Anthony-Petr Gorny, Untitled [ABDE], 1976. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Anthony Gorny, 80.30.1.
On December 11th, NOMA’s Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, Prints, and Drawings, Brian Piper, opened up the floor for a tour and conversation on Show & Tell: A Brief History of Photography and Text. With photographs dating back to the 19th century, Piper dissected the relationship between photography that includes text.
Throughout the gallery talk, Piper covered elements of misinformation, disinformation, poetry, storytelling, and advertisement that is featured in photography to better understand what these images are meant to convey. As his explanations of various photographs mused at the famous adage that claims a picture is worth a thousand words, he decoded the meanings of the images with deep knowledge of the artists, the intentions and messages they tried to convey through their respective photographs, and the context in which the photographs were taken.
For example, in George N. Barnard’s, “Battlefield of Atlanta, GA. July 22, 1864 No. 1 from Photographic Views of the Sherman Campaign, 1866,” Piper explained that the text in the photo detailing the Battlefield in the photo is actually incorrect. Other standouts included Margaret Bourke-White’s gelatin silver print, “Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville, 1937,” showing the image of African Americans waiting for aid in front of a mural showing a happy white American family under text that reads “World’s Highest Standard of Living” that creates a sense of irony and shows the realities of the longstanding racial disparities of the United States.
Piper’s Gallery Talk prompted visitors with food for thought and reflections included questions about irony, journalism, and the importance, or lack thereof, of truth telling in one’s art. Though some questions were met with pointed answers, others were left up to interpretation and varying understandings of what was trying to be communicated, if anything at all. In a moment in history where there are images with texts zipping from one corner of the globe to another and a seemingly unending source of informal journalism and education available on social media, the Show & Tell Gallery Talk could not have come at a more relevant time.