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MFA photography exhibit focuses on ‘Margins to Mainstays’
The Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg’s massive collection of photography contains something like 16,000 images, including daguerreotypes and calotypes (19th century prototypes) and prints, lots of prints on paper, which is where the story of photography-as-art really begins.
Opening Saturday, From Margins to Mainstays: Highlights from the Photography Collection – in the second floor gallery that will henceforth be devoted to photography – turns the spotlight (or, rather, the carefully-coordinated track lights) on 40 black-and-white prints with significant meaning.
“These are major works,” says curator Allison Moore, “and yet the artist or the subjects, in some images – underwent a struggle in many cases.”
There are numerous “name” photographers represented, including Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Avedon, Margaret Bourke-White and Imogen Cunningham, but the common theme is simply “photographers and subjects whose careers and personal lives were sidelined, ignored, or impacted because of what they looked like, how they identified themselves, or who they loved,” says Moore.
From Margins to Mainstays, Moore explains, didn’t start out that way. “I had several exhibition ideas in mind. I was thinking about an exhibition of women photographers, because we have such a strength in the collection. And I was thinking about an exhibition addressing civil rights and the ongoing struggle for racial equality, and Black Lives Matter. And then I was thinking about ‘highlights,’ to emphasize – and the museum wanted to emphasize – the strengths of this collection.”
As she started to pull together works from her checklists, however, “I started becoming aware of the struggles of these major name photographers,” Moore says. “Like Richard Avedon, who was gay, but he was closeted. I didn’t even know that about him. Then I started to realize that there were these histories and stories that I wasn’t aware of, and I just pulled them all together.”
And so the theme revealed itself, and evolved. The exhibit includes portraiture, abstraction and surrealism studies, a section Moore refers to as “The Body As Art,” historical subjects and more.
LGBTQ photographers include Shen Wei, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Minor White, Mapplethorpe, Avedon, Laura Gilpin, Berenice Abbott and Ruth Bernhard.
Photographers of color include Cornelius Marion Battey, James Van Der Zee, Carrie Mae Weems, Patrick Nagatani, Shen Wei, Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Liset Castillo.
Women artists (who are not a person of color or LGBTQ) include Ilse Bing, Julie Blackmon, Bourke-White, Julia Margaret Cameron, Carlotta Corpron, Suzanne Camp Crosby, Alma Lavenson, Barbara Morgan, Dianora Niccolini, Marion Post Wolcott and Cindy Sherman.
From Margins to Mainstays: Highlights from the Photography Collection will be on view through Sept. 26.