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Throughout the city, Philadelphia celebrates the 170th year of photography with exhibits that showcase the medium’s origins and exemplify the region’s strength in producing leaders in the field. Here’s a peek at two of the shows.

Eight local artists who experimented with processes, techniques and subject matter are featured in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s “Common Ground: Eight Philadelphia Photographers in the 1960s and 1970s.” Photography back then was just beginning to gain credibility in galleries and museums. At the time, art schools had just begun offering photography as a major.

Large scale prints are a hallmark of today’s photography but most of the works in “Common Ground” are small—and most are black and white since color photography was viewed as less artistic. Regardless of format, “Common Ground”’s photos are uniformly human-focused and their ambiance is upbeat, inquisitive and energetic.

Catherine Jensen’s experimental works from 1979 stand out for their colors and large format and for their radical mix of photography and sculpture. Jensen transferred photographic images onto cloth via color xerography. She then stitched and stuffed her cloth images as 3-D trompe l’oeil objects (a tea set, a table, a camera, framed family pictures). In their domestic content, their “crafted-ness” and their playful use of trompe l’oeil, these works have an uncanny alliance with work by today’s young artists.


Other notable pieces include Carol Taback’s photo booth collages from the late 1970s and Emmet Gowin’s 
psychologically-charged portraits of his wife’s family from 1969 to 1970. Taback—who had a photo booth in her studio—turned the human figures into abstract repeated patterns that prefigure Photoshop’s “mosaic” feature while Gowin’s intense portraits feel like precursors to work by local photographers Zoe Strauss and Sarah Stolfa, both of whom strive for truth and confrontation in their portraits. 


Twenty-one emerging photographers also focus on the human form in “Next: Emerging Philadelphia Photographers” at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. The immediate difference between this show and “Common Ground” is the use of color. While “Common Ground” features bright, vibrant hues, the large prints in “Next” have a deadpan affect that evokes a world-weariness. If earlier generations of photographers mirrored the exuberance of their times, today’s photographers record human uneasiness and depression. 


Jaime Alvarez’s 168_001 (Spain Rest Stop, Outside of Leon) for example, is a mystery. A shot of a grassy hilltop on a sunny day features an electric pole in the foreground. Is the pole the subject? Is this an ironic comment on beauty? Similar to both snapshot and documentary, the photo guards its point of view. Phil Jackson’s Davis With Deer, Upstate NY 2007 likewise cloaks its meaning. A young man by the side of a country road stoops down to hold up the head of a dead deer. The shot is operatic in content (loss of life; solidarity between young man and young deer). Yet the photo is inscrutable. ■

For more on the Philadelphia art scene go to theartblog.org.

“ Common Ground: Eight Philadelphia Photographers in the 1960s and 1970s ” Through Jan. 31. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and the Benjamin Franklin Pkwy. 215.763.8100. philamuseum.org
“ Next: Emerging Philadelphia Photographers ” Through Nov. 29. Philadelphia Photo Art Center, 1400 N. American St., suite 103. 215.232.5678. philaphotoarts.org