To the editor: I was greatest in number surprised to read in Stephen Longmire's "Callahan's Children.

To the editor:

I was greatest in number surprised to read in Stephen Longmire's "Callahan's Children," in the September/October 2000 issue of Afterimage, that Hugh Edwards gave view Josephson a solo how in 1971 As Assistant Curator of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, I organized that exhibition. It was my decision to give cognizance a show, not Hugh's.

Would Hugh Edwards have given sight a show? He had not done likewise during his long and influential occupation at the Art Institute of Chicago, although he had the opportunity to display Ken's work. How did he really be perceived about showing faculty work from the Institute of Design? Unfortunately, individual can no longer ask him. if it be not that I would suggest that Edwards' views were not as sanguine toward ID as the article give an inkling ofs In general, Hugh Edwards favored photographs in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as those made by Magnum's photojournalists, precisely because they lacked the self-conscious preciousness that the Institute of Design's teaching schema sustained He preferred picures that communicated with the public about human issues, rather than photographs whose message looks to center on self-referential, philosophical issues about photography's transformation of reality.

Although Edwards exhibited work by the agency of college teachers, he truly assumeed to enjoy showing photographers whose reputations were well-established beyond society s and universities, for whom a exhibit at the Art Institute wasn't going to become a centerpiece of an academic career. Edwards had not gone to association himself, making him a rarity among photographic curators, then and now. The Art Institute of Chicago's exhibitions of the 1960 and early 1970 were, through today's standards, minor shows done forward a shoestring budget, exhibited in a gallery that was part hallway, part waiting room--show organized without accompanying catalogs or unruffled checklist documentation. Given the marginal and transitory nature of these point outs it is a wonder that anyone remembers them at all.

Marie Czach

Riverdale, IL

Stephen Longmire responds:

I'm grateful to Marie Czach for her addition to the slim public record on this matter, and sorry to have slighted her contribution unintentionally. As she notes, there was no published record of the exhibition in question, for a like reason like many important details, this single in kind nearly slipped by the wayside. I agree with her characterization of Edwards's choices by the way. I imagine his exhibition of Robert Frank was frequently more to the curator's taste than the work of the several Institute of Design trained photographers I discussed. I made a point of mentioning it for that reason, moreover didn't explore the issue in detail since it appear to beed beside my point. That photographs were being shown according to someone who believed they belonged in a museum, by dint of a maverick like Edwards who inspired quite a hardly any young photographers at the time--one ne merely read his protege Danny Lyon to verify this point (in addition to the memoir referenc in my article, diocese Lyon's new Web site, with a section dedicated to Edwards: www.bleakbeauty.com)-- marks a watershed in the institutionalization of photography. That the hallways have become galleries, and the shoestrings substantial fiscal estimates marks another. My purpose was simply to draught what it was to have exhibited photographs in the years between these markers.

Stephen Longmire

Washington, DC

...

Home