Exhibit: "The Clinton White House," Bob McNeely at the Leica Gallery, New York — June 30 through Aug. 26, 2000.
In his capacity as chief White House photographer from 1992 through 1998, Bob McNeely shadowed President Clinton in quiet personal moments and campaign strategy sessions, at historic meetings with heads of state and preparing for on-air debates. Through it all, McNeely manages to capture aspects of the president's private and public moments with stateliness and intimacy. Most importantly, however, is McNeely's approach as a kind a Clinton biographer.
Clinton, seated alone on a stage at the outset of a televised debate during his re-election campaign, appears almost diminuitive yet eager, much like a schoolboy looking to impress his teachers. Other times, Clinton is portrayed in the midst of a hearty laugh. And the relentlessness of a political campaign is evident as McNeely follows Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and advisors into a Tennessee restroom. In Campaign Strategy Meeting, a stray hand holds up a sheet of paper for the president to read, as Clinton, his face reflected in a mirror, stands emotionless, as if acknowledging the weight he bears, a burden the general public will never know.
McNeely here provides a sweeping sense of history, in black and white, of a presidency that re-energized the electorate and redefined the political process. Shooting more than 25,000 rolls of film in six years, McNeely has created a document of Clinton's legacy, which will become part of the archive of presidential papers at the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Ark.
Related links:
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A disturbing view
of race and revenge
Exhibit: "Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America," a collection by James Allen at The New-York Historical Society, New York. — through Aug. 13, 2000.
The horrifying images of lynching victims — as snapshots and souveniers throughout the early 1900s — at the New-York Historical Society exhibit stand as evidence of mob vengeance, racism and a dark side of American history.
The images themselves are simple, straightforward B&W photos, of men and women, most of them black, who were often tortured before being killed by hanging, shooting, stabbing or burning. Many of the lynchings took place throughout Texas and much of the South, but they also occurred in the Midwent and California. While the images are gruesome, they also provide a more frightening context about the society in which they took place.
The lynchings were often public spectacles. Men in coats and hats, as well as boys and girls, gathered to witness the killings, sometimes smiling for the cameras and rarely making any effort to conceal their identities. In one postcard, Spectators at the lynching of Jesse Washington, a lone man in a crowd is lifted so that he can get a better view of a 1916 daytime lynching in Waco, Texas.
Glass cases in the center of the exhibit space on New York's Upper West Side contain items that provide additional context to the photos, including whips with their handle carved into the likenesses of an Asian caricature with a rope around his neck and of a screaming black man.
Another item in the exhibit includes a framed picture of a lynching, with the penciled-in words, "Bo pointn to his niga" and "klan 4th Joplin, Mo. 33." Under the glass are locks of the victim's hair.
Literature accompanying the exhibit explains: "The sensational aspects of extralegal violence were exploited by religious organizations, race supremacists, civil rights groups, photographers, and journalists to increase organizational growth, excite social activism, maintain racial dominance, solidify racial unity, and in this example to manipulate public opinion and increase political voice."
Meanwhile, the exhibit devotes one wall to the anti-lynching activists who themselves were often were targets of hate crimes. One poster by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People states that more than 2,000 lynchings were recorded between 1889 and 1922. (Yet, a handful of the pictures in the exhibit don't correspond to published news accounts, relegating the victims to eternal anonymity.) Outside its New York offices, the NAACP would display a flag that read, "A man was lynched yesterday," following each reported incident across the country.
Collected by researcher James Allen over the past quarter century, the postcards and photographs explicitly illustrate aspects of American society, politics and race that perhaps are not as far from our own times as one might think. Witness the dragging death of a black man in Jasper, Texas, and the current presidential candidates' acceptance of capital punishment for people who are today equally without sanctuary.
Related links:
- Journal E, a photojournalism Web site, hosts the online exhibit, which contains more than 100 photographs and a Flash presentation by James Allen.
- Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, a book published by Twin Palms of Santa Fe, N.M., contains many of the pictures James Allen collected over 25 years, along with essays by Hilton Als, Jon Lewis, Leon F. Litwack, Leon Litwack, and John Lewis.
...
Florida as a fragile
mosiac of cultures
Book: 'From the Sunshine State: Photographs of Florida' by Alex Webb, Monacelli Press, 127 pages, hardcover | U.K
The images here exist as a record of the interlocking aspects of life in Florida that exist side by side but never really mix. From Guatemalan immigrants who labor into the night to the tourists who flock to the fantasy lands of Disney World, from the poor rural families often left out of the bigger picture to the retirees who adopt the balmy Caribbean weather as their own, Webb's images create social commentary within a framework of beauty. His signature use of saturated colors and strong vertical lines place people within a context they have helped create.
A leisure fisherman on a bridge, a pelican in mid-air behind him. A man, faceless, stumbles away from a storefront, a few paces from a dog stretching. Two children amuse themselves in a playpen covered by mosquito netting as an empty chair sits on the grass nearby.
At his best, Webb stands with the likes of Cartier-Bresson due to his instinct for the decisive moment. And he responds to his environment like an anthropologist with a sense of humor and empathy.
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In its March
2000 issue, Art in America reviews a posthumous exhibit of work by Raghubir Singh, saying that, "As personal as his photographs undoubtedly are, Singh's mise-en-scènes are nation-scaled and highly variable ..." The six-page, in-depth article takes a look at the color photography Singh created in his prolific career. "It could become, for India, what Robert Frank's The Americans has been in this country," writes P.C. Smith. The exhibit was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, which hosted the show 23 January 1999 through 2 May 1999.
Singh's 13th and last book, River
of Color: The India of Raghubir Singh, was published shortly before
his death last April.
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