Exhibitions
Exhibitions have punctuated the narrative of photography's development, revealing new ideas and establishing movements at milestones in the medium's history. Although certain books have been seminal, exhibitions have been vital in disseminating photographic ideas, technique, and practice. Exhibitions bring artists and audiences physically together to consider the work, and are instrumental in the international exchange of ideas. Increasingly, key exhibitions are accompanied by conferences, lectures, and major publications.
Early events were generally group exhibitions, whilst later group exhibitions often confirmed a new stylistic direction, their titles becoming the name for a movement. One-man shows hardly emerged before the First World War, but some have had an importance beyond the particular photographer's career. The influence of curators like Stieglitz, Steichen, Newhall, Steinert, and
Early exhibitions
Photographs were first exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace, London, which included daguerreotypes, calotypes, stereographs, and recently introduced wet-plate photographs, totalling c.700 images from Britain, the USA, and continental Europe. In 1852 the first independent exhibition was held at the Society of Arts, London, with 774 photographs of all types, leading to the formation of the Photographic Society in 1853, dedicated to frequent exhibitions, the first of which was held in 1854 at the Society of British Artists.
The 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris included a photographic section organized by the Société Française de Photographie, which held its own exhibitions in 1855 and 1857. By 1859 the Salon des Beaux-Arts included portrait photographs, prompting Charles Baudelaire's celebrated diatribe against photography. The first two Central European exhibitions devoted exclusively to photography were held in Vienna in 1864 and Berlin in 1865. Through to 1900, international ‘universal’ exhibitions including photographic technology and images were held in London, Paris, Vienna, and other cities.
Secessionist exhibitions
The first international exhibition of ‘art’, i.e. pictorialist, photography was organized by the Vienna Camera Club in 1891, leading to Alfred Maskell, who exhibited in Vienna, proposing the formation of a British art photography exhibition group. In November 1893 the first annual salon of the pictorialist Linked Ring was held, at the Dudley Gallery, Piccadilly. (The previous year, 68 photographers had contributed to a show held by the London Camera Club.) The rules stipulated that there would be no medals, selection would be by a jury of photographers, and exhibits would no longer cover the entire wall space of the gallery. Other European events of comparable importance were the first salon of the Photo-Club de Paris (1894), and the international exhibitions held at the Hamburg Kunsthalle between 1893 and 1903, and in Kiev in 1908.
By 1908 the Linked Ring's elitist selection process and the predominance of a limited coterie, including numerous Americans, led to the creation of a salon des refusés by F. J. Mortimer (1875-1944). Exhibiting at the Amateur Photographer's Little Gallery, this group dominated the selection for the 1909 Linked Ring salon, precipitating the resignation of American Ring members and ultimately precipitating the end of the Ring. It was succeeded by the London Secession, led by George Davison, which exhibited until 1911, and the much longer-lasting London Salon, led by Mortimer.
In the USA the three leading societies, of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, had held rotating ‘joint exhibitions’, including European work, but Boston withdrew in 1895 and the event ceased. In 1896 Alfred Stieglitz, vice-president of the newly amalgamated Camera Club, declared, ‘let's start afresh with an Annual Photographic Salon to be run upon the strictest lines’. Salons in Washington and around the country established the American pictorialist movement and in 1900 F. Holland Day took an exhibition of the New American School to the Royal Photographic Society in London, causing a sensation. It was shown in Paris in 1901, including work by Steichen, who in 1902 had one of the first ever one-man shows, at La Maison des Artistes, with paintings and photographs.
In 1902, Stieglitz arranged An Exhibition of American Photographs arranged by the Photo-Secession at the National Arts Club, New York, modelled on the secessionist movements in art in Europe and leading ultimately to a remarkable international exhibition of pictorial photography at the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, in 1910. This was the first recognition of photography as an art form in a major American art museum, leading to the gallery commencing a photography purchasing policy, with fifteen shows. However, the 1910 exhibition also marked a watershed, as Stieglitz's interest shifted elsewhere.
Modern photography: the inter-war years
The exhibition of Coburn's ‘Vortographs’ at the London Camera Club in 1917, Kertész's exhibition at the Sacre du Printemps Gallery in Paris in 1927, and the Salon de l'Escalier show, also in Paris, in 1928 were milestones in European anti-pictorialist, avant-garde photography associated with the Surrealist, Constructivist, and New Objectivity movements. The Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart in 1929, combined with the Fotomontage exhibition at the Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum in 1931, set out the ‘New Photography’ manifesto.
The American reaction to pictorialism was the formation of the ‘straight photography’ Group f.64 in 1932, with an exhibition at the M. H. de Young Museum in San Francisco, including Adams, Edward Weston, Cunningham, and Lange. Arising from FSA (Farm Security Administration) and other documentary work of the 1930s, the Photo League held annual exhibitions, also showing Moholy-Nagy, Heartfield, and others at its New York premises. Another key New York venue between 1931 and 1949 was Julien Levy's gallery.
The first exhibition of the history of photography at MoMA, New York, Photography 1839-1937 (1937), was organized by Beaumont Newhall. The exhibition in 1938 of Walker Evans's American Photographs confirmed photography's place in major American art galleries.
Post-war developments
At the 1950 Photokina, L. Fritz Gruber arranged an exhibition of the fotoform group. Such exhibitions continued regularly, culminating in the 1980 landmark Imaginary Photo Museum, curated by Newhall, Gernsheim, and Gruber. Steinert's Subjective Photography: An International Exhibition of Modern Photography in Saarbrücken in 1951 showed contemporary work that was personal and expressive rather than documentary. The first major British post-war show was the Victoria & Albert Museum's (V&A) Masterpieces of Victorian Photography 1840-1900 (1951), based on the Gernsheim Collection and commemorating the centenary of the Great Exhibition. Historically even more important were another ambitious V&A show, From today painting is dead (1972), and Light from the Dark Room (1995) and Hill and Adamson (2002) at the National Galleries of Scotland.
Steichen's Family of Man exhibition (1955), an idealistic evocation of universal human concerns, promoted photography to a wide audience (estimated at 10 million worldwide), with innovative use of display space and unframed images, and a best-selling catalogue. Conflicts and other harsh realities, largely excluded from The Family of Man, were addressed by the World Press Photo shows from 1955, annual selections of press images and Photo-essays.
Shifts in photography by the 1960s were reflected in Szarkowski's defining exhibition New Documents (1967) at MoMA, with Arbus, Winogrand and Friedlander. The Diane Arbus retrospective at MoMA in 1971 was the most successful show since The Family of Man, the catalogue being repeatedly reprinted. (The following year Arbus became the first photographer to be included, albeit posthumously, in the Venice Biennale.) New Topographics at the International Museum of Photography, Eastman House, in 1975 introduced the new photographers of the man-altered landscape, and William Eggleston's Guide (1976) at MoMA legitimized colour photography.
Photography's convergence with contemporary art was heralded by the 1969 exhibition at the Kunsthalle, Bern, Live in your Head: When Attitudes Become Form, also shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, followed by The New Art (Hayward Gallery, London, 1972), Un certain art anglais (Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1979), including Burgin, Gilbert and George, and John Hilliard (b. 1945), and Photographie also Kunst, Kunst als Photographie (1979) in Austria. The trend continued with I am a Camera (2001) at the Saatchi Gallery, London, and Cruel and Tender at Tate Modern, London, and the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, in 2003.
At photography's 150th anniversary in 1989, several exhibitions, The Art of Photography (London, Houston, Camberra); Photography Now (London); Photography until Now (New York); Foto-Kunst (Stuttgart) and On the Art of Fixing a Shadow (Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles); reviewed the medium's history as an art form.
Finally, three events which focused on hitherto neglected areas were Fotografie Latein-Amerika (1981) at the Kunsthaus, Zurich; Eye of Africa 1840-1998, a series of exhibitions held at various venues in Cape Town in 1998-9; and India through the Lens: Photography 1840-1911 (2000) at the Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC.
Festivals
A modern phenomenon, festivals are now an important platform for photography. On one-, two-, or three-year cycles, using traditional and unconventional spaces for 25-100 exhibitions, typically for a month, they have large photographic and general audiences, and include portfolio reviews of photographers' work, seminars, talks, and opportunities for sales. Some, like Visa pour l'Image, distribute prestigious prizes. In some countries, the creation of festivals has been vital in establishing a photographic culture: Greece, for example, with its (albeit short-lived) International Month of Photography in Athens (1987-91), Photosynkyria at Thessaloniki (1989- ) and Skopelos international festival (1996- ).
In 1970 Lucien Clergue and friends launched the first annual photography festival, the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, at Arles, France, now a leading event in world photography. France also has Mois de la Photo, Paris (biennial), Visa pour l'Image, Perpignan (international photojournalism), and many local festivals, among the most recent Photo de la Mer at Vannes, Brittany (2003).
The annual ‘exposure’ festival at Hereford, England, has established an international profile since 1989. Festivals at Derby, Shoreditch, and in Scotland (fotofeis) ran during the 1990s, and in 1998 there was a Year of Photography festival in Yorkshire. In the same decade festivals started across Europe, including Naarden, Groningen (Noorderlicht), Rotterdam, Breda, Barcelona, Herten (Germany), Madrid, Braga, Plovdiv, Moscow, Odense, Rome, Milan, Hamburg, and Bratislava.
North America's leading biennial is FotoFest (Houston), since 1986; each event has a theme, with numerous exhibitions at public and commercial galleries, as well as the Meeting Place portfolio reviews attended by international photography publishers, curators, and festival directors. Photo Americas at Portland, Oregon, in alternate years to FotoFest, is similar. Commercial galleries exhibit annually in New York (AIPAD) and Los Angeles (Photo LA). In Canada, Montreal and Toronto have festivals.
So do Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, and there has been a festival of African photography in Bamako, Mali, since 1994. The first Asian event was Chobi Mela, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2000, while the Pingyao (China) International Festival started in 2001. In Japan, festivals of various kinds (mostly annual) have run since the mid-1980s in Tokyo, Higashikawa, Miyazaki, Nara, Okinawa, and Sagamihara. The Festival of Light has a website linking 22 international festivals in seventeen countries.
— Robert Ashby
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