A glorious harvest

PHOTOGRAPHY arguably is the most important visual medium of modern times, and certainly is the most widespread. The breadth of contemporary photography and the accomplishments of one of its greatest promoters are celebrated in the exhibition "Glorious Harvest: Photographs from the Michael E. Hoffman Tribute Collection."

Eighty-five images--which vary from a deceptively classic black-and-white landscape by Robert Adams to an enormous color tableau by Richard Misrach to an artful combination of image and text in the cyanotype process by Clarissa Sligh--honor the career of Michael E. Hoffman, the adjunct curator of photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1968 98 and publisher of the photography magazine Aperture. The Museum received the photographs in 2003 from the artists or their estates, and the collection includes pictures by many of the photographers whose work Hoffman exhibited or published. It is an exciting and diverse survey of contemporary work, featuring pictures by an international roster of luminaries, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Christenberry, Martine Franck, Eikoh Hosoe, Graciela Iturbide, Mimmo Jodice, and Nick Waplington.

Lynne Honickman, a photography benefactor who worked with Hoffman at the Aperture Foundation, writes, "Michael shared his turmoil, but he also shared his brilliance, dreams and ardent beliefs and the photographic universe is more vibrant, richer and finer for his presence."

Many of the photographs in the exhibition reflect Hoffman's interests and his passionate convictions about photography, as an art form and journalistic tool. The small Robert Adams landscape, "Edge of a Clearcut. Columbia County, Oregon" presents a scene of environmental degradation, but one framed as a beautiful landscape. This gelatin silver print of a controversial subject does not permit the observer to arrive at any simple ideas about the scenery or about the actions represented. Much different in scale and appearance, Richard Misrach's enormous chromogenic print "Dead Animals #79" depicts another troubling scene, a pit for animal carcasses in the middle of the desert. It is difficult to look at the details of decay on such a large scale, but they, like the landscape, are subsumed by the monumental representation of death itself.

Hoffman was committed to photography of the cultures of India, Tibet, and other parts of Asia, and numerous shots in the exhibition reflect this passion. Lynn Davis' "The Bayon. Angkor War, Cambodia," is a stunning view of a giant Buddhist monument in a vast temple complex. Evoking the 19th-century traditions of travel photography and monument views, the image offers a contemporary slant on traditional themes: how we live with monuments in our midst, and the past they represent. By contrast, Raghubir Singh's chromogenic print, "Mango Season, Crawford Market, Mumbai," is a giant snapshot of momentary experience, a scene of modern daily life hi a great city.

The human figure and the relationships among people are the subject of many of the exhibited photos. In one untitled print, a lush summer scene, Sally Mann captures the precarious uncertainties of adolescence and family life. A young girl, perched on a man's lap, gazes at the camera and away from the adults she is with. The man converses with another man and a woman who sit across from him, somewhat out of focus; a cat on the other man's lap looks as unsettled as the girl does. In the background, the lawn tilts into the distance, hedged by woods. Margaret Morton gives us another view of young adulthood in "Johnny and Brian," from her series, "The Tunnel, NYC." Here, we see two homeless teens, part of an established community of squatters in the underground subway tunnels of New York City. The setting and the sitters' age makes one think they are playing, and their weapons merely toys, but they are real as the boys are equipped for their dangerous life. Allen Ginsberg's portrait of the writer William S. Burroughs--combined with text describing the interview captured in the photograph--provides another side of portrait art: together, image and words reveal the fashioning and self-fashioning that make up "all our personalities.

Much recent photography has turned away from the world around us to concentrate on constructed fictions, which are all the more compelling for their depiction in photographs. Joel-Peter Witkin's picture, "The Arrival of Eve," offers a puppet show-parable on the oldest of themes, Eve's temptation. Its format evokes old photographs, and the stories we tell ourselves about the individuals in them. Doug and Mike Stain's piece, "Jungen Frau" ("Young Woman"), takes its title from the Petrus Christus painting it depicts. Composed with paper, film, scotch tape, and wood, the work seems destined to decay over time. It emphasizes the fragility of all photographs--light sensitive and paper-thin--but also gives us pause to consider the fragility of our memories and understanding of the things we see.

"Glorious Harvest: Photographs from the Michael E. Hoffman Tribute Collection" is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Oct. 3.

Peter Barberie is the Horace W. Goldsmith Fellow in Photography at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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