WELLNESS: Annie Leibovitz, (American, born 1949); Rebecca Denison, Founder of WORLD (Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Diseases), 1993; Color C print; Courtesy of the Artist

The Art of Caring: A Look at Life through Photography
May 16 - October 11, 2009

The Art of Caring: A Look at Life through Photography comprises seven thematic components: Children and Family, Love, Wellness, Disaster, Caregiving and Healing, Aging, and Remembering. Through photography and film, this thought- and emotion-provoking exhibition provides a visual discourse on how key life events are celebrated and honored, and how pivotal life decisions are made by a number of different cultures. Each stage of life is depicted by simple everyday situations experienced in moments of joy and gratification as well as by poignant events of passage. The unfathomable scale of devastation inflicted upon humanity and our environment by both man-made and natural disasters also is intrinsic to this life story.

The selection of the more than two hundred photographs in this exhibition took shape like a complex and carefully composed mosaic in which the distinct fragments represent mothers, fathers, children, caregivers, first responders, and others from around the globe. For the viewer, encountering these photos on the walls of this exhibition is somewhat like taking a walk on a busy street in any one of a number of major metropolitan cities, where who or what you see is often a surprise impossible to plan for or predict, much like the cycle of our own respective lives.

The exhibition begins with a group of images by the world-renowned artist Annie Leibovitz, who made a special selection from her vast archive that reflects all seven themes. These images provide a concise introduction to the entire exhibition. The Art of Caring showcases several works from Time & LIFE Pictures, including recognizable classics by such legendary photographers as Alfred Eisenstaedt and W. Eugene Smith. Contemporary artists include other established photographers such as Tina Barney, Nan Goldin, Chester Higgins, Sally Mann, Nicholas Nixon, Tatsumi Orimoto, Robert Polidori, Dona Schwartz, Neal Slavin and Larry Sultan. The exhibition features as well the work of emerging artists Elinor Carucci, Jeff Charbonneau, Eliza French, Peter Granser, Jessica Todd Harper and Misty Keasler.

The photographers who have "made" the pictures in this exhibition come from divergent backgrounds and cultures. They also have crafted their photographs motivated by varied emotions and life situations. Some capture an intimate family moment. Others record a disaster of unfathomable scale. Others show the drama between two strangers who, because of unforeseeable occurrences, have come into intimate contact in a possibly life-dependent relationship with one another, such as an emergency room exchange between a trauma victim and a doctor or nurse. This exhibition does not purport to demonstrate that man is inherently good and caring. However, it does allege that through unpredictable life circumstances during both major and minor events, caring people around the world made incredible differences in the lives of others.

REMEMBERING: Albert Chong (Jamaican, born 1958): Aunt Winnie, 1985; Inkjet on canvas; Collection of the Artist

Beginning at the conclusion of World War II, the slightly more than sixty-year time span encompassed by the photographs in this exhibition allows the viewer to witness many of the great events that shaped the last half-century as well as those that are shaping the next. Photographers have captured these occurrencesÑno matter how remote or dangerous the localeÑand brought them home to our newsstands, living rooms, and classrooms. The broad chronology covered traverses enormous transformational developments in our society as well as in the field of photography, including tremendous changes in subject matter, technology, and presentation. The stage was set for photography to take on an unprecedented role as chronicler, consciousness raiser, and educator during World War II. Throughout the war, new magazines like LIFE as well as Vu in France and the Picture Post in Britain were credited for turning "...documentary photographers into photojournalists and photojournalists like Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, and W. Eugene Smith into heroes..."

After World War II, photo-essays by photographers like Smith and Gordon Parks in LIFE were credited with helping to stoke the "can-do" energy of the times. By the 1970s, many of the same established photojournalists, whose images stirred a nation and world, saw their professional lives evolve from careers replete with opportunities to have work published in the lavishly illustrated pages and photo-essays that appeared regularly in LIFE, Look and other magazines, to earning a livelihood from less constant sources upon the demise of these same publications and others. At the same time, the advent of color photography and its acceptance as a legitimate artistic medium closed the gap between fine art and commercial work in new ways.

CHILDREN AND FAMILY: William Wegman (American, born 1943); Mother's Day, 1989; Color C print; Courtesy William Wegman Studio

Although the exhibition has been divided into distinct sections, the photographs were not always easy to categorize. In fact, many could easily have been placed in more than one section. Caregiving and healing are transcendent exhibition themes as well as complex processes difficult both to document and assess. Whether the afflicted one is a parent, grandparent, or sibling, a patient with leprosy, AIDS, a gun wound, or suffering from emotional or physical trauma after a natural or human-inflicted disaster, lives are saved, extended, and enhanced in manifold ways in this exhibition.

Photographs give us the opportunity to see and to learn more about ourselves as well as to question both our own actions and lifestyles and those of others. They also offer inspiration and motivation for social change. The people of New Orleans are critically aware of how desperately help can be needed in order to survive, and how a timely, caring hand, gesture, or other assistance can determine one's very survival. Appropriately, in organizing this exhibition we have reached out and invited to participate as our community partners a number of organizations that played and continue to play a role not only in the recovery of New Orleans after Katrina, but also New York after September 11, 2001, Indonesia after the tsunami in 2004, in the Sudan today, as well as in innumerable disasters around the globe over the time span covered by the photographs on display.

The following organizations have been selected and paired with the seven exhibition themes: for Children and Family, the Children's Defense Fund; for Love, the American Heart Association; for Wellness and Caregiving and Healing, the American Medical Association; for Disaster, the American Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity; for Aging, AARP; for Remembering, the National Hospice Foundation. These relief, humanitarian, and educational organizations were selected to be our community partners not only because their interests reflect the thematic components of the exhibition, but also because they have the potential to contribute to the lives of visitors and other community members in each location where the exhibition will travel through critical outreach efforts.

The Art of Caring celebrates diversity. This diversity is a by-product of great upheavals in both the political and sociological underpinnings of our society during the time period covered by the photographs in this exhibition. Even the formerly sacrosanct concept of what constitutes a family has been transformed. The Ozzie and Harriet-like nuclear family structure of the 1950s, which traditionally consisted of a mother, father, and child or children, was replaced by a multiplicity of societal norms.

The demographics of our society are being altered in other ways. We live in a decidedly older society with the consequent social impacts that caregiving for such a population exacts on all family members. The U.S. Census report tells us that in 2030, when the baby boomer generation is 65 and older, one out of five residents in the United States is expected to be at least 65 years old. Already, as reported in the September 2008 AARP Bulletin, "about 44 million Americans act as caregivers to their spouse, parent or other adult family member or friend, a role that can be stressfulÑphysically, emotionally and financially. Their quiet service as caregivers in their own homes is valued at a whopping $350 billion a year..."

DISASTER: Joe McNally (American, contemporary); Bill Ryan, Mike Morrissey, 2001; Color polaroid; Collection of the Artist

In today's interconnected world, photography is more a part of our everyday lives than ever before. Only a few years ago, bringing a camera with you was a conscious decision and often involved fastidious planning and the transportation of cumbersome equipment that made documentation far from spontaneous. Today, most cell phone users have a camera with them at all times. Taking a photo of anyone, anything and then transmitting it effortlessly via email to one person or many has become second nature. Walking, talking, shooting, and transmitting photos are now virtually synonymous.

In addition to the seeming omnipresence of photography and the proliferation of often unwanted images at dizzying speed, digital technologies have not only revolutionized established modes of communicating and reporting, but also have made basic photographic processes obsolete. Kodak no longer makes slide projectors; Polaroid's hallmark instant film is no longer available, and although many photographers still shoot in film, more often than not, the film is then scanned into a digital format prior to manipulation and/or production.

From birth to death through struggle and triumph after disaster, the photographs in this exhibition capture the complex interweaving of individuals, families, communities, governments, and humanitarian agencies that assist us all in our collective, circuitous, and unpredictable life journeys. These topics have put an emphasis in my selection process on emotionally charged situations replete with pleasures and vicissitudes. In so doing, these photographs pay tribute to the multitude of amazing caregivers who assist on the family level, the community level, and the governmental level in times of need. In the more than three years it took to select the photographs for The Art of Caring, I looked into countless highly personal moments in other people's lives. These confrontations led me, in turn, to reevaluate certain personal occasions and activities. This reaction reveals the potency and unequalled widespread appeal of the photographic medium by virtue of its ability to convey authenticity, engender empathy, and incite action. I hope that visitors to this exhibition will feel these emotions as well and be inspired by the amazing richness of the human experience.