during “Polaroids: Mapplethorpe” was among “the highest for the past five years,” says Wood. Visitors responded to the Swope and Parks shows with numerous positive comments, stating “that not only were these images historically important, they were personally significant,” Wood recalls. The 30 photos in “Place and Presence” differ, however, from the glimpses of black America that Parks published in Life; from Swope’s little-known documentation of the hardships suffered by the Japanese; and from Mapplethorpe’s intimate, informal portraits of friends and lovers.
Until 2006, the Block spent 20 years collecting mostly black-and-white historic photographs from sources such as the Farm Security Administration. “The photography collection wasn’t as broad as it should be,” Wood admits, adding, “It’s one that we’re working hard, still, to build.” “Place and Presence” reflects the museum’s recent push “to embrace some of the very important issues that have arisen in photography in the past few years,” Wood explains.
The artists in “Place and Presence” see the camera as a means of “self-expression, not just a tool for reportage,” Wood says. “Most of these works are contemporary. Some of them have been manipulated. Some of them appear abstract.” The Block has never shown most pieces in the exhibition before. Wood is particularly excited about two photos from New York–based artist Shirin Neshat’s 1999 series “Rapture.” One depicts a circle of seated men wearing white shirts, the other a group of women kneeling in black chadors. Together, the images make a bold graphic statement while comparing men’s and women’s religious practices in Neshat’s native Iran.
Half of the works in “Place and Presence,” including Neshat’s, focus on people. The other half are devoted to places that have equally distinctive characters, Wood tells us. “I just love this one image we have by [Chicago-based photographer] Scott Fortino” (pictured), she says. “For me, that is such a moving piece. On the one hand, the form and color and light are very seductive. But realizing this is the place where victims of domestic violence are taken to tell what’s happened to them—suddenly, that room reads as small, [and you notice the] uncomfortable chairs and mirrored windows on each side so you can’t see who’s looking at you. There’s this great tension, also, in seeing the absence of the people, knowing that this is between moments.”
“Place and Presence” includes works by several other Chicagoland photographers, including Laura Letinsky, Brad Temkin and Tom Van Eynde. Wood emphasizes that one of Temkin’s two photos in the show is a traditional dye coupler print, the other an ink-jet print. Now that the Block’s actively pursuing contemporary photography, it’s not about to miss digital technology’s transformation of the medium.
“Place and Presence: Photography from the Collection” runs through August 30 at the Block Museum of Art.
