There are no rules for good photographs, Ansel Adams once said; “there are only good photographs.” That sentiment is as simple and as elegant as the pictures that made Adams famous. Armed with the great traditions of black-and-white film and the archivist’s conviction, Adams captured some of the most enduring photos of the American West and wrote several critical books on the art, including three technical manuals. He died in 1984, just as electronic technology was poised to change the face of communication “” yet his takes on light values and density are among the most widely acknowledged guidelines in today’s photography.
Those who go to “Rebels & Revelers: Experimental Decades, 1970s-1980s,” one of the current exhibits at Balboa Park’s Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA), will see what Adams meant when he eschewed the notion of rules. The exhibition includes 60 images by such photographers as Thomas Barrow, Leland Rice and Barbara Kasten, regarded as among the leaders in expressionistic photography. While Adams stands as the 20th century’s eminent documentarian, the rebels take things personally, infusing their work with popular elements to reflect decidedly local vistas.
“These artists,” MoPA curator Carol McCusker said, “brought photography into a new artistic arena. By highlighting the camera as an expressive tool, they championed photography’s ability to represent personal iconography. These artists were influenced”¦ by wider mass media and pop culture, drawing inspiration from film, magazines and even billboards.”
Photographer Jo Ann Callis is a case in point. Yellow dots, black drips, disproportional flower bouquets and red swirls pepper her photography, underscoring her personal take on otherwise innocuous objects. John Pfahl made his mark, among other ways, with a series of waterfall photographs “” colossal open spaces and cliff formations dwarf the falls, rendering them almost powerless by contrast.
Arthur Ollman, MoPA director, acknowledges these works amid his take on photographic narrative. In a recent video interview for MoPA, he said that today’s image-specific media have in the last 20 years “become the central storytelling media of”¦ our world. Everything we know about the world comes through a camera somehow. That’s an extraordinary power and an extraordinary fluency that our audiences gain. That wasn’t always so.”
But even as today’s rebels permit intimate glimpses into their own realities, their final products trace to many of Adams’ theories and creations. Long before digital photography became so widely available, he and a photographer named Fred Archer devised techniques that let photographers manipulate light densities in their work. Those creations were pivotal moments in the development of the art “” whatever rebellion those two decades reflect, their effect was steeped in the work of one of traditional photography’s central figures.
The exhibit images are part of a 112-piece collection donated to the museum in 2005 by local philanthropists Joyce and Tedd Strauss. “The Strausses,” McCusker said, “have a deep understanding of both historically significant photographers and of photographers who have yet to full enter the ‘official’ history.” If this exhibit is a barometer, that “official” history is full of practitioners who, however ironically, may have little use for historical impact.
MoPA is also presenting “Woman: A Celebration,” a collection of photographs depicting the feminine mystique, from Jan. 13 to May 13, and “Tell Me a Story: Narrative Photography Now,” featuring fable, fiction and cinematic conventions in crafting the art of storytelling, from Jan. 20 to May 13.
The museum is located at 1649 El Prado; the phone number is 238-7559. It’s open every day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. except Thursdays, when it closes at 9 p.m. Admission is $6 for adults, $4 for students, seniors and the military and free for members and children under 12. It’s also free to the public the second Tuesday of every month.
