« Photography: NYPL's Fabulous 30-Year 'Recollection' Exhibit »

I’ll be in NYC later this month. While there, I’ll be stopping by the New York Public Library (NYPL) photography exhibit titled, Recollection: 30 Years of Photography at the New York Public Library. The exhibit is free and will be showing in the Stephen A. Schwartzman Building (5^th Ave at 42^nd St, Manhattan) through January 2, 2011. I look forward to viewing this exhibit for many reasons:

IMPORTANCE OF THE PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION. This exhibit highlights the work of more than 90 photographers, including Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Amy Arbus, Robert Capa, Cindy Sherman, William Wegman, and one of my all-time favorites Henry Cartier-Bresson. The photos are a representative sampling of a NYPL collection, which includes approximately 500,000 photos from more than 6,000 photographers.  It is my understanding that this collection rivals that of my hometown favorite George Eastman House photography collection (400,000+ photographs, 14,000 photographers represented).

HISTORY CAPTURED IN PHOTOS. The photos in this exhibit represent a range of image processing technologies, including platinum prints, albumen prints, chromogenic prints, gelatin silver prints and Polaroids. The history captured in the photos is broad and diverse, ranging from a 1901 print of President Grover Cleveland fishing and a 1930 photo of author Edna St. Vicent Millay to photos from the 1930s depression, Vietnam and skateboarding street kids circa 1996.

BROAD APPEAL. The exhibit is defined as portraiture, but that should not be misinterpreted to mean a collection of static headshots. In fact, these portraits are full of life and emotion depicted in widely varying locales with even more widely varied subjects.

PURE ENJOYMENT. I know this exhibit will make me smile for all the reasons I’ve already described. As Henri Cartier-Bresson famously stated, “It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time we discover the world around us.” I will greatly enjoy the experience of this NYPL photo exhibit featuring what I’m anticipating will be expert studies of the humanity in the world around us. You can preview most of the NYPL "Recollection" exhibit photos online. There's also this cool little video from NYPL showcasing photos from the exhibit: