Tuesdays are flexible for me: the dog goes to daycare, and I don’t have any client obligations, so sometimes I find plenty of time on my hands. Today I decided to head downtown to the Art Institute of Chicago and check out the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit.
Cartier-Bresson was a singular force in modern photography, and his career spanned five decades before his retirement in 1975. Exhibits like this are why people live in big cities.
As usual, the Art Institute did a fabulous job, and I got a little lagniappe when I automatically went downstairs to the photo galleries and found a wonderful tribute to Louis Sullivan, the famous 19th-century Chicago architect and mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright. In addition to some lovely graphite sketches of variations on building ornamentation – done by Sullivan – the exhibit is comprised of silver-gelatin prints from three artists: John Szarkowski, Aaron Siskind and Richard Nickel, who came together in the early 50′s at the Institute of Design. The three of them documented Sullivan’s work throughout Chicago, at a time when many of the beautiful buildings were being demolished for urban renewal. Szarkowski went on to replace Steichen at MoMA, Siskind was an influential photographer in his own right, and Nickel – a favorite of mine – remained in Chicago to pursue the documentation and preservation of Sullivan’s work. Sadly, he was killed in 1972 when a stairwell at the Chicago Exchange building collapsed while he was salvaging precious ornamental work before its demolition. In all, about 50 images comprise the exhibit; don’t wait too long to see it.
Cartier-Bresson’s catalog stretches from the early 1930′s through the mid-70′s, and the Art Institute has many examples from each important period. The first gallery includes early works from Spain and France, as well as his travels into colonial Africa. There is an entire gallery devoted to the portraiture of many celebrities and intellectuals, and significant space is given to his work in China and the Soviet Union. Cartier-Bresson was known for his ability to photograph ‘in the moment’, to capture the essence of the interaction between subjects, including the audience. This exhibit does a magnificent job of highlighting that ability, and because of that it is an emotional experience that is most enjoyable.
One thing that I learned today was that Cartier-Bresson was not enamored with darkroom work, and did not print his own negatives. He only cared about the image itself, and could not be tied down with the technicalities of the darkroom. Interestingly, that made my examination of his work different than the previous exhibit, for I didn’t examine the nature of the print as much as I sat back and viewed the image more holistically. Given the nature of this artist’s work, I think that is the best method.
The show runs through October 3rd. Whatever you do, don’t miss it.
