Predecessors and Descendants: Selection of Photographs from the NSU Art Museum Collection
October 5, 2024 – February 2, 2025
This selection of photographs from NSU Art Museum’s collection is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Joel Meyerowitz: Temporal Aspects. The photographs are by artists who preceded Joel Meyerowitz’s (b. 1938) trailblazing exploration of color photography, portraiture, urban scenes, landscapes and seascapes, as well as photographers who followed his lead. American photographers Anselm Adams (1902-1984), Berenice Abbott (1898-1991), and Walker Evans (1903-1975) each made significant contributions to defining the aesthetic of the new medium. They primarily worked in black and white, not only because it was an aesthetic decision but because Kodachrome— the first mass-marketed color film, introduced in 1935, was so complicated that photographers had to rely on labs to develop it. Color was also associated with commercial photography for advertisements rather than for fine art.
Although Anselm Adams produced color photographs (mostly for corporate clients), he wrote in 1967, “I can get—for me—a far greater sense of ‘color’ through a well-planned and executed black-and-white image than I have ever achieved with color photography.” Later photographers, such as Catherine Opie (b. 1961), benefitted from advances in color printing as well as Meyerowitz’s elevation of color photography to the status of fine art. Whereas earlier generations of photographers labored in dark rooms, masterfully developing their prints, the medium continued to evolve with digital photography and digital printing (introduced in 1991) and Photoshop (released by Adobe in 1987).
