NOMA honors the life and achievements of sculptor Lin Emery, one of New Orleans’ most beloved and accomplished artists. Internationally recognized for her lyrical, reflective sculptures, Lin was a vital part of New Orleans’ creative community. Read More
Lola Alvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1903-1993) stands outs as one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century, whose work remains regrettably underappreciated around the world. Read More
Distinguished collectors Cherye R. and James (Jim) F. Pierce have gifted more than 260 photographs by master art photographers, ranging from the nineteenth-century to the present, to the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA). Read More
Malone’s demonstration piece, believed to be one of a kind, then, is a strange but wonderfully conceptual work from early photography. As a photograph that consists of nothing but the word “Talbotype,” this work gives us photography twice over—that is, in word and in image. Read More
The New Orleans Museum of Art announces a major fund and pledged endowment by Del and Ginger Hall of Chicago, Illinois, in support of the NOMA photography department. The fund will support and augment an ambitious set of exhibitions and programs in the department of photographs over the next five years, while the endowment will provide a foundation for the department’s activities in perpetuity. Read More
Noted radiologist and art collector Dr. H. Russell Albright (1934-2017) bequeathed his extensive and important photography collection to the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), and left a fund to create an endowment in support of the museum’s Department of Photographs. Dr. Albright had a long and significant relationship with NOMA, filling many roles over the span of 30 years, ranging from Trustee to longtime Fellow. Read More
Maynard Walker’s photograph of North Polar Stars seems to trace the path of the stars through the night sky over a long period of time. What it actually records, of course, is our own planet earth spinning through space and time. Read More
In 1933, as the company approached its 100-year anniversary, Pommery Champagne hired Ilse Bing to produce a series of photos documenting its production facilities in Reims, France. Even though she was ostensibly hired to sell more champagne Bing approached the job with the same creativity and avant-garde approach found in her personal work. Read More
In the summer of 1936, Walker Evans and James Agee, on assignment from Fortune magazine, set out to chronicle the daily lives of typical sharecropper families in the American South. In Hale County, Alabama, they found three families—including the Fields—with whom they lived for a month, with Evans photographing and Agee writing about their lives and environments, including this photograph from the family’s kitchen. Read More
Lotte Stam-Beese’s portrait of fellow Bauhaus student Albert Braun reflects the innovative creative process nurtured by the Bauhaus School of Design in Weimar-era Germany. Read More
In 1940, Josef Sudek began his best-known series of photographs, a body of images of or through his studio window in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Read More
Photographs of and through windows have remained popular throughout the history of photography. In the early years, the presence of windows was driven by necessity: photography in its infancy required great amounts of light, and windows obliged. Read More
Photography has often been employed in the service of recording exceptional spaces, but a photograph always more or less distorts the space it is supposed to record. The distortion may enhance the true nature of the interior or it may severely misrepresent it. Read More
None of the following photographs were taken by photographers in their own homes. Rather, to make each of the images discussed here, a photographer had to gain permission to cross the threshold into someone else’s home. If that transaction calls to mind mythic negotiations that, supposedly, allow a vampire to enter one’s home (May I… Read More
Many of us can name a work of art, music, or literature that provokes an emotional or even a physical reaction. This photograph by Guy Mendes has that quality, and can inspire an incredible sense of lightness and peace. The photograph is beautiful in its simplicity. The soft bend in the wrinkled sail allows us… Read More
All photographs depend on different combinations of chemicals and minerals to turn light into pictures. This week, as NOMA focuses on the materials and processes that artists use to create, we’d like to give some special attention to a unique and beautiful variety of photograph: the platinum print. It may come as no surprise that… Read More
As NOMA explores the theme of process and materials, this essay looks back at an exhibition from 2011, What is a Photograph?, and some of the treasures that it included from the museum’s collection. What is a photograph? How do we define its history? Over the past 190 years, photography has infiltrated almost every aspect… Read More
During the Civil War, Timothy O’Sullivan made a name for himself photographing army camp life and Eastern landscapes destroyed by cataclysmic battles. In 1871 O’Sullivan enlisted in the U.S. Corps of Engineers for a series of expeditions to map the lands west of the 100th meridian, commonly referred to as the Wheeler Survey (after leader… Read More
