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“Where We Live” & New Photo Galleries at Getty

If you’re in southern California or are planning a swing through before the end of February, be sure to see the new photography gallery they inaugurated last week with “Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection“. It’s pretty fantastic for a late-20th century (nearly all) color photography survey show. And now the Getty has an extra 6000 ft dedicated to photography.

The heavy hitters are all there, but what surprised me was the quality (you could say street quality) of Adam Bartos’ “Hither Hills State Park” pictures. And Mitch Epstein’s. And Sheron Rupp, whose picture from a corn maze in my hometown is the show’s signature.

John Divola’s pictures of isolated houses from Twenty-nine Palms were the only images that were digitally printed, and it showed. Stand up close, and their over-sharpenedness feels cold when compared to the density of color in Shore’s “Uncommon Places” prints, or Joel Sternfelds, or even the old Egglestons, which are fairly grainy when compared to all the large camera photos in the show.

Here’s a pdf with images. Check this this gallery of Sheron Rupp’s work, which fuses elements of street photography even if it’s on the front porch. And here she is on one particular working method.

“On my old Raleigh bicycle with my camera in the bicycle basket, I rode around various neighborhoods in Northampton looking for material that grabbed my eye (usually kids, a landscape or garden, or the stuff in people’s yards). With one exception, everyone I met was a complete stranger.”

And upstairs, there’s a small exhibit of new acquisitions from Bill Owens, Mary Ellen Mark, Anthony Hernandez and Donald Blumberg.

Tag: Tidbits