birch path
Two Photographers - Two Visions
November 18, 2006 to February 4, 2007
Two Photographers - Two Visions is a paired photo exhibit of work by Ansel Adams and Alfred Eisenstaedt which opened yesterday at the Art Gallery of Ontario. I was part of a group of bloggers and photographers who got an early look at the show this week and it’s an interesting, if not immediately obvious, comparison between two photographers working from quite divergent viewpoints.
Difference is at the heart of showing these photos together. Adams’ work in the show spans from his 1920’s Brownie shots, through some of his most iconic images, and lesser-known photos from 1960’s which break somewhat from what is considered his norm. The images shown from Eisenstaedt’s career are of pre-war Europe in the 30’s based from his magazine assignment work at that time.
The two shows seem to merely share connecting rooms at first glance but there are some ties even though both men produced vastly different work with very little comparison even in terms of subject matter. What does draw the two collections together is seeing a global perspective on the world especially at the point where the collections overlap in chronology. During the 1930’s Ansel Adams was championing a burgeoning need for humanity to care for the natural world and was chided for dealing so much with natural subjects while his country was in turmoil. Eisenstaedt’s images of Europe in the 1930’s are filled with humanity and pioneered photojournalism in a world gearing up for the horrors of World War II. Both men were dealing with humanity and where they personally fit within the greater forces of the world but in opposing scales.
It’s a great show to see even if you simply want to see many original prints. Never having seen Ansel Adam’s work as original prints, it was very interesting to see the scale at which some images were printed and at least one paring of duplicate prints showing alternate takes on tinting and selective dodging and burning. There is also a later print of Adam’s beautiful Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico an earlier printing of which just sold for over six hundred thousand dollars last month.