Moma the Shaping of New

MoMA

The Shaping of New Visions Exhibition

For the first several decades of its existence, photography was largely seen as science and driven by the technological advances made by its inventors and innovators. Therefore, photography would rightly be seen as a tool for historical documentation capable of conveying that which could not be conveyed through the written medium. But by the early 20th century, photography was evolving into a form capable of previously unseen artistic ingenuity as well. This is the outlet for photography which is featured in the Museum of Modern Art's "The Shaping of New Visions" exhibition. The collected photographic images simultaneously expand the way that the camera can be used and the way that artistic statements may be defined.

Review:

From the outset, the mission of the exhibition is well-stated and clearly conveyed through the selected works. According to the Museum's description of the exhibition, photographs ranging from between 1910 and the present day have been selected in order to provide a loosely narrative history of the photographed image as it advanced through different post-realist movements such as surrealism, constructivism and Dadaism. (MoMA, p. 1)

Featuring works from a broad range of internally acclaimed photographers, the collection includes photomontages, photobooks and experimental films featuring sequenced still-frames. These various modes of showcasing the work help to demonstrate the intent of the exhibition, to illustrate the genuinely expansive and endlessly novel ways that the medium has been used to achieve expression. Of said expression, themes of industrialization and alienation permeate the work of the 20th century, carrying the notion that the camera has in its own way helped the artists to probe for humanity in increasingly mechanized subjects.

By its own assertion, for instance, 1924's Self-Portrait, by El Lissitzky may be the piece most directly representative of this idea. Here, the photographer overlaps a series of five individual still frames merging his face, a handheld compass and a tightly groups arrangement of geometrical figures, using the still medium to convey the actionable dynamic between mind, hand and one's surroundings. According to the Museum of Modern Art, the photo contests "the idea that straight photography provides a single, unmediated truth . . instead…that montage, with its layering of one meaning over another, impels the view to reconsider the world. It thus marks a conceptual shift in what a picture can be." (MoMA, p. 7)

This conceptual shift is ongoing throughout the series of photos and photography-based works displayed in the exhibition. For instance, a great deal of emphasis in many of the early works in the exhibition is placed on the details and features of industrialization. A good example is the series from 1927 by Charles Sheeler, which offers a panorama of the more mechanized features of metropolitan life such as with Criss-Crossed Conveyors, River Rogue Plant, Ford Motor Company. Empty of human life by teeming with the productive output of human ingenuity, this photo captures a particular dynamic of the human experience during the era of industrialization.

By contrast, the slide-show organization of Helen Levitt's Projects: Helen Levitt in Color, shows the quirky randomness of metropolitan life in the post-industrial landscape of the early 1970s. The forty slide presentation employs the medium to preserve the idiosyncratic but mundane moments of human life that the camera previously ignored in favor of larger moments.

In addition to the content of this slide-show, the display techniques in use demonstrate the care and variance attended to the exhibition by the museum. Lighting and framing were critical to ensuring both a useful historical narrative as one moves between pieces and by a unified interest in consistently pushing for the evolution of the form. Organized by Roxana Marcoci, curator of the Department of Photography, the exhibition belies the experience and care typical of the highly-reputable Museum of Modern Art.